Berlin, 1987. Otto Sander rests his head on Bruno Ganz’s shoulder as they contemplate the vastness of the city beneath them: a city in black and white in the final years of the Cold War, where greed and loneliness coexist with the most genuine acts of generosity and tenderness. For the two angel protagonists of Wim Wenders’ film, the angelic condition translates into a very specific way of being in the world: to observe, but not to participate.

For María Jurado, the figure of the angel is becoming increasingly present in the ideal of contemporary societies: transparent, resolute, always kind and available, and devoid of desires or attributes of its own. Angelical is a solo piece that critically questions the angel as an ambiguous and problematic figure, and as the condensation of a whole series of values (including harmony, purity and perfection) that, paradoxically, the more pessimism advances, the more they seem to come back into fashion.

Nowadays, faith not only moves mountains, but a lot of money too. Where does the desire to believe in images of salvation or transcendence come from? What makes us want to be angels? What do we do with everything that doesn’t fit within this framework, such as the body, contradiction, failure or violence?

Drawing on her visual and performative tools, and with the support of her regular artistic team, María surrounds herself with a constellation of philosophical references, including Walter Benjamin, Simone Weil and Julia Kristeva, to construct a universe on stage. Through them, the piece weaves a discourse on the angelic, not from the perspective of religious mysticism, but from the problems and contradictions of the contemporary world. The result is a piece that hybridises image, body and thought, like those by María García Vera (La Vía Láctea) and ATRESBANDES (Impossible imaginar res).