ANIMAL Romántico
Romantic Animal is a fictional documentary portrait of Denise Groesman, actress and visual artist.
Agostina López, author and director of the play, has worked with Denise in her actress capacity in two previous plays: My Own Beach and The Lake. Yet in this process, Denise’s involvement takes the form of performer and creator.
The play picks up different works of Denise as visual artist spanning over ten years. The stages where the play unfolds are four exhibitions Denise held between 2014 and 2018: “Life Sheds Us of Ourselves, What Is Left Is Another Person”, “The Cave Is Where It Shelters”, “I Am Family”, “Yes, I Am Sinister”, and her workshop, that is, the space where we see her paint, set up her models, experiment with different materials, and here also her paintings, sculptures and videos from previous times can be seen.
The play is a cross between theatre and visual arts; for inspiration, it draws on these installations by Denise to set up theatrical scenes over them.
In the play, Denise is Denise, but at the same time she is not: the play treats her artistic work in a documentary fashion to then depart towards fiction and fantasy.
The play is like the maze of her mind and creation, inhabited by all her works to date. It is her subconscious, the crossroads of her mind.
Within that maze, three presences appear: her father, a girl she gets romantically involved with and a interlocutor that can be an assistant, a curator.