Performance
as Living Architecture
A One-Month Laboratory in MaskPoetica & Spatial Dramaturgy
Directed by Carlos García Estévez
Founder & Artistic Director of Manifesto Poetico
Overview
This laboratory investigates performance as a living architectural system, where bodies, masks, and spatial relationships interact to shape rhythm, gesture, and audience perception. Participants explore how these elements function together as compositional forces, rather than following a fixed aesthetic or style.
The work integrates mask practice, physical improvisation, and spatial experimentation, allowing performers to investigate performance as both a material and structural system. By the end of the program, participants will have developed tools to compose performances that engage perception, space, and collective dynamics.
The program unfolds through two interconnected research movements: MaskPoetica: Contemporary Commedia dell’Arte and Spatial Dramaturgy, supported by a flexible research hands-on construction environment called Atelier Inside the Form.
Research Focus
How can performance be understood as an architectural process, in which the body, the mask,
and the space are organized in real time to generate perception, rhythm, and meaning?
This inquiry guides all laboratory activities. The focus is structural awareness: understanding how physical impulses, tension, spatial orientation, and timing can shape a coherent and expressive performance system.
Rather than prioritizing psychological interpretation?, the work focuses on structure: physical impulse, rhythm, tension, spatial composition, and the dynamic relationship between performer, environment, and audience.
