About the show
He never stops, never stops. Wants to taste everything. And he skips, superficially, over things. Don’t be selfish. How embarrassing. Cover your mouth, your teeth are showing. He shrank and shrank… and now he’s an expert at pleasing everyone. Reaping the benefits, of course. A skilful harlequin. Look at him, jumping from place to place, avoiding, in doing so, any pause to take in what surrounds him. He’s happy in the fantasy. He dances because he no longer remembers who he is. No one remembers. Now, all he does is try to be seen. He can do no more. He never stops, never stops. Being seen—even by offering up a pitiful image—frees him from the torturous tyranny of insignificance.
Writers’ and directors’ note
The idea of talking about gluttony comes from the need to highlight what corrupts us. We have the sense that we’re living in a society that no longer trusts power, or the banks and governments that manage it. Outwardly, everyone claims to act in the best possible way, no one owns up to mistakes; yet vice and greed seep in everywhere. Societies are becoming increasingly unequal, and the climate crisis is alarming. Still, gluttony keeps devouring everything. Nothing and no one seems able to stop.
At the same time, we look around us and see a compulsive consumption of emotions. In fact, we see it in ourselves as well. On the surface, the world appears to offer everything. A boundless, overstimulating banquet that is numb to pain. But while we chase fulfilment and perpetual happiness, mental health keeps deteriorating, and we never seem to hit rock bottom.
We see social media as one of gluttony’s gateways. It unsettles us, makes us witnesses to the (real or fabricated) enjoyment of others: achievements, travels, thrilling jobs, beautiful homes. It fuels the race to become what we are not, the urge to devour without digesting everything life might offer.
Gluttony corrupts us. In its most explicit form, eating out of gluttony means savouring without digesting. More broadly, it means taking from the world only the exciting and pleasurable parts—above all, rejecting and fleeing from anything that causes pain. We avoid the sensation of emptiness by stuffing our mouths with pleasures and stimuli: a literal and metaphorical image of gluttony.
For us, gluttony is also what blocks any change; rebellion is avoided, yet metamorphosis arrives. When gluttony overwhelms the individual, they are transformed—giving way to animality, to the beast, to the fool. You cannot escape gluttony by consuming its cure. This is how one builds their own labyrinth, trying to flee from a place that has no exit, doomed to fall into the same trap again and again. Like a puppet unaware of its strings. Gluttony, in its purest form, is a portrait of madness, ignorance, blindness — of human folly.
The way out of this labyrinth begins with allowing ourselves to be pierced by emptiness. When immersed in constant gluttony, we forget the importance of accepting ourselves in our true nature. We must pause, overcome fear, the traps, the panic, the relentless need for an answer. And that is why it is so difficult — until we stop devouring, we won’t find the right words to connect. That is the clown’s tragedy.
Pau Matas Nogué and Oriol Pla Solina
