© P.An.
Artist statement
Stéphanie Frassoni
Actress and author of French and Polish nationality. After studying Modern Literature at the university of Paris, Nanterre and Dramatic Art at the Samovar school, she decided to cross the ocean and set off to discover Mexico where she worked as a teacher and continued her theatrical research there. It was during this trip that she met the actor Pedro Aguilar with whom she created the Théâtre La Boka company upon her return to France in 2003.
But just a few months after her return, the call of the sea was once again felt and would take her to the green and wild coasts of Bilbao and then to the arid lands of the Land of Buñuel: Zaragoza. During these Iberian years, she oriented her work towards a theatrical language that would reflect the diversity and intensity of the worlds she inhabited and which inhabited her and continued her research by training in Noh theatre with Akira Matsui, Butô dance with Yoshito Ohno and the Kathakali theatre at the Kalamandalam school.
It was also during these years that she gave her work a new objective, a new «raison d’être», and included it in inter-cultural dialogue and social change, with the idea that theatre must participate in society through the emotion it transmits and that only in this way we can “rekindle all the suns”!
Since 2019, it is at the foot of the long abandoned coal mines of northern France that she has left her suitcases and continues her path of research and creation, always in search of the other and of being.
Pedro Aguilar
Originally from Mexico, he began his training as an actor at the Regional Conservatory of Morelia and continued it at the National Center for the Arts in Mexico City. His artistic career has allowed him to continue his training with Eugenio Barba, Julia Barley, Carlo Boso or Yoshito Ohno, to collaborate with Le cirque du Soleil, Els Comediants and Transe-Express and to participate in festivals such as the Festival Ibero-American in Cadiz, the Fringe Festival in New York, the International Theatre Festival in Buenos Aires, the International Festival Casa de América, and the Mexico-USA Festival in Sacramento.
From 2003, he founded, alongside the actress and playwright Stéphanie Frassoni, the company La Boka. His work as an actor and director within the company leads him on the paths of experimentation to find a theatrical language that reflects his artistic and personal questioning. Rich in a Mexican imagination conducive to dreams and surrealism, his work is enriched by the multiple cultures that surround and fascinate him, making his work a world apart where the different influences dialogue with each other and are written in a contemporary and critical relationship to our society.
His passion for theatre and his taste for adventure have allowed him to work on projects of contemporary theatre, street theatre, theatre for young audiences or even participatory theatre, always with the quest for emotion as the driving force. His work as an actor and director has received support from the Rockefeller Foundation through the Mexico-USA creation residencies, the Dramatic Center of Aragon, the Regional Council of Aragon, the Culture Pole of the city of Zaragoza and of the La Caixa Foundation.