Victoria Szpunberg (Buenos Aires, 1973) holds a degree in Playwriting and Directing from the Institut del Teatre and a Master’s degree in Theatre Studies from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is a playwright with a substantial record of awards, publications, and artistic works of various kinds, and is also active as a teacher and pedagogue at the Institut del Teatre, the Sala Beckett Obrador, and other artistic research and training spaces.
She first gained recognition in 1998 with the play Entre aquí y allá (Lo que dura un paseo), which was a finalist for the Premio Maria Teresa León, selected by the Royal Court Theatre in London for its International Residency 2000, and premiered at RESAD in Madrid in 2000 and at the HERE Festival in New York City in 2002.
Her plays have been staged at theatres such as Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, Teatre Lliure, Teatre Tantarantana, and Sala Beckett, as well as in theatres in Madrid and throughout the rest of Spain. Her texts have also been translated into several languages and performed in the United States, Colombia, Italy, Prague, France, and Romania.
Her play ”El imperative categorico” has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Premio de Teatro Memorial Margarida Xirgu for Best Actress awarded to Ágata Roca, the Special Jury Prize at Teatre Barcelona 2024, the Premio Butaca 2024 for Best Text, the Premio de la Crítica 2024 for Best Text, Best Actress, and Best Set Design, as well as the Premio Ciudad de Barcelona 2024 de Artes Escénicas awarded to Victoria Szpunberg as both author and director.
Clara G., an associate professor of ethics at the Faculty of Philosophy, is in crisis. After fifty, recently separated, unable to get a place in the university and about to be homeless, she begins to suffer strange attacks. She often faints, she hears persistent noises, she is invaded by dark, paranoid thoughts. Clara G. has been part of the system, but she is increasingly cornered, getting closer to the margin. She drifts, encountering several men, until his ethical compass is straightened by a chance find: a fabulously sharp kitchen knife.
What should be the pattern of her behaviour in an increasingly hostile environment? What are the ethical boundaries of a system that can only survive at the cost of the misery of others?
The play offers a deeply contemporary reflection on the fragility of the individual within a society under constant pressure and transformation, following the journey of a woman who, confronted with isolation, precarity, and the loss of personal landmarks, attempts to regain her inner balance and redefine her own ethical sense in an increasingly unstable world, transforming crisis into a possible moment of reconstruction and reevaluation of the relationship between the individual, responsibility, and freedom.
Translated by: Luminița Voina Răuț
Cast: Diana Fufezan, Vlad Robaș
Event moderated by: Bobi Pricop Duration: 1h 30min Spain, Romania
