Art Happens

La Obra or The Play is based on the story of Simon Frank, a Polish Jew who was captured during WWII. After the war, he arrived in Coronel Sivori, a village in Argentina, where he reconstructed his house from Poland. Not to live in, but to serve as scenery for a play. He kept on expanding this scenery, reminiscent of places in Warsaw and little by little, at Frank’s request, the neighbors began to participate in it. Some as secondary actors, others as set designers or technicians. He was incorporating the inhabitants of the town in different roles of people linked to his past. The play was presented each year on his birthday and it became famous in the area. But then after almost 40 years he was arrested, because it turned out that Simon Frank died during the war in a concentration camp and the man was actually Jürgen Richter, a German soldier. For La Obra, European theater director Walid Mansour, convinced inhabitants of the Argentinian village to tell their story about their experience and how it affected their lives. They all remember the play and the experience, with which they have a conflictive relationship, in a slightly different way. Walid Mansour himself is also present on stage. He reflects with a sporadic voiceover about his own experience of being raised during a context of a civil war, in a narration that reproduces the one in the play about Simon Frank.

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