Mi alma en otra parte – My Soul Elsewhere

This is a highly poetical and yet unrelenting play which succeeds in portraying three generations of a family. Six extremely dense, bare scenes are all that is necessary to tell the story, which takes place at several times each around ten years apart. Antonio, an “old man” and Manuela, an “old woman”, live together in an emotionally empty and passionless marriage without ever experiencing moments of intimacy. Manuela claims to feel more tenderness for her grandmother’s chest of drawers than she does for her husband. As for Antonio, he is conducting what can only be called a love affair with a twelve-year-old girl. His wife is aware of what is going on, and his son (who is the same age as the girl) watches secretly as a witness to his father’s meetings with the girl. The text does not offer explanations or construct false causal links, neither does it judge nor condemn. It illustrates matters as they really are. The woman later dies of cancer and the man retreats to the countryside. The son marries the girl and they have a baby who they name Manuela.

José Manuel Mora sends his characters on a lonely journey. Stubborn and with their heads held high they assert their own dignity, each with a “soul in a different place”. He bestows upon them several recurrent connecting motifs and minimalist language before casting them out to face the ravages of time, yet in doing so he creates extremely affectionate images composed with precision. A sense of perseverance and a great archaic space emerge from these short scenes. It is the long journey to death, filled with desire, unrequited love, unspoken persistence, and obstinacy.
Dea Loher

José Manuel Mora was born in Seville in 1978 and now lives in Madrid. He studied dramaturgy and directing in Madrid, is active as a writer and dramaturg and works on a freelance basis for El Cultural, the culture supplement to the daily newspaper El Mundo. He has participated in the Playwright Residency at the Royal Court Theatre London and the Sala Beckett in Barcelona. Currently he is completing a postgraduate course in performance studies at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. He was nominated for the Andalusia Prize for young Authors in Seville and was awarded the National Prize for young authors in Madrid. His play “Mi Alma en Otra Parte” was presented as a staged reading in July 2007 in Barcelona’s Sala Beckett.