A Festival for the Creative Process
Impulso Creativo is a new festival celebrating its first edition this March, running from the 12th to the 22nd in various venues across La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and La Orotava. This cultural event focuses on creative processes and aims to establish the island as a reference point for artistic research, contemporary creation, and creative thinking. So says its founder, director, writer, singer and actress Bibiana Monje.
Hamlet-a: A Contemporary Experiment
Beyond the scheduled events, the festival kicks off with an ambitious project: Hamlet-a. This theatrical experiment is a contemporary reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s classic, featuring eleven women over the age of 50, many with no prior stage experience, who have been rehearsing for nearly two months. This novel company emerged from an open call that received over fifty applications.
The participants are now engaged in a collective creation process drawing on each woman’s personal experience. Bibiana Monje explains that each participant embodies a “possible Hamlet,” exploring themes such as doubt, guilt, lucidity, rage, or desire through an open dramaturgy combining word, body, voice, music, and silence.
Community Dimension and Empowerment
Thus, Monje states, Hamlet-a acquires a “community and social dimension.” Alongside rehearsals, workshops and artistic training labs have been developed so the eleven participants can gain skills in different areas. The audience for these activities has been broad, however, as they were also opened to all the women who applied for the open call but were not selected.
“This project transcends the production of a show and conceives the creative process as a place for learning, encounter, and collective empowerment,” expresses Bibiana Monje.
Opening the Backstage to the Public
This initiative is just one example of the philosophy behind the Impulso Creativo Festival, which seeks to give visibility to creative processes by opening backstage areas and working methods to the public. Therefore, both the Hamlet-a process and the festival as a whole will be documented on video, generating audiovisual content that will form part of a digital platform accessible beyond the island.
Bibiana Monje explains that this virtual space will allow people to follow rehearsals, labs, interviews, and materials from the creative process, expanding the festival’s reach nationally and reinforcing its identity as a cultural project focused on how things are created, not solely on the final result and stage performance.
Documentary Premiere and Festival Programme
In line with this, a documentary capturing the creative process of Hamlet-a will premiere on the 15th at Espacio La Granja in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The show itself will have only two performances at the Teatro Leal in La Laguna on the 12th and 22nd, serving as the opening and closing events for this new festival. The programme will also include other theatrical experiments, creative thinking seminars, and gatherings centred on contemporary creation.
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