Manual for Building a Dream (Manual para armar un sueño)

What if I were to come back to life, asks this forgotten character in the depths of the mirror. In front of him sits an actor who has been getting progressively older, one dressing room after the other, papering over his intimate defeat, his worn-out hopes and dreams, the dark cloud of disappointment that hangs over his days. So many things have died in him that no matter how long he lives, he’ll never be able to forget them. But today he hears those voices in the mercury of the mirror, and it’s as if his soul has suddenly slipped back into his body. In this barren present in which this man no longer seems able to live up to his dreams, he will take to the stage with the last ounce of his strength to radiate hope.

Together with his character, sieve in hand, he will shake the very bowels of the theatre, confronting its vices and virtues, its unfailing humanity. Together they will descend into the underworld, traverse labyrinths where bureaucrats hoard their tedium, negotiate the pitfalls that line the red carpets of fame, illuminate the dark galleries clogged with vulgarity, and, in an attempt to free Segismundo from an alienating and prosaic reality, they will escape from the world and its jibes, transforming Clavileño the Swift into a Pegasus. Once again, defying death and oblivion, they will seek the joy of a reunion with theatre.

Manual for Building a Dream is a spirited ode to hope that seeks to shed light on the murky shadows of a world hostile to anything that eludes its commerce. An endless journey in history, but one that unfolds in the short space between the dressing room and the stage. A dream as fragile as the thread of a kite that withstands all kinds of storms.