Acción espectáculo en tres partes is one of the stage poems with which Joan Brossa sought to give his poetry a third dimension: to take it off the page and bring it into the body and the space.

Teatro UNAM, the Centro Cultural de España en México, and the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) invited us to intervene in the exhibition Poesía Brossa. The final performance followed many of the Catalan poet’s provocations and was, at the same time, the result of a performance laboratory around his work and the obsessions that run through it.

Brossa revived the tradition of street artists: clowns, magicians, and transformists. There I found several keys to my own obsessions: working with popular culture and with the references closest to us, such as the festival, the carnival, and the fair. In this case, we turned to the Mexican popular celebration, in particular the aesthetic codes of weddings and quinceañeras.

His art was deeply political and anti-fascist without giving up humor, play, or its popular roots. It is a line I want to continue, and in it all of us at La Compañiasauria found a tradition to enter into dialogue with.

Magic was the other axis. For Brossa, magic is a performing art, and surprise an indispensable condition of the stage. That notion has been key to my later work.

In the end, the performance was an excuse to bring the popular celebration into the museum and to play with magic, transformation, and poetry, with no need to explain or “say” anything.