Childhood integrates us. It is the common homeland of all human beings who inhabit the planet. Adults can recognize what we were in the children around us, and those of us who are less forgetful will learn to recognize ourselves in an identity that we largely forged in childhood. Neuroscience tells us: the majority of the brain's architecture is formed by the age of three.
María Zambrano said it long before: childhood is that indestructible homeland, that place to which one returns not out of nostalgia but "as the ultimate refuge from all the storms of life; a place that, by its mere appearance in the soul, offers security, calm..."
Huizinga in his Homo ludens He came to say that we are what we play. The Dutch philosopher and historian attributed to play a humanizing function similar to that of thought and work, and pointed to it as, no less, the origin of culture. And play, as we all know, is, above all, a childlike capacity, regardless of the age of the person playing.
Teatralia turns 20, it's grown young, but we return year after year to that childhood haven; to that energy of discovery, curiosity, and inventiveness so characteristic of children. And with that fuel, this time we've brought together 21 shows, the result of a careful selection of high-quality performances for all audiences.
More than three weeks of programming, from April 1 to 24, reaching 32 municipalities in the region, including the capital, provide the measure of the Community of Madrid's performing arts festival for children and young people, already ranked among the world's leading festivals.
But Teatralia can't be explained by numbers alone. Its genuine character lies in qualitative factors, those that strive to make each of the 125 scheduled performances a unique and meaningful experience for the most precocious and demanding viewers.
A festival dedicated to children, girls, and the adults who necessarily accompany them; a festival also dedicated to young people experiencing their newfound independence by no longer allowing themselves to be accompanied.
We are aware that the first contacts with the performing arts are ingrained in a child's emotional memory, and therefore, we seek a strong partnership with families and schools that will allow our children access to great creators from around the world. Artists from Canada, Belgium, France, Italy, Uruguay, Mexico, and Greece, along with a large representation of Spanish companies, will showcase their work, which encompasses a wide variety of performing arts. Theater, puppetry, shadow puppetry, music, dance, and video creation come together in multiple combinations and in diverse registers and languages; from humor to poetry, from gesture to words, from movement to music.
The festival program features productions for a wide range of ages because the audience grouped under the "For Children and Young People" category is extremely diverse in both sensibilities and development. The festival focuses on the wonder of a show for babies and the wisdom of a show for teenagers, as well as creations for all ages in between.
Pinocchio, Ali Baba, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Little Mermaid, under the gaze of today's artists, will coexist with new stories and protagonists.
Characters from distant times, who have survived for centuries, initially only through oral transmission. The rawness they exude is clear proof that children's theater is not, and cannot be, devoid of emotional tension. Neither is theater nor any other artistic expression aimed at children.
Don't take the above as an "anything goes" approach, contrary to the most basic common sense; we share the maxim that there are no forbidden topics, only inappropriate approaches, when speaking to children. But we want to shed the artifice of the adult mask to allow the child to cover their face with the essential mask. The mask, the prosopon of classical Greece, is the origin of our current term for "person."
Teatralia looks squarely at the child, "that marvelous creator," in Lorca's words, "who possesses a poetic sense of the highest order (...) before his intelligence becomes clouded." And with that perspective, the festival celebrates its 20th anniversary. Two decades, a round and important figure, but numbers can be misleading. The Brave Little Tailor He killed "seven with one blow," and his neighbors hailed him as a hero when they believed he had killed seven giants, instead of seven flies. Tango says that 20 years are nothing, and yet, for Teatralia, it has been a long and rewarding journey, undertaken in the company of a multitude of Madrid children whom we, once again, invite to this celebration of the performing arts for all.
