Reminiscencia

Vaca Valenzuela studied playwriting and theatre directing at the Universidad de Chile (Santiago) in 2016. There, he dabbled as an actor in the film industry, which sparked his interest in getting behind the camera, and trained in oral storytelling, a form of knowledge transmission favoured by the First Nations of Latin America.

A young Latino’s perception of ancient classical theatre, the redefinition of masculinity within cishet bodies, a lesbian artist murdered because of her sexuality… Such were the topics of Valenzuela’s works up until he became interested in WhatsApp. In 2018, with Paranoia, he guided a single viewer along a narrative journey in a piece that was already an invitation to view a familiar space in a new light. The following year, he brought together mapping, technology, and temporality with Las cosas que nunca dije by sending photographs of the venue as it was a century earlier to the audience, thus launching an experiment that should last until 2069. In 2020, true to his belief in the unifying power of technology and wishing to elude the lockdowns imposed by pre-pandemic repression, he created Reminiscencia, which was deemed the best work of online theatre by the Chilean Arc Critics Circle in 2021. The artist offered the piece free of charge to hundreds of viewers. One of them, an 83-year-old surgeon specializing in gender-affirming procedures, inspired him to create a new biographical documentary essay entitled Identidad 83.