Victoria Abril will take the stage at the 54th San Javier International Festival

In 'Medusa', Abril will share a cast with another newcomer in both Mérida and San Javier, the Murcian singer Ruth Lorenzo, as well as with Natalia Millán and Adrián Lastra, among others. The Extremadura Chamber Choir will collaborate in the Mérida performances. Pier Paolo Álvaro signs the costumes for the performance.

José María del Castillo remembers that “Medusa, the feared monster of antiquity with snake hair and a petrifying gaze for anyone who dared to look at her, was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who gave the gorgon's head to the goddess Athena as a symbol of Victory”. “This is how we have always been told the story,” he adds, “but… what if the facts were told to us by Medusa herself?”

The author and director acknowledges that he has reformulated “the classic myth of Medusa to delve into the induced social thinking, appearances, the fear of what is different and the value of integrity in a society that has not changed so much despite the passage of time.” centuries”. «Through humor and tragedy, music, voice, movement and the plasticity of a multidisciplinary staging we will tell the myth from the place of the defeated, the antihero, thus revealing the other side of every coin, which maintains its value no matter which side you look at,” he says.

The purpose of 'Medusa' is to offer the public “a biting, ironic, tragic, funny at times, forceful and revealing staging to turn the established order around.”

But 'Medusa' will not be the only great attraction of the 54th San Javier Festival, whose official program will be presented later and which will start on August 2 with a free show that will take place in the gardens of Parque Almansa. This is the arrival in San Javier of La Carroza del Real, from whose stage two singers and a pianist will offer a popular recital of popular opera and zarzuela arias and duets.

Young talents

The Teatro Real, within its vocation as a national reference opera house, has launched this project, a traveling stage to bring an artistic offer that can include instrumental concerts, opera and zarzuela recitals or children's shows, throughout Spain.

On the other hand, San Javier will also receive, on August 10, the new company project of one of the great figures of international dance, the dancer, choreographer and former director of the National Dance Company (CND), Nacho Duato, who returns to the Spanish stage with his young Nacho Duato Company, with which he recovers some of his most iconic choreographies and provides the opportunity to make the public vibrate again with the works that garnered so many successes during the 20 years that he directed the CND, before to address major international challenges.

And on August 17, attention: first performance in Spain of 'Play Dead', by the Canadian company People Watching, a show in which dance, mime, circus, theater, and a hypnotic musical and scenographic atmosphere come together. come together to offer the public a scenic experience that is as disturbing as it is pleasant. This is the riskiest bet that the director of the festival, also the Councilor for Culture, David Martínez, makes in this edition.