Join us on February 2 at 4 pm for a special glimpse into a new play-in-progress by Electric Company Theatre Core Artist Carmen Aguirre, Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project. Premiering in November 2024 at the Chutzpah! Festival, this is an exciting opportunity to see the work in development and to ask Carmen about her creative process.

Date: Friday, February 2, 2024
Time: 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Approximate running time: 3 hours, including intermission and Q&A)
Location: Norman & Annette Rothstein Theatre, 950 West 41st Avenue, MST Territories

Register for this free event: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/staged-reading-fire-never-dies-the-tina-modotti-project-carmen-aguirre-tickets-800213549267?aff=oddtdtcreator 

About the work

In Fire Never Dies, Carmen Aguirre tackles the dialectic between art and revolution by excavating Tina Modotti’s life and art. This Italian photographer and her revolutionary art thrived in Mexico City in the 1920s. She was Frida Kahlo’s lover and posed for Diego Rivera’s murals. After seven years of photography, she abandoned her art to join the anti-fascist cause in Europe, running the Red Aid Hospital in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.

Raised in a working-class family, Tina’s legacy is one of dedication to justice and equality and the four hundred photographs she left behind. She died of a heart attack at the age of forty-five in the back of a taxi cab in Mexico City. Carmen is compelled by Tina’s struggle to reconcile her artistic practice and intimate life with her political commitment.

The play takes place during Tina’s heart attack and consists of twenty-five scenes performed by a seven-actor ensemble. One of the actors plays Tina’s heart, whom Tina converses with directly. Scenes differ stylistically: film noir when Tina is in 1930s Berlin spying on the Nazis for the Soviets, naturalism when she is at a 1920s party in Mexico City, cat-walking when characters are introduced on a runway. The thematic thread is: what is the personal cost of militancy?

Read more at electriccompanytheatre.com/show/modotti/

Bio

Carmen Aguirre is a Chilean-Canadian Vancouver-based Theatre Artist and Author who has written and co-written over twenty-five plays and two bestselling memoirs, including the #1 international bestseller Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. She is a Core Artist at Electric Company Theatre and a 2020 Siminovitch Prize Finalist. carmenaguirre.ca

This reading is offered FREE to the community. If you have the means and would like to contribute to this offering, we invite you to make a donation to Electric Company. Contributions of all sizes are greatly appreciated! electriccompanytheatre.com/donate/

* Photo: Valeria Ascolese and Melissa Oei by Carmen Aguirre

In Partnership with Electric Company Theatre