I AM NOT MUHAMMAD ALI

17. und 18.10.2015 um 20.30 Uhr im HAUSER

Normal people don´t like to fight, we don´t know how to do it, our hands swell, we hear a buzzing sound, and we get a small epileptic attack.
As time goes by, our survival instinct has shut down. We are afraid to put out the blow. We are nobody´s idol, nor any public figure to follow. We are not Muhammad Ali. We receive the blow and don´t know what to do next; we metamorphose, we perform theater, movies, songs, books… to understand the blow, but we can´t achieve it.
And this is because boxing only looks like boxing, and it has to do with anger. Pain is to boxing what sex is to pornography.

ABOUT „IM NOT MUHAMMAD ALI“
Ready for the Ring, boxer Muhammad Ali is about to fight one of the decisive fights of his life, many think it will be his end; Ali, 10 years a boxer, will fight against George Foreman, today´s heavyweight champion; experts think he is dead; after this fight Ali will surely retire, some say.
This project evolves from the short story „Hands that Grow“ by Julio Cortázar, where he narrates the absurd and abnormal swelling of Plack“s hands after having beaten his friend Cary when he said „You´re a coward, a bastard, and a bad poet in addition“, the analogy with one of the most important boxers in history, Muhammad Ali, fight against George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974; the relationship with the blow, fall, death, anger, and the impossibility to beat up any person who hurt us physically or emotionally.
The self-reference, the violence, the physical and spiritual pain, the blows we give and take, society´s expectations deposited on the shoulders of a champion, the idol´s figure, impotence, falling and getting up after a bad knock-out. Box, Muhammad Ali, Cortázar, the hands, and our life immersed in all of this; trying once again to explain human nature and his vulnerability.

ABOUT OUR WORK
La Justiciera and Colectivo Charalito are a team of creators whose projects in the last for years are focused on more contemporary research and interdisciplinary and postdramatic theater. This team strives most of all for a type of collective creation and laboratory wise, where everybody involved will work in a similar way, with no hierarchies in the job. They are in constant search of their own new theatrical languages.

A production from La Justiciera and Colectivo Charalito
Creators and Interpreters
Valentina Martinez Gallardo*
Paulina Arriaga Cabrera
Director: Edson Martínez
Scenic Assessment: Charlyn Gallegos
Multimedia La Resistencia

*Fellow, Scenic Creators Program 2014, National Foundation for Culture and Arts,(FONCA)
*This project also has the support of SRE (Secretary of Foreign Affairs) and AMEXCID (Mexican Agency for Iternational Coperation and Development)

Cooperation: 5-7 €