Other InAbilities
2018

Other InAbilities
Stage laboratory, Pont Flotant

Festival de Otoño de Madrid, 2018

Continuing their line of relational work with the community, Pont Flotant has developed, within the framework of the 36th Festival de Otoño in Madrid, a stage laboratory in which various aspects of functional diversity are addressed. The objective has been to reflect together on the concept of ability, on what incapacitates us and on the differences that unite or divide us because of these ‘inabilities’.

Ability as a mutable idea

Does our ability to learn, our ability to run, to feel emotions, our ability to work, our acquisitive ability, change? How far does human ability reach? Does ability have a limit? A fixed or variable maximum? How does my environment affect my inabilities? Are we capable of overcoming or accepting our inabilities? And those of others?

Not all abilities have the same social or economic value, there is a hierarchy involved, a linearity, a competition, a pass or a fail. Let’s wake up our most absurd and inept abilities in an act of symbolic rebellion, a way to “fail better” as Beckett once said. In the end, our qualities will depend, in many cases, on our acquisitive ability or disability.

During the creative process, we have always started from the basis of our own experiences, trying to build a path from the personal to the universal, searching through the private and anecdotal for empathy with the general public, ensuring that this personal involvement is conveyed to the audience. One of the other constants of our creations is to focus on a theme (in this case the abilities/inabilities of human beings) from completely disparate points of view and using various artistic and scientific languages.

The idea of this stage laboratory was born out of a need for personal and theatrical interaction between people with very varied degrees of abilities and knowledge (from dancers, actors or artists to people with no direct connection with the performing arts), from the idea that art is a driving force for reflection and change within the social environment and that theatrical investigation and creation can also serve as a common ground for learning as well as for personal and artistic growth.

In this way, we have been creating different theatrical materials, still in the embryonic stages, which, connected by way of various dramaturgic resources, begin to provoke a certain narrativity (albeit fragmented and multifaceted), and to generate and nourish a discourse which will undoubtedly be the basis of our future production.