Performer
No life should go unmourned, and no violence be left unanswered.
This multimedia performance looks at femicide in Mexico through the memory and funerary rituals of an Indigenous Oaxacan woman, who leads the audience to the house of death to demand justice for her sisters. Soil, flowers, and candles become part of the staging as the piece pays homage, in the Oaxacan tradition, to every body without mourners. Who answers for the dead when no one has come to grieve them?
Drawing on necropolitics, the concept developed by Achille Mbembe, the work begins with a femicide in 2017 and the protest march that followed at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. A site-specific intervention, it adapts to each space and keeps the audience close, so no two nights are alike. Songs, Indigenous languages, floral offerings, and ceremonial mezcal turn grief into a sacred act of defiance.
This production won Best Actress and Best Set Design at the Hermandades International Festival (2019), and is a part of an international tour through France, Switzerland, Spain and Mexico (2026).
Credits:
Playwright, Director & Performer: Darling Lucas
Set & Lighting Design: Leticia Olvera
Multimedia Design: Yoatzin Balbuena
Original Music: Yunani Uscanga
Executive Producer: Hermana Menor Producciones
Supported by:
Venue: Gallery
Performer
Darling Lucas
Darling Lucas is an actress, playwright, director and performer, and founder of Hermana Menor Producciones (2018). Her work crosses theater, dance, music, film and antropology, centered on necropolitics and the “poetics of broken bodies,” a concept she coined. She won Best Actress at the Hermandades International Festival (Mérida, 2019) for Broken o el Necropoder, which she wrote, directed and performs.
