Odysseys to Traverse Death and Celebrate Life

In light of the recent loss of its founder, Juan Monsalve, Teatro de la Memoria has decided to return to its origins while simultaneously reflecting on the relationship between theatre and ritual and their relevance in contemporary society. This research project addresses the odysseys of navigating death and celebrating life, exploring—through personal, traditional, and contemporary perspectives—what the experience of mourning entails and how the arts constitute a space for its passage.

The project’s methodology comprises two components. The first focuses on the theatrical laboratory, where exercises and dispositifs for scenic production are developed; the second approaches mourning from an anthropological and documentary perspective. These approaches complement and inform one another, generating a documentary corpus that integrates individual and collective reflections.

The research has three main orientations: methodological, creative, and theoretical. It explores themes such as the experience of death, the temporality of grief, and mourning rituals. The process culminates in public-facing performance events. Overall, the research project seeks to understand mourning from multiple perspectives, integrating artistic practice, theoretical reflection, and ethnographic observation to produce meaningful knowledge about the role of the arts in human experience.