EL GOLEM

The public health system is collapsing. Like many other patients all over the country, Ismael, who suffers from a rare disease, is about to be forced to leave the hospital where he is being treated. Then Felicia, his wife, receives an unexpected proposal from Salinas, a hospital employee: Ismael can keep his bed and continue receiving treatment if she memorises a text. At first, an apparently simple task to accomplish: memorise a few words in the right order. However, day by day, Felicia notices that, as she internalises the words of the text, whose author is unknown to her, something inside her – in her dreams, in her memory, in her imagination, even in her body and in her will – is transformed.

This story speaks of the power of words to construct who we are. At a time in history when the capacity to circulate words has multiplied in a way never known before, the capacity to use words to lie, destroy, deform and manipulate has also multiplied. Never before have we suffered the unconstrained power of words, and this play tells a story that makes us aware of something we fail to notice: we are what we say, we are what we read, we are what we learn.