This is an experiment in chaos and order. The experience is obviously not an innocuous one and is extremely complex; it could be summarised as “if you want silence you have to work on it” or “do whatever you like”. Assuming power is in no way simple. We are born tied to our circumstances and from our earliest childhood depend on others to obtain such vital necessities as food or heat. We depend on the audience, and also on theatres and governments, for our work to be seen. However, what is essentially a social interdependence does not make either the audience or the theatres or the governments our masters. The problem with government is that it has been created to rule, to administrate and to govern our actions. Art is a homogenous medium where we can experiment with or reproduce certain states, certain assumptions.
Sofía Asencio and Tomàs Aragay are the company co-directors. Every show or project is begun from scratch, so that they can rethink their artistic language each time. Mixing genres, stage formats and types of people, they create their own way of inhabiting the stage. They like to use the stage, where we would expect to see something spectacular, as the setting for something as unspectacular as possible, so creating a poetic pathos.
Societat Doctor Alonso set up their base in a rural area, the village of Pontós in the province of Girona, to move away from the ‘noise’ and the ‘uniformity’ that surrounds contemporary creation and the arts in a big city like Barcelona. This allowed them to turn their gaze inward in search of their own voice. By creating in a local and rural environment, and finding their place within their own cultural traditions, they are in a position to construct a strong and universal discourse from their peripheral perspective.
By the same token Societat Doctor Alonso have developed a clear will for continuous exchange with the outside world, a desire supported by a double conviction: on the one hand, the need to keep a close eye on the creative directions being developed abroad; and on the other, the overwhelming imperative of showing their work to audiences from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, so that the variety of reactions can in turn provide an enriching artistic feedback.
Societat Doctor Alonso collaborate with a broad selection of interdisciplinary artists, often continuing these collaborations across an extensive range of projects.
