11th Edition of the Festival Escenas do Cambio – Lostopía
The 2025 edition of the Festival Escenas do cambio, entitled Lostopía, is built around 16 acts that, through a scenic dramaturgy, weave relationships between artists, works and audiences, connecting stories and voices to map the concerns and longings of our time. Each selected work explores, in a singular way, the tensions between memory, identity, resistance and transformation, composing a collective narrative where each artist and each piece are essential. This edition invites the public to immerse themselves in an expanded present, a space between nostalgia and utopia, where the arts blur the boundaries between the personal and the collective, the ephemeral and the eternal.
In Solala, Amalia Fernández guides us on an intimate exploration through three pieces: Familia, which links family memory with visual storytelling; Bailar el problema, an immersion in cultural identity through movement; and Caja de cuadraditos, a reflection on art as a shared experience. In the same introspective vein, Raissa Avilés’ La María o la espeluznante seducción de una canción de amor transforms love songs into acts of subversive resistance, stripping them of their conventional romanticism to reveal their libertarian and transgressive nature.
Also exploring memory and intimacy will be the VACAburra duo, who present a preview of their new project, Familia Nijinska, with which they propose new ways of transmitting and reflecting on artistic memory and mental health, using live drawing and visual archiving to interweave the theoretical and the corporeal.
In the field of identity and territory, Reinaldo Ribeiro’s Black Through Red and I’m not an Influencer (Schwarzenegger exterminó mi futuro) make up two chapters of a triptych that uses the colour red as a symbolic axis of resistance, inheritance and passion, addressing themes such as migration, violence, periphery and decolonial narratives.
Exposure, by Julio César Iglesias Ungo and Hans van den Broeck, with live music by the prestigious composer and film musician Ben Frost, immerses us in a space of confrontation between technological alienation and community. This production integrates physical strength, scenic innovation and philosophical reflection, highlighting the participation of the recently created Urban Arts Ensemble Ruhrand the veteran company Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, winner of more than 70 awards around the world.
In Fuga para o tempo presente, Nuisis Zobop uses dance and philosophy to inhabit the fragility of the present, exploring concepts of impermanence and finitude as forms of resistance in the face of contemporary crises.
Sound experimentation and movement are also backbones of this edition. So de Cop, by Arnau Obiols, transforms natural elements and mechanical devices into a visual and sound symphony that rediscovers the beauty and mystery of the everyday.
Ruido, by Ça Marche, is a participatory installation that invites the public to be active creators, using foley art to complete the absence of sound and reflect on the collective narratives we construct.
The privileged architectural space of the City of Culture takes centre stage in Elvi Balboa’s Baunsbak. A site-specific intervention that intensifies the relationship between body and architecture, allowing the public to experience the Mount Gaiás environment through movement and sound.
In Worn Out, by South Korean company Chumpan Yamoo, time and deterioration are at the centre of a poetic meditation that questions our perception of the inanimate, reflecting on loss, adaptation and transformation.
Velaiquich, Amooorch! by Colectivo D’elas celebrates emerging cultures and examines the over-updating of our time. The work vindicates spontaneity as a creative engine, integrating urban dances and local collectives, thus extending its connection with the territory.
On an emotional level, Funboa Escénica’s Roland mon amourcombines electronic music, movement and vulnerability to turn theatre into an act of intimate, shared connection.
Finally, Fluctus’ I’m not a Hero uses humour and physical theatre to highlight the ethical and social dilemmas of our time, intertwining idealism and banality with a critical eye.
In this eleventh edition, the Dramaturgical Command reaffirms its role as a laboratory/school of experimentation, where a multidisciplinary team creates an expanded narrative of the festival in dialogue with the shows and the audience. Through observation, analysis and dramaturgical intervention, they will amplify the stage experience with different proposals. With no fixed structures, its development will be dynamic and collaborative, mapped out together with artists, researchers, Afonso Becerra as coordinator and the festival management.
To close, Mercedes Peón will offer a manifesto-concert in online format, reaffirming the festival’s vocation to break down barriers and consolidate itself as an avant-garde benchmark.
Lostopía is an invitation to question, imagine and build possible futures through the transformative power of the performing arts. A space for thought and action that, from this territory, embraces its contradictions to draw a map towards what is possible.
Kirenia Martínez Acosta. Artistic Director for Escenas do cambio 2025