Rodrigo García (E/ARG) Gólgota Picnic

72% theatre 14% piano 14% excess

A fallen angel speaks. He can no longer bring evil to the Earth, for mankind has already factored in and consumed evil. And so, even the Devil himself fears humanity.
The hill of skulls on which Argentinian-Spanish director Rodrigo García stages his excessive picnic is a hamburger-strewn battlefield of consumption, in which art is, at best, an ornament. A disconcerting version of the world in which we live.
García’s drastically physical theatre language is a raging reckoning with Western civilisation, with us. Immoderate and yet similar to the Bible, whose stories inspire the vast avalanche of the evening, in its force and wild imagery: angels rise and fall, everywhere there is fire, heavens that open, miracles, demons, dead people and unimaginable tortures. And sitting naked at the grand piano in the middle of this theatrical mission is Marino Formenti – whose piano marathon left a distinctive trail in steirischer herbst 2010 – playing Haydn’s “The Last Seven Words of Christ”. Playing and playing, until the last note has faded.