Where were the women of the Beat Generation? Bodily Portraits of Minor Characters is a combination of literary texts, poetry and physical theatre that traces the life course of two writers of the Beat movement: Diane di Prima and Joyce Johnson. We find ourselves in New York in the 50s; jazz music, poetry readings. In the shadows, we discover the minor characters, the women: out of focus, on the sidelines, blurred, working underground, non-popularised. Nomadic travelers, moving with their own rhythm, beat; also travelling inwards, into more intimate and domestic surroundings, integrating them into their poetry. Women are the true Beat essence: raw, unedited, pure, shocking.
Sanna Toivanen and Alba Cabrera have years of experience in physical and ritualistic theatre, working on methodologies related to Grotowski and Artaud, both in the Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richard Workcenter in Italy, and in the Song of the Goat in Poland. They have also worked with La Fura dels Baus, Albert Vidal, Pere Sais, Corchero among others. Laura Ventura, museologist and designer of narrative spaces, is the ideologist of the theoretical background of the performance. Bodily Portraits of Minor Characters is the first joint project of these three artists as the Dones BEAT collective, winners of the Bonnescèniques grant (Centre de Cultura de Dones Francesca Bonnemaison) in coproduction with Antic Teatre.
