In a return to mark International Women’s Day, ten years after its original performance in Edinburgh, La Niña Barro, directed by Flavia D’Avila is a moving, at times disturbing watch. Inspired by Spanish writer Marta Massé’s introspective poems, La Niña Barro is a physical exploration of what it is to be woman made from mud. Elizabeth Sogorb enacts the role of La Niña entirely in the nude and Alexandra Rodes that of The Woman, also playing the Mbira (a traditional Zimbabwean thumb piano).
Soundscape and breathwork played a big part in this production as the only language used was Massé’s poetry, which was sparing and in Spanish. For those who couldn’t understand, a booklet with translations was available. The rustling of the plastic cobweb-like sheets hung as walls, the splashing of water poured from tin buckets, and the sometimes aggressive, sometimes sensual washing of La Niña’s mud-covered naked body created an auditory panorama of La Niña’s journey; her gasps and pants narrated her emotions in time with the mbira’s tune, creating a trance-like atmosphere, and making the action feel raw and more intimate.
The vulnerability of La Niña’s body was clear from her ‘birth’, her movements childlike and primal, learning to walk on stage much like a young baby mammal. She felt animalistic and primal, her nudity forcing us to view her with more respect, more aware of her fragility. This also made the rougher touches on her body more horrifying to watch, although one was not embarrassed until the fourth wall was broken, La Niña becoming aware of our voyeurism, then covering herself in shame. As her self-awareness grows, La Niña washes off her mud, eventually clothing herself in red fabric; a nod to genesis, and the transition to womanhood.
Massé states, “La Niña Barro is me and someone else; and I don’t understand her. But I let her be free in her world of spaces. Of Clay. Wearing her heart on her sleeve.”
Image by Sandra Navarro provided via Press Release