ASSITEJ Magazine 2019

LOLA FERNÁNDEZ DE SEVILLA, HAS A PHD IN
PHILOSOPHY AND IS AN AWARD WINNING PLAYWRIGHT
AND A RESEARCHER.
“Towards the unknown… and
beyond:” this sentence could
be the best definition for
“childhood” ever. As newcomer
human beings to the world,
this process named childhood
consists indeed of testing
and approaching life through
experience. As very beginners,
it is normal to fail: falling down
and necessarily getting up
again and again. But hopefully
mistakes will not lead to fatal
consequences.
You see me, sitting at a table opposite you, a
rather heavy, elderly man, grey at the temples.
You see me take my napkin and unfold it. You
see me pour myself out [sic] a glass of wine.
And you see behind me the door opening,
and people passing. But in order to make you
understand, to give you my life, I must tell you
a story – and there are so many, and so many
– stories of childhood, stories of school, love,
marriage, death, and so on; and none of them
are true. Yet like children we tell each other
stories, and to decorate them we make up
these ridiculous, flamboyant, beautiful phrases,
as Virginia Woolf writes (The Waves 1931). As
creators, that is what we do: telling tales to each
other to be able to understand what is happening
to us, who we are and what our world is like.
The unknown is in the forest, but also under the
bed; at the doctor’s or at school. Graciela Montes
talks about childhood as an essentially ambiguous
concept, a lifetime which includes both lights
and shadows and which generates tenderness as
well as violence. There is a monster living inside
every child; we just need to observe during half
an hour everything that happens at a schoolyard.
Montes advocates for the implacable nature of
these monsters and stands up for avoiding their
domestication. The unknown, the wild, besides
being part of the world, is also placed inside every
single child; self-knowledge is one of the favorite
subjects in literature and theatre for children and
young people. And actually self-knowledge will
continue to be a significant aspect for the rest of
their lives.
There is a monster
living inside every
child; we just need
to observe for half
an hour everything
that happens in a
schoolyard.
This ability to invent stories – of whatever kind
they may be – as a way of resistance, is something
that connects our experience as adults to
childhood’s vulnerability, any childhood, and not
just our audience’s childhood. We create within,
from, and for our own childhood, with dialogue and
communication: with the children we were at a
time and who are kept inside us.
Assitej Artistic Gathering 2019 2–7 September Kristiansand
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