Masterclass

Reflecting on his production of Things Easily Forgotten, which explores familial and cultural memory of Spain in the twentieth century, theatre-maker Xavi Bobés led a masterclass on his approach to objects. Bobés describes the ways in which silence offered him a link to objects, allowing him to translate their objectness in a process he compares to the work of an interpreter. He discusses key texts that have shaped his thinking around objects, including Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude and George Perec’s The Infra-Ordinary and Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, and the development of early productions such as The King of Loneliness and Insomni. The masterclass moves through questions of space, time and memory in a theatrical frame. Ultimately, Bobés argues that the expressiveness of the object is discovered through action.