Centroamérica

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol are no strangers to working on the frontier of reality and fiction. While developing a new performance about Central America, the artists met A.: a Nicaraguan woman who had fled the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega. She can no longer return home. Politics, power, exile. Then A. makes an extraordinary request: could they travel back to Nicaragua under a fictional identity and carry out a personal task on her behalf?
What started as artistic research becomes something else, something deeply challenging. Through interviews, documentary research, and archival material, the question that appears between the reality and fiction they research become ever more painfully immediate: theatre may not repair history, but can it make a difference?
In Centroamérica, Mexican company Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol turn their gaze south and trace the histories of their ‘invisible’ neighbouring countries. Places that many Mexicans know by proximity but rarely imagine. A region shaped by military intervention, the geopolitics of the Panama Canal and exploited migration routes. Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol previously appeared at Noorderzon with Tijuana (2017).

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol is a group of artists. They create stage productions, books, radio programs, and videos, and are involved in educational processes. Since 2003, they have been developing projects as a way to connect work and life. Their work aims to create stories based on true events. It has nothing to do with entertainment; it is a space for reflection. Things are as they are, but they could also be different. They have presented their work in nearly every state in Mexico: at festivals, independent venues, state theaters, and universities.

Abroad, their work has been presented at venues including the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Schaubühne (Berlin), FIBA (Buenos Aires), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Festival d’Automne (Paris), Theater Spektakel (Zurich), FTA (Montréal), HAU (Berlin), Kammerspiele (Munich), Santiago a Mil (Santiago), Theater Biennale (São Paulo), DeSingel (Antwerp), Festival Internacional (Caracas), FAEL (Lima), Belluard International (Fribourg), Cena Contemporânea (Brasília), TBA (Portland), FIAC (Salvador de Bahía), Festival de Otoño (Madrid), RADAR (Los Angeles), Temporada Alta (Girona), Dialog Festival (Wroclaw), Centro Cultural España (Guatemala), BAD (Bilbao), Inteatro (Ancona), TNT (Terrassa), MESS (Sarajevo), Fusebox (Austin). They also performed at Noorderzon in 2017 with their show Tijuana. 

The collective has already won several prizes and awards, including the ZKB Patronage Prize at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel and the Audience Award at the Impatience Festival (Théâtre de l’Odéon and Centquatre) in Paris. Since 2023, their work has been part of the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library in New York.