Cry Babies is a speculative fiction in fake documentary format that looks at the relationship between education, society and violence. In an ultra-infantilised, saccharine world (cartoon characters, children’s songs, Mr.Wonderful, promises of a successful future…) which is at the same time hyperdigital and controlled (facial recognition, cameras, social networks…) one person bucks the norms: a teenage girl instigates a violent episode at her college. What has led her to commit this atrocity? How much responsibility should be assigned to her family, the school, technology, media, the politician who made cuts to education, society or herself? For the piece, we see inside the mind of the perpetrator through her diaries, interpreted and exposed to the audience by the performers, who highlight the various factors (financial, political, educational, social…) that drove this person to violence. How should we deal with juvenile violence as a society?
THE FOLLOWERS is a company of young women from Barcelona created in 2018 by Andrea Monje and Laura Riera. Welcome to Siri’s Party was their first piece, presented as a work in progress at the Rose Bruford College of Theater and Performance (2018, London) and at the Festival Croquis (2019, Sala Beckett). In 2019, the team were awarded the Bonnescèniques grant (Francesca Bonnemaison Women’s Cultural Centre) and premiered the final work at Antic Teatre of Barcelona. The show is currently on tour. Cry Babies is their follow-up production, where they take a further step in the investigation of new languages and the creation of contemporary narratives.