Among the PREMIO 2023 award-winning projects, I'm not a hero addresses the theme of heroism and its contemporary manifestations through physical theatre: an audience in a circle, two bodies crushing each other, two stories touching each other, all of which end up drowning in a puddle of good intentions.
Assuming that being a hero or a heroine today involves the action of stepping out of our comfort zone in order to act in everyday situations in which the Other involved needs help, Kevin Blaser and Faustino Blanchut – authors and stage performers – ask themselves what are the forces working in the opposite direction.
The title of the show refers to an excuse behind which we hide in order not to expose ourselves, to avoid the risk of being vulnerable and to justify our inability to escape, at times, from a passivity that allows us to remain in the comfort and warmth of anonymity.
“The project”, write Blaser and Blanchut, “stems from the need to investigate the relationship between what is heroic and what is petty, between the ideal and the banal. Where do we position ourselves when the noblest choices already seem to lead us into an infinite whirlwind of difficulties? Is it worth the effort to try to become the hero we would like to become or maybe it's better to leave that to someone else? Do we really want to be heroes? Does being a hero mean embodying the best version of ourselves or is even that not enough?
In a society where every choice of the average person supports or combats the evil strategies of the dark side of the Force, we cannot always extricate ourselves from the complexity of the world and guide our own actions. I'm not a Hero will try to poetically "sing" the great confusion that arise from this.
Through humour, the lightness of acrobatic bodies, and the concrete closeness of bodies in action, we intend to create a diversion that can fathom the value of a heroic act. A tribute to good intentions which are not always enough, but which must not weaken in the face of the challenges that inexorably present themselves to us".
