They say the hardest part is getting started. But they also say we’re losing interest faster than ever. The average attention span now lasts only a few seconds, despite the fact that we have more stimuli than ever before. Books pile up unread, just like the mountains of news stories we never have time to process. So where do we begin?

We could begin with Kim Basinger. Or Carlos Jesús. We could begin with a flea living inside a wig. We could begin with a shoulder carrying an object. Or we could begin at the beginning, as Aristotle recommended. But what is the beginning? If the beginning lies at the opposite extreme from the end, isn’t it logical to assume that the beginning should never actually come to an end?

Getting stuck at the beginning is the premise around which María García Vera builds La Vía Láctea (The Milky Way), which could be defined as a performative lecture, a solo piece, an essay or a farcical comedy, though perhaps it is better not to define it at all. Through the body, the spoken word and an exuberant imagination, María leaps from one beginning to another, from the start of an idea to the start of a journey, an action or an emotion. The piece shuns solemnity and thrives on improvisation and immediacy, in a shared space that may make us laugh, make us think or even arouse the urge to start something.

After premiering the second part of Les Chevaliers with the Los Detectives company at last year’s TNT, María now presents a personal, intelligent and unclassifiable work, full of improbable connections and attempts to find a path, whether magical, telepathic or out-of-body, that might save us from drifting away. Its focus on the here and now and its concern about the overload of information that leaves us overwhelmed also resonates with Impossible imaginar res by ATRESBANDES and El discurso by Rosa Romero.