ALBERTO CORTÉS (MÁLAGA, 1983). STAGE DIRECTOR, PLAYWRIGHT AND PERFORMER OF MY OWN DRIFTS.
BIOGRAPHY
I graduated with a degree in Theatre Direction and Dramaturgy from ESAD in Málaga and in Art History from the University of Málaga (UMA). In 2009, I began my career in the performing arts with a ‘hybrid’ and peripheral approach to dramaturgy that has evolved over time. Since then, I have continually encountered various creators and friends who have inspired my journey, and I have continued to produce works in different formats and disciplines in an attempt to maintain hope in the intangible, the spiritual and the human. Over the years, my work has taken the form of theatre, dance, performance art, as well as folklore, flamenco and site-specific pieces; I support other creators’ creative processes through direction and dramaturgy, and I run workshops as opportunities to share the research I am currently immersed in. At a certain point, my career has centred on the idea of understanding the stage as a space of desire and a romantic relationship with the audience. My work is staged in various venues and at festivals across Europe, and my texts have been published in Spanish by the publisher Continta Me Tienes: “Los montes son tuyos” (2022; featuring the texts from El Ardor and One night at the golden bar), “Siempre vengo de noche” (2024; Analphabet) and “Libro de las devociones” (2026; El corazón de Ester and Los chicos de la playa Adoro). My works have also been translated and published in Italian (Luca Sossella Editore) and French (Les Solitaires Intempestifs). Today, I live out my identity as a creator, performer, director, playwright, partner, teacher, son, brother, uncle, lover and friend.
ACTIVE CREATIONS
CREATIONS / 2026
EL CORAZÓN DE ESTER
In the 19th century, a strange manuscript signed by a certain Ester, a mysterious young woman of religious fervour, is found in the English countryside. The writing recounts, through a series of diaries and love poems, how Ester wears herself out by giving herself to her lovers and loved ones until one day she disappears from the village without a trace. The stage play inspired by this story functions as a direct confession to the audience, in a kind of intimate ritual of the word. A confession that, as in Saint Augustine, is a way of redeeming ourselves together; a confession that becomes devotion and makes us rethink the limits of emotional devotion and the dangers it poses to the performer’s body.
This is a piece that speaks of the wear and tear caused by gazes when they pierce through a body. It proposes a reflection on what it means for the artist’s body to be looked at by the eyes of the public and what it means to be sold over and over again by the capitalist market. The result is a body, like Ester’s, that is consumed by love in an exercise of progressive disappearance (the act of loving the spectator as a sweet, slow death). Faced with this imminent disappearance of the performer’s body and the work itself, Ester’s heart asks: must we then invent new forms of devotion? Is there a queer devotion that does not involve sacrifice? Is the only possible option to overcome the wear and tear of the flesh to transcend it and reach the Spirit? Perhaps “El corazón de Ester” is a spell, like that of a sorcerer’s apprentice, which seeks to disappear without disappearing. At this point, the influences of Simone Weil and all the mystics of history appear, who are here Ester’s great teachers. Other voices of 19th-century women who nourished the writing also appeared in the process, such as Emily Dickinson and the Brönte sisters, and many others who have dialogued with the past, such as María Zambrano and Anne Carson. Beyond the tragedy of dying for love, the work is also a celebration of dedication to the audience, a love letter and a veneration of the act of holding each other together in performance.
To avoid being consumed so quickly and to protect ourselves from the notion of ‘star success’, we propose a pact of collective responsibility regarding the consumption of the works and the artists’ bodies: the piece will be a limited, numbered series of 50 performances, after which it will disappear. In the hope that the viewer becomes aware of its magic and that Ester survives the sacrifice.
Concept, dramaturgy, texts, direction and performance: Alberto Cortés / Lighting design and technician: Benito Jiménez / Sound design and technician: Óscar Villegas / Musical Direction and violins: Luz Prado / Guitars: Adriano Galante / Choir: proyectoeLe / Piano: Tacet est musicae / Technical coordination: Cristina Bolívar / Subtitles: Marion Cousin / Set design: Víctor Colmenero Mir / Painting: Miguel Oliver / Costumes and tour production assistant: Gloria Trenado / Hat: Patricia Buffuna / Movement accompaniment: Janet Novás / Outside eye: Amalia Fernández / Photography: Manu Rosaleny and Alejandra Amere / Video: Johann Pérez Viera / Production: El Mandaíto Producciones SL / A co-production of: Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Grec 2026 Festival Barcelona, Festival d’Automne, Théâtre de la Bastille, Centre de les Arts Lliures de la Fundació Joan Brossa, Agencia Andaluza de Instituciones Culturales – Teatro Central and Tanzquartier Wien / With the collaboration of: Festival Citemor, CAMPO, Azala, Graner
CREATIONS / 2022
ONE NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN BAR
I called «One night at the golden bar» the experience of making myself vulnerable in order to find the beauty that appears in the cheesy, affected, outdated and queer declaration of love. Writing from ecstasy and from the romantic, the speaker and the investigation of the sung and set to music voice appeared; in short, I wanted to find a song that highlights the fragility of affection from the queer gaze. I want to invoke the figure of the angel from some kind of invented heaven, to ask myself about which identities are in that vulnerable and monstrous place at the same time, and how we are going to protect these bodies when they are exposed in their fragility.
To understand myself I tell myself that this is about what the fires of desire and love did with my body and my language thinking about other men. Along the way, all the unresolved cracks appear to me that form part of the unfathomable associated with the romantic; the tensions between the theories we formulate to invent new ways of relating to male toxicity and the heteronorma and at the same time the capacity to fall sick with desire before The Man who ploughs the earth. That crack is this performance. Although it could also be the attack that Ana Torroja sings in La Fuerza del Destino when she says ‘one night in the Gold bar I decided to attack’. And it could also be what Rilke said: ‘every angel is terrible’. Or all those other things I see when I sing of love but don’t understand.
Concept, dramaturgy, texts and interpretation: Alberto Cortés / Music and sound space: Cèsar Barco Manrique / Lighting: Benito Jiménez / Sound: Pablo Contreras / Costumes: Gloria Trenado / Movement assistance: María Cabeza de Vaca / Stage assistance: Víctor Colmenero / Photography and video: Clementina Gades y Alejandra Amere / With the collaboration of: Teatro Calderón de Valladolid, Junta de Andalucía (Residencias Ágora), Centro Conde Duque y Graners de Creació / Acknowledgments: La Poderosa, Labo XL, Rebeca, Iver, Claudia, Mariquiña, Esther y Peru
PUBLICATIONS
The texts of «El Ardor» and «One night at the golden bar» are published in a joint format as a Diptych of the Romantic Mountains and under the title «Los montes son tuyos», with the publishing house «Continta me tienes». Everything was written out of desire, out of love for the street and love for the human body. In the words of Rodrigo García Marina: «In Cortés work, exploration is directed towards an innocent adulthood. He does not pursue an oxymoron, nor a tragic knot, but the game, the pleasure of what perishes, the smell of what has just been created. It is a body facing the possibility of all new bodies, the miracle of what seems new, although it has always been there».