Clara Carmona

She is a puppeteer, professor of puppet theater, and specialist in object theater, interactivity, and new media at the National University of the Arts.

She is also a professor of mathematics and physics. She was a teacher for 35 years, during which she worked in secondary school management and teacher training.

She currently resides in Chos Malal, in northern Neuquén, and is part of the Compañía Títeres de la Mapu (Mapu Puppet Company), where she has worked for the past ten years with the goal of bringing theater to remote areas of the province and the country.

Within the company, she shares the roles of scriptwriter, producer, and director of all its works. She specializes in table puppets, marionettes, and giant puppets for street performances.

Her work is particularly connected to the political aspect of art. She also coordinates and participates in collective artistic interventions with a community impact, related to the climate and ecological crisis and to Nature as a subject of rights. 

Sound Box  (NAT Art Residence - 10/2024)


Sound Box is a performance, a theatrical proposal. It is inspired by the texts I wrote during my residency in Tagle, in the Spanish autumn, facing the Cantabrian Sea.

It premiered in the Argentine autumn, in a Patagonian forest, at the foot of Cerro Corona, in Huinganco, Neuquén province, with the desire to invite silence and the search for a fold, a crease, that contains some ancient voice stored in memory... or in the body.

 

My box contains unavoidable texts.

Voices. Stored for a long time.

Unrecognizable because they are so old,

They become words. They become corporeal.

They offer themselves.

In this sound box, I reveal one of my folds, I uncover a corner, I dust it off...

Perhaps you will resonate,

or at least, you will want to discover yours,

your folds.

Sound Box - Performance and Ritual

Development of the experience:


Sound Box is a performance. A ritual. A theatrical experience in which the audience isn't just a spectator, but participates, engages, and creates.

It takes place in two performing arts spaces different, also integrating the route between both:

The first is outdoor: This time, we worked in nature, in a forest, in the particularly beautiful autumn of Huinganco.

  • It invites silence and encounter with the environment, with one's own body and with the other participants..
  • It's about being present, perceiving one's own corporeality, the base of support, the supports, one's own weight, one's breathing.
  • It is also about perceiving the bodies of others.


The second is indoors, in this case the Espacio-Minga, a small room built in wood and clay.

It's time to open the Box. It is a scenic object: a cardboard box with several interior compartments.

  • Each participant is invited to choose a box. Each box contains a folded piece of paper containing a text...to be read or told to whomever it may concern. In this way, the box is passed from hand to hand and emptied.
  • This ritual of random readings will lead to the writing of new texts, this time by the participants.
  • To conclude, there is a collective, and at times polyphonic, reading of the "inevitable texts" of those who participated.


Huinganco-Neuquén, Sunday, April 13, 2025

Click on the images for full view

Sound Box - Digital version

In each of the boxes in this box, there's a text I wrote for you when you got here... and maybe you'd like to listen to me.

I invite you to select one, or several...or all of them. (These are some of my texts, stored inside a fold of my story.)


Now take a piece of paper, a pen and write yours.

Today, at this moment… What are your unavoidable texts?

Write them down… and start your own box.

Texts included in the audios:


1- I DON'T KNOW THIS ONE I AM NOW...

...or maybe I do… but it confuses me.

She looks a bit like the original,

But, I wouldn't say she's the same.

I have thick skin and lot of patience - they tell me -

BUT IT IS A LIE.


2- SOMEONE WRITES WITH THEIR FEET IN THE SAND

Choreography of writing

that glides in a light tempo

Andante.

Sometimes subtle. Sometimes vigorous.

He writes old words

that leave in the sand

drawings never before drawn.

He writes a legacy to his children

The barely suggested lessons

He writes what he knows is necessary

What he knows

He writes with his feet. On the sand

He draws…issues of life

He draws plants, he draws rivers

he draws horizons and deserts.

Write powerful words

That are shouted

(like the stars shout at night)

Write powerful words

that are whispered lightly

(like the breath of dawn)

Draw the kept secrets

those that you treasured

until today

when you write them, finally

in the sand.


