When You Walk Over My Grave

2022

WHEN YOU WALK OVER MY GRAVE Sergio Blanco 25–28 August 7.30pm

With support from

CHURCH HILL THEATRE The performance lasts approximately 1 hour 45 minutes with no interval.

Please ensure that all mobile phones and electronic devices are switched off or put on silent.

WHEN YOU WALK OVER MY GRAVE

Director and Writer Sergio Blanco Cast Sebastián Serantes

Gustavo Saffores

Felipe Ipar Visual Design Miguel Grompone Set and Lighting Designers Sebastián Marrero

Laura Leifert Costume Designer Laura Leifert Sound Designer Fernando Castro Live Video Operator Francesca Crossa Scenic and Lighting Assistant Paula Martell Sound Operator Gerardo Hernández Assistant Director and Producer Danila Mazzarelli General Manager Matilde López Espasandín Performance co-produced for Festival Internacional de Artes Escénicas de Uruguay & Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires.

SYNOPSIS In a continuation of his recent immersion in autofiction theatre, the Franco-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco’s latest theatrical text When You Walk Over my Grave is a play that recounts the author's last days alive.

After having arranged his assisted suicide in a luxury clinic in Geneva and later delivering his corpse to a young necrophiliac resident in a London psychiatric hospital, the play follows multiple encounters between the author and doctor Godwin – responsible for orchestrating his assisted suicide - and the young necrophiliac waiting for his corpse to be delivered.

Through their conversations, the play addresses not only death but erotism, passion and desire, as inevitable impulses of the lived experience. In this sense When You Walk Over My Grave is a dramatic poem that portrays the inflamed torments of love on one hand, and a metaphysical dissertation of the political status of the human body postmortem on the other. Who does a corpse belong to? This is a question that has been explored by playwrights since the ancient Greek tragedy.

When asked about creating the script, which was entirely handwritten in blood, Sergio Blanco replied: Every day I woke up at dawn and spent about thirty minutes preparing the ink – the blood needed to be diluted in dust – and once it was ready, I would sit down to write for sessions of seven hours. It was an intense and tiring experience but also a very interesting one. This play could only be written in this way because there is a connection between the writing process, the materials and the themes of the play itself. When You Walk Over My Grave is a text that talks about subjects so profoundly part of the human existence that it could only be written in blood.

SERGIO BLANCO Franco-Uruguayan playwright and theatre director, Sergio Blanco spent his youth in Montevideo and currently lives in Paris.

After studying classical philology and theatre directing at the Comédie Française, he is now dedicated to writing and directing theatre.

His plays have received several awards and distinctions such as the Uruguay National Playwriting Award, the Montevideo Playwriting Award, the National Theatre Fund Award, the Florencio prize for Best Playwright, the Casa de las Américas International Award, and the Theatre Award for Best Text in Greece. In 2017 his play Thebes Land received the prestigious British Award Off West End in London and he received the Best Author award in 2021 for his play The Wrath of Narcissus.

Sergio’s plays .45’ and Kyiv have become part of the Uruguay National Comedy repertoire in 2003 and 2007 respectively. Among his extensive work are Slaughter, .45', Kyiv, Barbarie, Kassandra, Darwin's Leap, Thebes Land, Ostia, The Wrath of Narcissus, The Bellow of Düsseldorf, When You Walk Over My Grave, Cartography of a disappearance, The flowers of evil, Traffic, Memento Mori, Divine invention and Zoo. Most of his pieces have been translated into different languages and published in multiple countries around the world.

Specialising in performative writing systems, he has conducted multiple workshops and research in different Latin American and European cities, that always culminate in performances and public intervention, including Scenes of Penitence and Autopsies, 10 Playwrights in the Public Square, Louvre/Banlieue, Africa Street, Whisperers and Campo Blanco.

Alongside his work as a playwright and director, Blanco has been involved in academic activities in universities and cultural institutions in Europe, Latin America and Asia. In 2013 he was appointed Artistic Director of the European Crossing Stages project by the Carlos III University of Madrid and was also invited by the Uruguay National Comedy to direct the First National Dramaturgy Seminar. In 2014, he directed research about autofiction for the National Institute of Performing Arts of Uruguay.

In 2020 Blanco wrote and directed COVID-451, a show performed in different cities with the participation of health staff from different hospitals. In December of the same year, the Spanish Theatre of Madrid premiered his text Darwin's leap and in May 2021 his play Divine invention premiered at the National Classical Theatre of Madrid.

In recent years, his work has toured International Festivals around the world. In March 2022, he premiered his piece Zoo at the Piccolo Theatre in Milan.