“Something must change!”

Lleida"Something must change!" With this cry halfway between help and tiredness, the protagonist ofPrima facie, magnificently performed by Victoria Luengo, culminates a heartbreaking final monologue that addresses not only sexual assault, but also the lack of protection for victims.

The piece reflects (and how!) on the lack of gender perspective in justice and highlights the fact that sexist violence is a social scourge that must be eradicated.

Furthermore, it highlights the ravages of a still-prevalent patriarchal society, which clings tooth and nail to power. A production that leaves its mark. One that stirs. One that shakes us to the core. After all, why do we go to the theater if not? To leave the same way we came in?

And the fact is that artistic manifestations have that revulsive and transformative potential that favors stimulating a critical spirit, redefining who we are or who we want to be, both individually and collectively.

With this vocation, the Dolores Piera Center for Equal Opportunities and Promotion of Women at the University of Lleida (UdL) created the Artivism Cycle. Art for the Prevention of Gender-Based Violence in 2022. This is an artistic project "with widely recognized professionals" that aims to "raise awareness, prevent" and confront gender-based violence with the motto "Something has to change!" as its flagship. The fourth edition of the cycle will offer three high-level artistic projects from October 21 to November 5 in the city of Lleida.

The conversationGraphic humor and feminismThe series will be opened by the Flavita Banana doll and journalist Flor Coll. The session will reveal the artist's career and creative process and delve into how art in general and graphic humor in particular can be useful in "raising awareness and preventing sexism."

In the seriously hilarious soliloquyManologue, Irantzu Varela will bring to the stage "a forceful critique of the unjust, sexist, fat-phobic, and violent society that surrounds us and imposes itself on us." The Basque journalist and writer uses unadorned political humor as an activist device to raise awareness.

Actress and artist Pamela Palenciano, who already bared her own weight on stage in the first edition of the series with her ironic and humorous autobiographical monologue,It's not just the blows that hurt, returns this year with a proposal that goes beyond. The colloquiumIf you love, it doesn't hurtexpands the dramaturgy ofIt's not just the blows that hurtDeconstructing "the myths of romantic love and how gender roles and sexist violence affect relationships."

Three proposals that show that some things have changed, but that we must continue fighting for many more. "Something has to change!"