Contra el progrés – Against Progress

Although the title sounds like a programmatic appeal, the play itself refuses to find correlations and draw conclusions. The seven fairly strange scenes are like miniature portraits, each containing a hugely disruptive factor which bursts into a seemingly everyday situation. This disturbance is often connected to death or the great unknown, forcing the characters to confront the question of who or what they would like to be, and how presumptuous they would like to be when facing decisions about fate, life, and death. It is generally the case that they desire a lot of power, or even too much, and are thus in the process of doing away with themselves – hardly a surprise! This cabinet of curiosities full of bizarre snapshots pushes the boundaries of reality further with each scene, taking a subtly ironic approach to the concept of progress. Who actually owns the progress that we have? Who benefits from it? Does it even exist? Is there a goal for civilization? Will everything get better – or is it better if it doesn’t? Whose finger is on the big red button, or did we stop needing it long ago? The tone of “Against Progress” is laconic in the extreme, providing an enlightened yet mischievous prognosis of what is just around the corner.

In the final sequence the seals – acting in the name of ecological equilibrium – take their revenge on mankind. If the over populous human vermin are to be decimated some poor seal has to do the dirty work and kill the human babies. Not very nice, admittedly, but a better alternative than being tyrannized by people who no longer believe themselves to be human.
Viola Hasselberg

Esteve Soler was born in 1976 in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Catalonia. He studied directing and dramaturgy at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona and is currently writing his doctorate on the dramatization of comedy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The Teatre Nacional de Catalunya has previously performed his work “Jo sóc un altre!”, and Davant de l’home was produced as part of the public rehearsals at Teatre Lliure on texts by Thomas Bernhard. Esteve Soler is also the film critic for the daily newspaper Regió 7 and the radio station COMRàdio and an editor of the theatrical journal Pausa. He lives in Barcelona and belongs the the circle of authors of the Sala Beckett