Program Fira B! 2023

What mark have our grandmothers left in our bodies, and how can we live with the dregs of family inheritances (with their lights and shadows), with their silences and their guilt? Our show has an object as an articulating axis: the artificial pearl, the product that the women of the east of Mallorca have been making for years. A pearl is synonymous with glamour, prosperity and mass tourism; but it is also an artifice, an imitation that hides sacrifice; women's hands at the service of the factory. Hands that, like those of grandmother Jerònia (worker 917) are full of memories, "the best years of my life" and full of knowledge. These same hands, now, coexist with Parkinson's, with arthrosis, with silences, guilt, loneliness and beauty? They are voices that, if they are not collected, are extinguished. This project was born, at first, with the desire to collect the witnesses of the different workers who have woven the industry of the Pearl of imitation in the region of Manacor. With no historical or documentary intention, but rather guided by curiosity and intuition, we audio-recorded their conversations, their time at the factory, their experiences, until we had gathered some thirty witnesses.

Our gaze, however, (that of two generations below), filters and shakes us in order to understand what the immaterial inheritance is and how to move forward from here. To weave the piece, we have proposed three axes that work as artistic engines: the oral tradition of the interviewees; the physical objects of the grandmother's world, which abandon anonymity and take centre stage, as depositary entities of memory and the family photographic archive, which allows us to narrate the story from different prisms. Perla, integrates different theatrical languages and beats to be a living experience between audience and performers; that with doses of humour, criticism, humility and sensitivity, wants to delve into the foundations, the cores, of ourselves. Perla is, therefore, a local, intimate and familiar story; but it connects with many other realities, since we talk about universal themes such as: the working world, working women, the role of women in the family economy, the relationship between granddaughters and grandmothers, the criticism of a fierce capitalist model, the rejection of mass tourism or the loss of the rural world. Perla, in the end, is a tribute to the working class women who built our homes and who have brought us this far: to be able to question the inheritances we have received and to be able to think in a way that is connected to the present.

Actresses: Marta Asamar García Cèlia Castellano Algaba Noèlia fajardo Franch Francesca Vadell Cubells

Visual dramaturgy: Las Piñas Company

Textual dramaturgy: Francesca Vadell Cubells External view: Mariatònia Salas Brunet

Lighting design: Marina Collado Bennasar

Distributor: Belio Albertí Urrea

Teaser: Ekain Albite Arregi