Gritos

�Gritos� are cries.
Here these are plaintive cries, singings, sounds and dances of women. They are inspired by the �Pla�ideras�, the Spanish plaintive women who today hardly exist any more, who use a ritual-like form of expression for the mourning and the suffering.
For me, the fascinating at the Mediterranean mourning is that its voice doesn�t fail in the moment of the highest desperation but gains power and volume in contrast to us Nordic people. The mourning people are exposed to the vibrating sounds of the wailing and the pain becomes a public ritual.
Also the Wailing Wall has this public character, but it also takes up all the personal wishes and the most quiet and deep sighs which are confided to it. Here in a quite own way poems, singing of women and flamenco rhythm are interweaved to one lament. An actress, a singer and a dancer stand at the Wailing Wall and express their pain but also their hopes and visions, each in her form and peculiarity.
Dance, singing, word � rhythm, sound, thought.
Their wailing finds to a whole. They go the way together until the pain starts singing and dissolves.
Or as a Spanish proverb says: �Cantando la pena, la pena se va�.

These laments are intended for all those whose cries are fell silent.
Brigitta Luisa Merki

Premiere, 07.05.1993, Zürich, Theater Westend

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Stuttgarter Zeitung

A complete work of art, encapsulating dance, music, song, the spoken word and visual arts, taking this homogeneity, emotional force and theatrical suggestion to heights rarely ever scaled before. It is all done in Flamenco. The guitarists (...) don't just provide accompaniment to the voices and bodies, they become part of the poem. The women strike up a sound evocative of the Wailing Wall - a powerful, common rhythm pulsates on Gillian White’s stage.

Stuttgarter Zeitung, 02.04.1994

Stuttgarter Nachrichten

Brigitta Luisa puts her „shrieks" into an hour-long scene packed with melancholy, gloominess and beauty - a dance poem that starts like an ancient tragedy and ends like a fiesta, a piece of choreographic theatre. This is a complete piece, and songs, words, music and zapateado become interwoven w ith wonderful effect before the iron sculpture; an emotional episode which discharges itself on the spiral of life with explosive force and consequences.

Stuttgarter Nachrichten, 02.04.1994