A round of applause for things that happen before the curtain opens

Ticket in hand, you walk through the door, sit down, the lights go out. In the stalls, a string of wide-open eyes, old and young, point to the stage, curious, passionate and excited. There is a silence that precedes the storm of emotions? The show begins!

That's the way it starts. Because the show, or at least its cooking, had started a long time ago, several months before. With those crazy ideas that were thrown into the void, without a safety net. Some of them died stamped, while others survived, intertwining to form the marvelous and unique thing that happens on stage when the lights go on.

What the public will see there is usually the result of a long cooking, where certainly many things will have happened. We confess that in La Peonza we are into slow fire, and in this slow cooking, in this care for detail, there are some days that for us are always essential. Some days in which we renounce the family, where we move away from our usual environments (this would be the price to pay) to immerse ourselves completely, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week in the rehearsal process. And we do it in an environment with professionals, technicians, producers, who provide high quality to this final part of the creation of a show. A space and a time of total immersion, in which the creations take the final form. These spaces are the residencies, and, after many years enjoying them, we think it is necessary to recognize the virtues of the model that our neighboring country has.

The French residences for creation model, provides resources and professionals to carry out the work well. The administration understands that generating these spaces for creation is important for artists and provides their work with quality. What is achieved goes beyond an optimal level of rehearsal. A cultural project is woven (theater, town or city) with a transversal view, where while the show is being cooked there is a mediation work with the environment, where there is room for counterparts such as parallel training activities in schools. And where the creation of previous audiences is also encouraged, a long-haul work that residencies in France also facilitate.
Surely we are not discovering anything new here when we insist that culture needs time, space and conditions. And in this sense, we should thank countries like France for leading the way, and work to ensure that this model of transversal residency becomes more and more common in our region.