2009 Feten Best children’s show. 2014 Premio Villanueva 2010 Cuba, Best Show. 2014 Parque de las Marionetas Festival, Zaragoza, Best Show. Show for all ages (children form 5 or over).
Granddad lives an ordinary life: he bathes at the same time, goes for a walk at the same time and eats his breakfast at the same time each and every day.
One day his legs decide to stop walking and, little by little, he dims.
When granddad finally departs, his loved ones build a house very close to him so that he won’t feel lonely. And so the story goes: placidly opening and closing drawers, tenderly remembering special moments of his life through the magic of an old desk.
They say that the departed live on thanks to the memories of those who loved them …
CAST AND CREW
Author: Rosa Díaz
Script collaboration: Ángeles Jiménez
Actress & puppeteer: Rosa Díaz
Lighting designer:Retalo 2004 y Mauricio Zabaleta
Set designer: Ariel García Y Rosa Díaz
Set construction: José Toral
Costume designer: Laura León y Ángeles Jiménez
Music: Mariano Lozano-P
Objects direction:Mª José Frías
Prop designer: Ariel García , Elisa Ramos y Rosa Díaz
Prop construction: Ariel García, Elisa Ramos e Iker Pérez
Puppets: Ariel García e Iker Pérez
Web & graphic design: Colectivo Verbena
Photography: Pepei Díaz Clemente
Project Design Illustration: Elena Díaz Frutos
Direction: Mauricio Zabaleta y Rosa Díaz
Production: Cía .La Rous y la Agencia Andaluza de Instituciones Culturales. Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía
PRESS CUTTINGS
“Rosa’s first one-woman show is quality drama for children and adults. A single rose is already a garden.” Ideal (Granada), 12 January 2009.
“A few words, a few gestures, some puppets made from discarded materials and a bit of darkness was enough to make a simple story, but one as deep as learning the meaning of death, envelop the youngsters (and not so young) like a mist of goodness.” La Nueva España (Asturias), 14 March 2009.
“The topic, which is quite a bold one to tackle with children, is not handled in a soft or sentimental way, but with profound delicacy, sensibility and restraint. The staging is very detailed and well thought-out.” ABC (Cordoba), 11 July 2009.
“Rosa has a special sensitivity and considerable skill creating pure images and sets. The scenes roll by to be retained in your memory, reaching straight to your heart. Rosa Díaz as an actress and person has something special, a stage presence that makes you watch and listen, with her measured voice and tender smile. Creatively and technically, she’s an excellent puppeteer, too. A show that is deeply moving and a fascinating experience both for adults and for children over five or six.” Ciberpadres, Ferrán Baile: Report on FETEN, April 2009.
“Rosa Diaz’s performance is inch-perfect, delivered with just the right tone to hold the audience’s attention throughout, with the simplicity of someone who knows how to get something across without necessarily having to show it on stage.” El Día (Cordoba), 10 July 2009.
“The magic of a special woman. It is very hard to find a viewpoint as unique and delicate as this on any stage. Grandfather’s House is a tour de force of control of dramatic pace and rhythm, where Rosa Díaz, a unique actress and puppeteer, patiently spins out the audience’s emotional gauges until at some point they burst. A wise show, with a positive, naturalistic reading from a child’s viewpoint of such a complex subject as death.” La Teatral, October-December 2009.
“Rosa Díaz is a bundle of activity, handling all the design, artistic direction and performance herself. She recyles all sorts of things we thought were good for nothing, and starts to tell her story, experience, enchant and move us. When the performance ends, we leave the theatre with Rosa’s melancholy, wishing we were the children in the audience who were enchanted by Rosa, but there’s no way back. We call come to understand some day that some shows are like that, quite inexplicable, and lodged forever in our fragile, mortal hearts.” Atenas, the cultural portal of Matanzas (Cuba). April 2010, Teatro de las Estaciones, Rubén Darío Salazar.
“Rosa constantly reinvents herself and at the same time everything around her. Rosa is a magician, working with the magic and viewpoint of children to transform and teach them.
“Rosa has the ability to remove our veils, with attention to detail in her performances. Every gesture, movement or object takes on multiple meanings that move us, makes us laugh, make us shiver or make us weep. Her voice, which she uses to narrate, characterise and hold our hand, leads us to wherever she wants to take use, awakening the imagination like an illusionist, which is basically what she is in the strict sense of the word, in a show that borrows something from all the arts.
“One of the first thing that Rosa achieves is to respect children as individuals. The way in which she makes them face the toughest truths of reality is consistent and truly creative.” Ulises Rodríguez Febles, dramatist and researcher, CDIAE (Cuba).
BIO AND BACKGROUND
Rosa Díaz’s has been working in drama since 1981. In 1985 she founded the company Teatro Fénix company in Albacete, and in 1988 joined Cambaleo Teatro in Madrid.
Between 1988 and 1992, in parallel, she worked with La Tartana Teatro and Comediants, participating in events including the Expo ’92 Parade.
After moving to Granada in 1993, she set up the company Laví e Bel, followed in 1999 by Lasal Teatro, where she worked as an actor, producer and director.
In recent years, especially since 2006, she has specialised exclusively in direction, working for such companies as Gar Producciones (San Sebastian), Vagalume Teatro (Granada), Teatre de l´Home Dibuixat (Castellón, including directing Piedra a Piedra, which won the FETEN award for the best shortformat show in 1998 and was nominated for the Best Children’s Show at the 2009 Max Awards), Axioma Teatro (Almería) and Karlik Danza Teatro (Extremadura, with the show Niña Frida, nominated for the Best Children’s Show at the 2008 Max Awards), as well as the company La Maquine with El castillo rojo (The Red Castle). Her first work after setting up her own company, La Rous, was La casa del abuelo (Grandfather’s
House), which won the Best Show prize at the 2009 FETEN awards for children’s and young people’s drama in 2009. Her second work as author and performer with her own company, La Rous, is El refugio (The Shelter), winner of the Best Show and Best Actress awards at FETEN 2011. In 2011 she was awarded the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Drama for Children and Young People by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.
TECHNICAL RIDER
Minimum stage size: Width 5m, Depth 4m and Height 3m
Light and sound is supplied by the company. Sockets to be available at side of stage.
A black chamber and total darkness are required during the performance.
A bar needs to be suspended behind the set to hang a curtain (supplied by the company) and the electrical equipment.
Technical requirements:
Power supply for lighting: 3000 W
Power supply for sound: 200 W
Times:
Load-in and set dressing: 3 hours
Load-out: 1 hour
Assistant personnel required:
1 electrician/FOH technician, plus personnel for loading in and out.
*Running time: 50 minutes
Technical contact : Katia Moretti Mobile: +34 617 57 33 21 teilumino@gmail.com
