Leviathan

The jury's
conclusion

La Franja Teatral is a trans-disciplinary and emerging research platform for Cuban theater, based in Havana, Cuba, under the direction of playwright and director Agnieska Hernández Díaz. The performance “Leviathan” will be based on themes inspired by Ibsen’s play “Pillars of Society” in an original and surprising mix of mythological themes and contemporary society problems in post-pandemic Cuba. In the creation process they will investigate the limits and possibilities of documentary theater, merged with dramaturgical elements from performing arts, dance, singing and live music and create a form of total-theater. “Leviathan” is a theatre piece about education, gender violence, emigration, health, artificial intelligence, corruption and contempt for the great problems of the community, intolerance, racism, the unhappiness of convenient marriage, increasing differences in all layers of society. They have created a strong and original plot. The play exposes an increasingly centrifugal and corrupt society within the settings of an elaborate Christmas night. A poor teenage girl comes to the shore to commit suicide but gets involved in a party where the island’s influential personalities are celebrating. On the opposite side, in a town across a bridge, people a struggling to survive. She gets abused by the celebrities but gets unexpected help from the mythological sea monster Leviathan. The Ibsen Scope Jury appreciate the methodical approach of creating this piece, the original and colorful plot, and the urge to discuss the continuously growing differences in the post-pandemic world.

About the project

Christmas eve, on an Island, a teenage girl decides to commit suicide. Finding herself on the shore, the girl catches a strange fish in the coastal waters. In a mansion nearby, great influential personalities of the island are having a wild party. They buy the fish from the girl and they expose on social media how much they are doing for vulnerable people and find themselves suddenly in front of the Leviathan, a poetic monster that will put each of them in front of the horror of all the increasingly centrifugal and corrupt societies.

Based on Ibsen’s “The Pillars of Society,” the performance “Leviathan” will investigate the conflicts and testimonies of decision-making in contemporary Cuba. The destinies of the multitudes, reflecting a conceptualization and point of view of reality from different social classes of the same country, is the starting point for rewriting the present narrative from a dramaturgical and performative perspective. The topics addressed are cultural, migratory, experiential and educational phenomena, gender issues, perception of the future, a frequent marginalization that is spreading among young people – all contemporary alarms standing in the way of healing Cuban and Latin societies where all kinds of disasters, including the unhappiness of its citizens, are part of the daily life.

The Leviathan is a poetic monster that feeds on family pain, in the economic crisis, in television, in the people when they are surviving.

The performance is a trans-disciplinary documentary theatre integrating live music, singing, dance, urban dance, performance, living arts, side specifics, environments, dramatic text and audiovisuals, to through a dramaturgy that generates visual and poetic dialogue with our societies in present.

Agnieska Hernández Díaz (Cuba, 1977)
Agnieska Hernández Díaz is a theater director and playwright of the trans-disciplinary Company La Franja Teatral (Cuba), a platform for a multi-artistic team in the creation of documentary theater with an emphasis on combining different artistic languages, dance, singing, live music, audiovisuals, performances, living scenes and a documental and autobiographical playwright that dialogues with Cuba and our actually societies. She graduated in Theater Arts at Arts University of Havana, Cuba, where she has also been a professor in playwright. Agnieska Hernández Díaz has received several awards for her playwright, mise en scéne, film script, literature, inside and outside Cuba. She has been directing and writing award winning theatrical productions for both La Franja Teatral and other companies in Cuba and she is the most performed female playwright in Cuba from 2015 and up to this date. She recently received a prize for staging in the city of Milan, and prizes for both playwrighting and directing in Cuba.

La Franja Teatral
La Franja Teatral a trans-disciplinary and emerging research platform for Cuban theater in Havana, Cuba. It brings together artists from various manifestations, under the direction of the renowned playwright and director Agnieska Hernández Díaz, to give life to contemporary pieces authored by her, that investigate the limits and possibilities of a documentary theater that explores a Total Art including performance, dance, singing, live music and a powerful dramaturgy that dialogues with the audience.