Catalogue
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Teatro Español, ''Armengol''

Madrid

The background of the scene consists of a backdrop and two pairs of side wings in white LWE - Windel elastic fabric made up with vertical fullness.The fabric was stretched along the height, using its elasticity and the heavy tubes that ballast the pockets of the lower sides of the backdrop and the wings.The diffused light ...
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... fades during the dance and, by focusing on the orchestra and the dancers, creates a more intimate atmosphere.Until, following the tragic story of the protagonist which ends in 1936, the year of the Berlin Olympics, the lighting changes ...
... and turns red the backdrop and the pair of wings in the foreground, which are raised.At the same time, the lights are switched off on the orchestra and on the second pair of wings, which thus go against the light.Surprisingly, the backdrop turns out to be a Kabuki curtain that, once released ...

... it adds to the gravity fall the violence of the retracting elastic fabric.Behind the orchestra a backdrop made of FBR - Bruxelles velvet appears, it is symbolically red like the blood that is about to be shed ...
The background of the scene consists of a backdrop and two pairs of side wings in white LWE - Windel elastic fabric made up with vertical fullness.The fabric was stretched along the height, using its elasticity and the heavy tubes that ballast the pockets of the lower sides of the backdrop and the wings.The diffused light ...
... on which, dramatically disfigured, the five circles of the Olympics painted in black on velvet appear.The dancers disappeared and the orchestra changed its music.
Historical play
in two acts
Text
Miguel Murillo (1953)
Music
Arnau Vilá
First night
Madrid, Teatro Español, 15/12/2005

Scenography
Ana Garay
Lighting design
Technical direction
Manuel Fontanals
Stage direction
Esteve Ferrer

Staging
Teatro Español of Madrid
Season
2005 / 2006

Armengol is based on facts really happened during the Spanish Civil War in Badajoz, in Extremadura, where lived the character that gave its name to the theatrical opesra by Miguel Murillo, a native of the same place.
Armengol Sampérez (1882-1936) was an idealist who, in the Spanish province of the 1930s, opened a gym for boys studying and practicing a pedagogical method that is meant to improve the self-esteem of the young men group who met under his leadership.
The method tried to combine the development of the body with the mind growth without seeking to achieve goals absolute, proportioning them instead to the means that the boys had actually available.
In 1936 Armengol departed from Estremadura to go to Barcelona with a group of ten young men who were supposed to participate in the ''Olympics of the free world'', an organized event in antithesis with the Berlin Olympics of Nazi Germany.
The outbreak of civil war prevented the holding of Barcelona alternatives Olympics, while Armengol was imprisoned and sentenced to death.

Materials used in this production

FBR - Bruxelles

·Limited fabrics·

Flat making

Fabric: tailoring types

Kabuki curtains

Typology of curtain

LWE - Windel

Elastic fabrics

Vertical fullness

Fabric: tailoring types

Information on data processing