Pau Miró’s Buffalos

(Photograph by: Submitted photo, courtesy Arthur Despins)

“What I’m interested in is creating a relationship with an audience where we all say, ‘We don’t know,’” says Bentley-Fisher. “I find theatre often excruciatingly boring, because we all go there and celebrate what we know, and I find that really tedious — I want to go with people to where we don’t know, where we all take that chance. It’s not that we don’t care — we all want to know very, very badly — but it’s being willing to take that chance of not knowing. And colluding with an audience, saying, ‘This is well worth it, let’s all discover, let’s all try to find it out.’
“So, we’re very ambitious. We’re trying to get to the heart and the truth of something. That’s where our ambitions lie.” (Planet S | From Catalonia With Love | May 19-June 1 Vol.9 Issue. 19)

"Buffalos by Pau Miró dealt with the repercussions of an unstable family life, the physical abuse and the abandonment of a group of siblings who will have to fight for their survival and will develop very distinct mechanisms of dealing with the reality outside the four walls of their house. The fable core of the play transports us to a continent full of wild life, buffalos, lions, elephants and giraffes." (The Catalan Connection)

"Pau Miró’s Buffalos tells the story of five siblings who run the laundry & a quarter of the city and must confront the disappearance of a sixth brother. Aggressiveness, loneliness and survival are some of the background themes of the work ... a tragicomic trilogy with absurdist overtones are "set in the Raval neighborhood, which inspires playwright & director Pau Miró's work with its “charged urban cocktail” of hipness and seediness." (The Director: Pau Miró)

"Within one year Miró has initiated three plays and has completed the trilogy that takes place in a laundry in the district of Raval where the characters identify with wild animals. The play is set in the fifties and deals with the limitations of the Franquismo. It shows how the characters turn to a silent fantasy to get over their frustration. (Pau Miró)

"Jirafas, the grandparents. In Lleons, parents. And Búfals, children." (The secrets of giraffes)

"But whether it relieves or agitates, whether it darkens or illuminates, it is never limited to a mere description of reality. Its function always consists in appealing to the whole man, in permitting the “I” to identify itself with someone else’s life and to take on what isn’t but may possibly be. Even a great instructive artist such as Brecht doesn’t act only with reason and arguments; he also resorts to sentiments and suggestion. (…) Art is necessary for man to be aware of and to change the world. But it is also necessary for the magic inherent to it." (The Necessity of Art by Ernst Fischer)

:: Note :: ... Canadian premier in Saskatoon ...