Federico León (AR) Las Multitudes

45% theatre 45% generations 10% constellations

A young man and his friends are looking for the young woman he is in love with. But she adores an older man, a musician, who is also spoken for. Scene by scene, and together with one hundred and twenty actors, the Argentinian theatre- and film-maker Federico León takes this simple situation to develop an extraordinarily poetic and touching tableau of generations interlaced with subtle humour.
León has cast twelve female and twelve male representatives of each generation for this production in Graz: children, teenagers, young adults, adults and senior citizens. To begin with they are cohesive groups, gradually entering into relationships and giving rise to new constellations. A band, a swarm, groups and networks, a club. Some are formed spontaneously and chaotically, others are well-organised. Some disperse as quickly as they formed.
In “Las Multitudes” León raises questions which could not be more relevant today. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, to whom León does not refer to explicitly, recently raised similar questions concerning the global crisis of democracy, proposing the multitude as a new sovereign. But what is belonging? How do communities achieve permanence? How are alliances constituted, why do they disintegrate? And for all the necessity of making compromises and forging alliances, how can individual liberty and difference be preserved?

Coffee, Cake, Cinema