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Therapy on stage

CITY HALL OF BARCELONA|July 25, 2011
The theater turns 'Mucha Mujer' into the tool for women with social problems in the Raval neighborhood to regain their confidence and autonomy and claim their role in society.

"The theater of Mucha Mujer has helped these women regain the strength to move forward and perhaps also to find their artistic vocation"


As therapy or as disconnection. The theater becomes, in "Mucha mujer", the tool for women with social problems in the Raval to regain their autonomy and confidence and claim their role in society.

After the success of its first edition with the performance of the play Allà, where you keep the strength of your humanity, the theater workshop starts again for ten women.

Andrea was one of the first women to participate in "Mucha mujer". Transsexual and with drug addiction problems, this resident of El Raval has made this project her therapy to get out of the world of drugs, and nine months later she can say that she has recovered much of her self-esteem and has redirected her life. And all from the theater.

"My environment has changed, I have new friendships..." acknowledges this new artist on stage. Like her, twenty women with various social problems participated in the first edition of the "Mucha mujer" project, which closed with the performance of the play There, where you keep the strength of your humanity.

"My environment has changed, I have new friendships..." acknowledges this new artist on stage. Like her, twenty women with various social problems participated in the first edition of the "Mucha mujer" project, which closed with the performance of the play There, where you keep the strength of your humanity.

With the actress and director Laura Settecase, the project uses theater as a tool to strengthen the autonomy of the participants, create new bonds between them and encourage the integration of these women in their environment.
Work with questions

To do this, the classes revolve around play, creativity and improvisation exercises, which have served to build the final show. "We work from a driving question that generates new questions and also some answers", explains the director of "Mucha mujer".

Questions that investigate the personal stories of the students, such as Marcia, a Brazilian resident in Barcelona who the workshop has helped to relate to people better, and has given her an impetus to get out of the situation she was suffering from.

"It has helped me a lot in dealing with people, especially if I have to do a job interview, because you come from a reinsertion and people have a lot of discrimination in this regard," says Marcia.

Space for reflection

In addition to a space where you can meet your most artistic self, "Mucha mujer" is, for Marcia, a place where you can become aware of everything around you: "Sometimes we live so fast that we don't have time to reflect, to think, to remember. And here we can do it."
After the success of the first edition, the second workshop began last March, with new women and many personal stories behind it. "It helped me open up to the world," explains Anna, a student of this second edition. "I was very closed in myself and these classes have made me jump, laugh and live again."

She also sees the theater and this workshop as a space where you can find yourself again and meet new people. "You find people who may have been, in one way or another, as lost as you have been at some point, and that helps you, too."

Either as therapy or as a disconnection, the theater of "Mucha mujer" has served for these women to have recovered the strength to move forward and perhaps also, to find their artistic vocation

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