Los Detectives is a company founded in Barcelona in 2016, led by Mariona Naudin and María García Vera. Their projects investigate the question of “the feminine” as well as the possibilities and limits of the stage to generate its own language. Coming from disparate fields ranging from anthropology to film and fine art, Naudin and García Vera combine their interests to expand their scenic language and overflow it. They are driven by a desire to link humor, body and thought in order to delve into strategies of estrangement that aim to engage with the audience’s intelligence and bring the performers’ abilities into play. To date, they have premiered three pieces for stage: Kopfkino (Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona, 2016), Pienso casa, digo silla (Festival Grec, Barcelona, 2019) and Concrete Matter (Dansa Metropolitana, Barcelona, 2022), co-produced by Antic Teatre. In the development of these works and other projects, they have had the artistic support of Graner and La Caldera (Barcelona).
A group of contemporary women knights relentlessly search for the Holy Grail. Like Perceval, these lost and disoriented beings try and fail, and yet they launch themselves relentlessly into their endless search. The essential question in all this: when one searches, what does one really search for?
The value of the Grail quest is that it seeks the impossible. It reveals an apparently unproductive gesture that—in reality—establishes the raison d’être of the adventure. Undertaking their fourth project, Los Detectives explore the universe of medieval knights and the quest for the Holy Grail. They work according to the premise that those who truly belong to their time are those who do not perfectly coincide with it and do not conform to its demands. It is precisely because of this condition, because of this lucky disconnection, that they are more capable than others of perceiving and grasping their own time. Through this anachronism, Los Detectives invite us to think about the most immediate present, a time defined by an incessant search for the image of the self and the other.
Performance: Maria García Vera and Mariona Naudin / Direction: Sofía Asencio Aznar.
