Autoreverse

Highlights

• See the compelling autobiographical one-woman play based on tape-recordings of a family's history during exile in Chile.

Witness Autoreverse at the Battersea Arts Centre

After producing a smashing hit Misty, Omar Elerian and Florencia Cordeu come together to display the story of a family in search of a house. The intriguing autobiographical show of Cordeu is wholly based on tape-recordings which store her family history and journey during their exile in Chile.

Autoreverse is a one-woman play where Florencia Cordeu’s family story is found in cassettes, documenting the predictable life in Argentina and Chile. She was just a year old when her family ran away from the military dictatorship. During the ordeal, she lost her uncle. He was listed as a “disappeared citizen” and is thought to be murdered, though no one knows what happened to him.

Like pieces of evidence, Florencia picks up the cassettes and listens to them. She imagines the painful experiences her family had to go through while escaping the horrors prevailing in Argentina during 1970. Directed and co-created by Omar Elerian, this 80-minute play places Cordeu in the centre of the stage as Malena. He brilliantly projects the adversities and struggles faced by families and the steps they took to survive during extreme situations.

The cast and creatives of the team

Omar Elerian who became popular for his work on Misty directed Autoreverse. His other notable works include Islands, One Cold Dark Night, Going Through and NASSIM. Florencia Cordeu created the play and is also the star of this masterpiece, excellently portrayed the role of Malena. In addition to her works in various television, films and voiceover works, she played a wide range of roles in worldwide productions.

A brief about Autoreverse

Based on a real-life story, Autoreverse unfolds the forty years of a family’s journey. Malena comes from a trip from South America, her native place with a box of cassette tapes. She has two choices in front of her- to reminisce the agony faced by her family or bury them forever. However, she chooses the former and listens to the traumatic and distressing experiences of her family. Now, Cordeu lives in London for the last 23 years. She uses the cassettes to recall her childhood memories which were fading away.

It’s clearly visible what the tapes mean to her and how she tries to grasp her memories. There are also amazing passages recalling South America. These include maté tea tasting like grass, tomatoes and peaches thriving under the Sun, and slow-developing trees her parents chose to sow.

Watching the play will make visitors feel an attempt to grab something substantial, which thins into the air. This inherent impossibility to relive childhood memories seems frustrating, as well as intriguing. Florencia tries to articulate how the destroyed fragments of family, memory and home form a relationship with her existing place and time. She displays the cassettes as beautiful letters bound together where a family fights to find a home. It shows what it means to be remembered as a person, as a family and as a nation. Grab the tickets to watch this autobiographical play.

Additional

• Performance Information

  Leading Role
  Florencia Cordeu

  An original story by
  Florencia Cordeu

  Director
  Omer Elerian

• Performance Times

  Monday – Saturday: 8:00 PM
  Sunday: No Show

• Getting your tickets

  You will receive your tickets via email confirmation shortly after booking. Please display them on your mobile device along with valid photo ID.

• Venue Information

  The Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at The Royal Court has a seating capacity of 85. It is wheelchair accessible and has an in-house bar.

• Cancellation Policy

  Tickets cannot be cancelled or refunded.