Rescue

A montage that immerses us in an intimate dialogue between an abandoned space and the immortal voice of one of the most prominent Chilean creators. Rescate invites you to witness how a theater continues to dialogue with its history.

The piece features sound engineering work, technology and even robots, where the words and voice of the creator of La Negra Ester are cited to address stories related to the old and abandoned theaters in northern Chile.

The dramaturgy is composed thanks to the audio records of the director Andrés Pérez Araya, who narrates the work, and thus we can witness how an abandoned theater dialogues with a deceased theater director. "This desert theater exists, it was founded in 1886 and remains abandoned in the commune of Chañaral. It is said that Andrés Pérez worked there, from there begins a fable that we are telling. In this theater, the Windsor of Chañaral, it is said that the French actress Sarah Bernhardt performed," says Alejandro Moreno in an interview.

Indeed, the Windsor Theater of Chañaral (Atacama region) is a historic wooden construction that was a vital cultural and social center for the community and currently persists, although in a state of abandonment and deterioration. From 1926 onwards, it was leased and transformed into a biographer (cinema), a function it maintained for years. It was last used in 1998 for the premiere of the play "Malte" by Chilean playwright Fernando Cuadra.

As Moreno explains, Rescate is a dramaturgy show, since it is based on the fact of making a person who has already died act and resolving it through voice. "I took all the files I found about Andrés Pérez and transcribed everything he said and began, together with the sound engineer Joaquín Vallejo, to put together sentences, to put together stories. I mixed a noun that he said in an interview in 1987 with a verb that he said in 1994 with an adjective that he said in the year 2000, and that's how sentences were formed," he says in Interference.  

This is how, on stage Andrés Pérez narrates the play and tells the story of a group of children, the story of the life of a snail, the story of a French actress who lived in Chile, the story of a woman who works in a cabaret in Punta Arenas. "This project, more than artificial intelligence, is a project of artificial craftsmanship, since we manually built, analogously, the speech of Andrés Pérez, it was not a mechanical process of software. We were putting together like a collage of words, but it was done manually and that is artificial dramaturgy, it is not artificial intelligence," Moreno concludes.

Direction and dramaturgy: Alejandro Moreno | Cast: Valentina Muhr, Paula Bravo, Mario Goya and Juan Pablo Lara | Model boss: Mario Goya | Art direction and setting: Juan Pablo Lara | Stage director: José Noriega | Lighting realization: Dubi Cano | Costumes: Constanza Rojas | Puppet making: Macarena Ahumada | Model choreography: Cristián Plana | Robotics: Saiprasanth Krishnamoorthy, Hassam Khan Wazir and Diego Pozo | Sound designer and text programmer: Joaquín Vallejo | Music: Alejandro Miranda | General production: Nicole Venegas | Direction assistance: María Paz González Durney | Acknowledgments: Marcelo Porta, Andrés Pérez Araya Foundation.