¿Donde estaré esta noche? (Where Will I Be Tonight?)

Claudio Valdés-Kuri’s latest film “Where will I be tonight?” shows a European myth in the present. He has chosen the “Virgin of Orleans“ (Joan of Arc) as his heroine to explore the complex relationship between religious and national concepts of modernity. Occupied France in the middle ages and contemporary Latin America reveal surprising parallels.

“Jeanne d’Arc stands for the struggle to go beyond oneself, the struggle of man against man.“ (Claudio Valdés Kuri)

Kuri more or less intuitively uncovers the complexity of global interrelationships and fault lines in his theatre. Here, he will be reading the themes of the Joan of Arc (the ‘Virgin of Orleans’) from the perspective of the New World. In his play ¿Dónde estaré esta noche? nine actors, who could have come straight from the streets and are (at first sight) barely distinguishable from the audience, explore the contradiction between political pragmatism and religious allegiance. Valdés Kuri plays with the boundaries between theatre and reality, between audience and performer, and between past and present. “What I am showing here are very simple, strict aesthetics in a totally Baroque frame. I don’t have any specific influences. My language is personal. In this piece you see two chairs, a table, and the theatre seats. By tearing down the fourth wall we seek active audience participation, which is a part of the stage setting: the actor is a spectator, and the spectator an actor. The condemned are judges, victims, perpetrators…” (Claudio Valdés Kuri)

Claudio Valdés Kuri (*1965) is of Mexican-Lebanese origins, and his work reflects this fact. He is a trained actor, singer, set designer, director and documentary film maker. At the early age of eleven he was already touring Mexico with the group run by his acting teacher Susanna Wein. In 1983, he began studying at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica film academy in Mexico City and made a name for himself with documentary films. He began directing street theatre productions in the mid-1980s. From 1988 to the present he has staged seventeen plays. From 1996 to 1999, he worked as an actor at the Carpa Theater in Vienna. He is now directing the company he founded in 1997, the Certain Inhabitants Theatre Company in Mexico City. He has produced three plays with this theatre. His theatre production De monstruos y prodigios, la historia de los Castrati (Monsters and prodigies - the History of the Castrati) attracted attention internationally in 2001.