Agrupación Señor Serrano

We are working. We are working on a new show: The Mountain. We keep on writing and imagining how The Mountain can fit in a world after C-19, if it will still have sense. The show was supposed to be premiered next July in Barcelona, but we know for sure that this won’t be possible. So, what should we do? Give up? No, we work. Every day. Also today. Because after this crisis, theatre will be more necessary than ever. Well, we don’t believe this, we just hope we’ll be able to keep doing theater because, as many theatre makers, we can’t do any other job. Or better, we love what we do and we are not going to really question if it is a job or not. In any case. We are working on The Mountain.

What’s the show about? Let the raconteur of the show tell you about it:

What is the Truth? Or better, what the Truth is not?

Good evening. Welcome to The Mountain.

This show is about the first expedition set to conquer the Mount Everest. The mountaineer George Mallory and his team, were the first men to try to surmount the highest peak on Earth, back in 1924 (30 years before the first official summit). Why were they trying to do so? Did they succeed? What certifies that something has really happened or not?

This show is also about Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds in 1938. The program made millions of people believe that a martian invasion was really occurring. What was the intention of that broadcast? Did the broadcast reveal something about the vulnerability of the public in front of new media formats? Is that radio program telling us anything about our present times? What makes us trust someone or something?

Well, let me be your sherpa in this expedition, let me be your guide through this invasion.

But who am I? Mmm? Who am I? 

Exactly, who is he? Well, we tell you: he is Vladimir Putin. And this is part of what he has to say about Truth and Trust:

What do you know about me? Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, a strong, tenacious and constant man. A charismatic character wrapped in something murky and dark. A leader with questionable methods who has managed to gain the trust of his citizens in a country of 150 million inhabitants. A politician who has used news forgery, disinformation and confidence-manipulation strategies to destabilize the world. What else do you know? Take your time. What else do you know about me? And even more important, how did you come to know what you know? Do you trust what you know about me? Do you think everything you know about me is true? Or in other words: Do you think that the information circulating about me responds exactly to who I am and what I do?

It is clear that I am not a kind and crystalline Santa Claus, but why do we decide to believe certain things and others not? Why do we decide to trust certain media, certain information, certain people and not others? How is trust built and how is it destroyed? What does trust have to do with truth?

Let me tell you an anecdote. One day I was with a group of friends in my Dacha's garden. We had invited actor Nikita Mikhalkov to entertain us. At a certain point, Mikhalkov proposed a game. He made a draw and I was chosen. He asked me to climb into a chair and secretly gave me instructions. I went along with him amidst the excitement of my guests. They blindfolded me and started a countdown. I heard the muffled laughter of the whole group as I felt the breeze caressing my hands, that renewed air of the month of May that makes the elms bloom. Five, four, three, two, one and... The tips of my shoes gently rise, I lean on my heels and drop backwards. I feel the aroma of freshly cut hay, barbecued meat and baked pastries. I fall backwards with all my weight. I notice how I traverse the air, how gravity draws me to its most intimate bosom. I feel the space that separates me from the ground and the eyes of my friends on me. Their strength, their energy, their will and mine. I feel my friends ready to catch me in the air, in community, and thus interrupt my fall. Trust.

Then without opening my eyes, I rebalance my weight in the air, I turn on myself, I manage to set my left foot on the chair and with the free leg I launch a kick that hits Aleksey's mandible, my elbow strikes Masha's belly, I notice how my right knee crashes into Boris’ chest breaking two ribs and then, fully regaining control of my body thanks to these supports, I gently land on the floor. I bend my knees and take the necessary momentum so that my head hits Nikita Mikhalkov's jaw and breaks it in two.

I open my eyes and look at the scene around me, my friends lying on the ground, the blossoming branches of the elms swaying, and I realize that I have a huge erection. I take a deep breath and I think that trust is just this.

You know what I mean, right?

So this is what we are doing. We are working. Every single day. Because the Truth is out there. Or not.

Agrupación Señor Serrano is composed by Àlex Serrano, Barbara Bloin and Pau Palacios.

Agrupación Señor Serrano

Theatre company

Spain