Dominio Público (Public Space) by Roger Bernat

Award-winning Spanish artist Roger Bernat presents the U.S. premiere of “Dominio Público,” a unique participatory theater spectacle that aims to map societal structures.

In a public square, the audience, wearing headphones, moves through the space answering simple questions with wordless gestures. As the performance evolves, Dominio Público becomes at once a three-dimensional mapping of societal structures and an embodied exploration of individual agency and collective power.

Seen and celebrated over the past decade in Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Tokyo, Dominio Público makes its U.S. premiere in Georgetown University’s Red Square. For this performance Bernat, D.C. community members, and G.U. students collaborate to customize Dominio Público for this moment in Washington, D.C., building a communal ritual that uses game-like structures to bring to life the nature and ramifications of our assigned roles.

About Roger Bernat

Roger Bernat retakes documents, testimonies, and historical stagings to elaborate projects in which the community becomes the protagonist. There are no longer individual actors who embody the characters but it is the audience that, not without irony, represents the collective. His shows include Public Space (2008), The Rite of Spring (2010), Please Continue (Hamlet) (2011), Pending Vote (2012), Desplazamiento del Palacio de La Moneda (2014), Numax-Fagor-plus (2014), No se registran conversaciones de interés (2016-17) and The Place of the Thing (2017).

The shows have been performed in more than 30 countries. In 2017 he was awarded the Sebastià Gasch Prize for paratheatrical arts.