Knots Nudos Nós Theater Festival: a space to challenge all borders

More than a decade of research and creation of new shows and new diffusion spaces are commemorated this January in Buenos Aires with the 6th. Edition of the International Theater Festival of Grupo Knots Nudos Nós. “Actually it was going to be in January 2021 and we decided to postpone it because we did not want to do a virtual edition, and because as every year – actually every two years, as it is done – the headquarters changes, Buenos Aires was going to take a long time to return to have a festival “, details Santiago Saracca, member of the mother group, theater director and organizer of the current edition. Originated in 2011 and organized every two years, the Festival arrives in Buenos Aires after having passed through Berlin (2011), San Pedro, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2013), La Paz, Bolivia (2015), Mogi das Cruzes , São Paulo, Brazil (2017) and Tafí del Valle, Tucumán, Argentina (2019).

“This is a network of stable theater groups, companies that work permanently creating their shows, dictating their courses, seminars, workshops or managing different activities -explains Saracca the conformation of KNOTS-NUDOS-NÓS-. And at the end of each edition of the Festival, on the last day, in an assembly, it is proposed and decided where the next one will be held. ” That is why one of the salient characteristics of this international group is the confluence in each festival of each of the member groups: taking the keyword Encuentro, Knots Nudos Nós proposes an intense and in-depth exchange so that the experiences gathered during the two years apart, they can converge towards a common denominator that establishes new individual proposals based on what is common to them.

“During those ten days, in addition, what is sought is to create a show,” says Saracca. Work begins a little earlier, remotely, and a director is invited. On this occasion we are organizing Célula Cype, from Villa Martelli, and Camino Teatro and La Corbel Estudio, from the City of Buenos Aires, and we have the power to invite the director, who in this case we invite a group in its entirety, who is Teatro Grito, in La Paz. They are going to coordinate all the creative work and the assembly of the show that will be done during those days. And on the last day, at the closing party on January 16, it is presented to the entire public. The festival travels these two routes: festival and meeting; a way of socializing knowledge and knowledges, that is the meaning. “

-How do you make a show in such a short time and related to what can happen?

-Teatro Grito has in its team a director, a director, actors, actresses, their own dramaturgy, they write their works, that is, it is a group with more than 20 years of experience and with its own room. So in this case they are in charge of starting to think about where the discursive thing is going to go, aesthetically, poetically. They began to link up with the groups scheduled for the Festival and were asking for written material, texts, images, and from that they began to put together. And when they get here they will do the assembly work. The reality is that we do not know how and where it will go, because on the one hand there are the ideas of Teatro Grito, what it will bring from those ideas that the groups sent, and on the other what is happening creatively in those ten days. They arrive with scenes, fragments, and in the second week there will surely be a montage with everything that was created in the first from what they brought. It is a super intense festival: from 9 in the morning until 12:30 or 1 the work is carried out internally, and at 4 the workshops open to the public begin, and at 7 the first show and at 9:30 the second.

Between Thursday 6 and Sunday 16, the CELCIT (Moreno 431), Espacio Las Sibilas (Humberto 1 ° 330), Patio Las Sibilas (Humberto 1º and Balcarce), Eureka cultural (Virrey Cevallos 1751), Orilleres (Block 16, house 63, Villa 21-24), and Espacio Caacupé (Osvaldo Cruz 3470, Villa 21-24), will be the shelter for theatrical art of the following groups: Impulso Coletivo (Brazil), Teatro Grito (Bolivia), Compañía do Escândalo (Brazil ), La Sangre Mamute (Brazil), CIE El Tea recently (Mexico), Compañía La Turba (Spain), Teatro del Arca (Uruguay), Aulò Teatro / Maglab (Italy), Die Pinken Clauden (Argentina), Caja Tomada (from Argentina ), Grupo Tumba Cabeza (Argentina), Las Juanas (Argentina), La Cordura del Copete (Argentina), Coletivo Iúnas de Campinas (Brazil), Coletiva Corpo-Territorio (Bolivia and Brazil), Grupo La Piedra Angular (Argentina), and Célula Cype (Argentina), Camino Teatro (Argentina) and La Corbel Estudio (Argentina).

And it is because of that intensity sought that January was also sought: “We believe that January is a month with less theatrical offer than the usual Buenos Aires has, but above all that there is an audience that continues to be in the city in a month in which the times are different and it allows another type of approach to different proposals. What is usually generated in the communities is an approach in the first days and then becoming a habit. That produces a very special exchange. “

Knots knots knots

From Thursday 6 and Sunday 16 January 2022 different venues. Tickets $ 1000 ($ 800 students, retirees and teachers; discounts per pack of tickets) available through Alternativa Teatral or CELCIT (also programming). The workshops, talks and shows programmed at Espacio Las Sibilas are free to enter with solidarity collaboration and non-perishable food.