3- HERE I AM

Here inside this little piece

Bubble

Cave

Inside

I'm

Still

Cared for

I'm

Still

I


4- I WALK

Without hiding

Lymphatic lizard, I walk

on all fours and my belly on the floor.

I am ready


5- FURIOUS SEA

let me pass

I want to wash off the filth of so long ago

If not here... where?


6- A SHELTER TO SPEND THE NIGHT

That's what I need.

A place where I can fall asleep

And rest the journey,

that has climbed onto my back.

Unsaddle, I need

Take off my saddle

And lie down in the grass

(I'm coming... I'm coming... I'll be back in a few hours)

If you want, stay here

Lie down here, right next to me...

Let's sleep a while.


7- FINDING MY VOICE

Say, sing - shout

Roar

Strip it of the hiatus

and the swellings

Shape the cavities

Tune my strings

Tense them carefully

Find the stored air

And give it way.

Let the air pass

dragging along the forgetfulness. All

 Find

the scream that stuck in my gut

a long time ago

and must be ripe by now.


8- SOMETIMES I RUN DRY

I stay like this, waiting. With nothing

I become withered, without water

Until the water runs again

And wets my legs.

 

9- AN OLD MAN, INSIDE A LITTLE LIGHTED HOUSE

Eating slowly.

The old man looks at his plate, moves his spoon,

brings to his mouth some soup or stew

or who knows what concoction

that someone who cares for him, a wife or a daughter or who knows,

prepared for him.

The old man watches TV. He watches the news and says how bad things are in the world

he remembers his youth

he remembers his strange childhood,

some love that once moved him

He eats. Simply

perhaps later he goes to clean himself

they will accompany him to sleep, to lie down

in a clean bed. Perfumed

with clean clothes. Ironed

Maybe he'll look at the ceiling and can't sleep.

Or, he'll listen to a radio program on some station

that repeats old things,

ones he knows.

The old man will look at the sky

will look at his bedroom ceiling.

Maybe he won't be able to sleep.

Maybe simply

Slowly, slowly

Death will come to him.

and they'll find him there

lying

looking at his bedroom ceiling.

 

10- LITTLE COUNTRY WALTZ

Under the clear sky up above, the celebration

One two three, one two three

Triplet after triplet

on the freshly watered earth

on his haunches and with laughter at hand.

 

11- MEDITERRANEAN WALTZ

The beauty of gliding across the grass

Surrounding oneself with its dampness

And rolling over

ROLLING MYSELF

Filling my body with quarter notes and eighth notes

Taking you out to dance

and lightening your weight

Holding your gaze

Clean.

And find you, finally. There


12- LUCKILY, I HAD THE CLUCIDITY

to teach you

to lie down

to some melody

It came easily to you,

(it seems you already had it from some older learning)

I received it before I was born

The cub-woman

blew it on my sternum

between my ribs

I placed it in your hands

I carried you palm over palm

so you could lie down in the air

and the music simply settled

beneath you.

You let me, you allowed me everything

your little face full of laughter and trust

Now you're out there,

Uploaded to songs.

 

13- THIS MORNING I WENT TO THE RIVERBANK

The water began to fill me. Slowly

From the hands up

Hands, arms, chest, neck, head

Back

Hips

Legs, feet

MY skin is brown

Like the earth's

And with the water inside, it becomes transparent

I like my brown skin.

 

14- SILENCE IS AFTER THE SOUNDS.

Always.

It is engendered

that's why it takes a while

to clear

and become

just silence.

Mine, the one I know

is a full-corporeal silence...

Corporeal


15- FROM THE FLOOR

the earth smelled different

I liked to lie on the still warm ground

I closed my eyes and smelled.

The jasmine won out over the others

Far away, some wet weed

And further back,

a tiny bit of honeysuckle.

That´s how you´d found me when you came back.

Half drunk on smells

and smiling.


16- I LEAVE

I am a shapeless bug

Bloody.

With skin red from scratches

The hairs are dirty with shit and insects.

I'm on my way out.

hairy creature

Stinks of my own urine.

Terrified.

Shaking.

I'm on my way out.