‘We are a theatre group making a film about people that go to the theatre. The audience and their stories’, says Mariano Pensotti, renowned writer and director from Buenos Aires, winner of the Rosenmacher, Clarín and Premio F awards and receiver of the Unesco-Aschberg, Rockefeller Foundation, Antorchas and Casa de América de Madrid awards. He is known for “Ojos ajenos” (2000), “Noche en las cataratas” (2003), “Laura” (2005), “Vapor” (2005), “La marea” (2005-2011), “Interiores” and “Sucio” (2007), co-directed with Ana Frenkel, and “El pasado es un animal grotesco” (2010-2011), amongst other work.
Pensotti tells us that ‘El público’ begins in the movie theatres of Leopoldo Lugones and Cultural San Martín. ‘The people coming in will see the seating area of the theatre being filmed, with people waiting for the show to start. Suddenly the play starts and we see people leaving. We follow 11 theatre goers for the following 24 hours and each one of those stories is a short film. What they have in common is that each one of those theatre goers will relate to someone a scene from the play they watched. The story continues: ‘the audience in the movie theatres will watch 8 short films and then they will set off for Teatro Metropolitan, where they will watch the remaining 3 films’.
For the author of the piece, the main idea is ‘to think about who are the people that go to the theatre, what do they experience, to what extent does that experience affect their lives. And to find out how wide-ranging is the audience in such a theatrical city as Buenos aires’. ‘I like turning the audience into the protagonist because it involves role reversal. And for those attending the show, it will be an immersive experience in a traditional area of Buenos Aires theatre culture: 99% of the short films are shot around Av. Corrientes, an iconic area for argentine theatre. That’s also why the films are screened in the movie theatres of Lugones and San Martín. And the protagonists of the short films are actors with a lot of experience, making this also a sort of homage to independent theatre.’
