Tripa Colectivo is a theater company that has its main camp in Vitoria and currently consists of five women: Marina Suárez, Natalia Suárez, Andrea Berbois, Maite Mugerza and Mayi Martia. The company began operating in 2013 in the theater laboratories of the Sala Baratza de Vitoria-Gasteiz and since then there are three works presented to the public: Maite (2013), La piel del padre (2015) and Urruna (2019). Although his work has been exposed throughout the Basque theatre network, it has also been reflected in the artistic circuits. In fact, the company’s creative processes and references are traversed by the visual and plastic arts. In addition, the members of the company met in the Faculty of Fine Arts and have their own trajectory as artists.

They tend to have long creation processes, with numerous attempts, arcenes and derivations. The works can have different starting points – a photo, an unimaginable place or a script – and from there the work takes countless forms, changing shape, exploring different expressions, tending the limits between one language and another. The Tripak also creates special relationships with the objects they stage, and often the objects appear to be protagonists who are on the table. In these creative processes, they often collaborate with friends and artists in the area, whether they are musicians, artists or enriching lines of work.

Today Platea is preparing all her work. In this work process, different stays have been made in the z/b space of the Bilbao Office, in the Azala Creative Space of Álava and in March have made a stay in the S'ALA of Sardinia to continue shaping this last work. From time to time they allow us to enter the creative process, as in the presentation they made at the Eremuak Conference in October last year. In this Work in progress, we who approached the Tabakalera de Donostia had the opportunity to get to know the details of Platea. And that pass, that essay that's not yet finished, I would say it didn't leave anyone indifferent.

On the plató, around a table of blue silk tablecloths, the four protagonists appear in the suburbs of a prosperous banquet, tasting the last crumbs of a happy moment and drinking the last drops, dancing, rubbing, fighting in an unstable and unstable. There is a decline in the atmosphere, such as the last splashes of the party that comes to dawn, as happens in those small hours when the initial elegance and restraint have been lost. The trays, containers and cups that can be silver but look like metal, the clashes between them and the spill only increase that sense of decay. All the work takes place in that part of the table, at a slow pace, with a point of melancholy. The image created by the quartet often takes the form of a tableau vivant: the pictorial imaginary of the time in which they merge is enormous.

A video sonata brings the scene that we just mentioned outdoors, broadening the dimension of the piece. The Tripak spent three days recording this piece of video in the garden of Santa Catalina, interpreting each scene in a different location. The presence of the quartet, its bodies and its impositions, in this situation in which nature, architecture and memory converge, affect the landscape and are integrated as atypical elements in its natural scenario. The gestures and movements of the girls, the throwing of stones and the noises create durundias and hum across the plain. The space itself adds value to the piece, as the chosen location cannot be more beautiful: Remains of the old tower house and Augustinian monastery of the 13th century, located at the foot of the Sierra de Badaia, today known as the botanical garden of Santa Catalina.

In this location it is easy to see the blue silk table as well as the trays and cups we had seen in the previous work. And those nuts they eat continuously and indiscriminately. The scenes recorded on the river are especially beautiful, the four protagonists, one of them with violin, when they appear in crystal clear waters, swimming with lace clothes, without stopping drinking, floating, singing. We don't know exactly if they're mermaids, but they continue to give with their glasses, even though we don't know what's causing what they celebrate. The moon illuminates the dark sky, the feast is in its late times, only the crumbs of a party remain. The candles are already off.

Casings: A sonata is a video created in the context of the artistic stay of the Bilbao Office in the z/b space. There is still time to see the play in theatres, but in the meantime this video offers us a new format to see a play, it offers us a new dimension to imagine the theater, as the possibility to visualize the process. Artistic intervention is available on the interactive website Zapizuria.org.