Shows

Index / Activities / Shows / “The Arabian Nights All Over the Casa” with Héctor Urién

“The Arabian Nights All Over the Casa” with Héctor Urién

April 07, 2022From 6:30 p.m.
CÓRDOBA
Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Samuel de los Santos y Gener, 9). From 6:30 p.m. Free entry after signing up using the forms provided on this website.
In Spanish.

As part of the Nights of Ramadan 2022, Héctor Urién will be back at our headquarters in Cordoba on Thursday, April 7 with yet another session of stories inspired by “The Arabian Nights.” The different rooms inside the Casa Mudéjar will provide the setting for these different tales.

Oral storytelling is the Muslim equivalent to theater. Traditionally, instead of watching performances by actors in a communal place, storytellers draw their stories in mid-air using words and relying on the audience, ambience and natural scenery around them. Staged storytelling is thus created inside of space and through its use. The story has a different feeling in every corner where it unfolds.

Offering the experience of such a show has led us to host this event during the Nights of Ramadan. Taking advantage of the amazing spaces where Casa Árabe is housed in Cordoba, storyteller Héctor Urién will weave his tales amongst a select audience in four different places. These tales will be determined by the present moment, though we can guess something about each, because everything takes place in the present, after all, and nothing is truly certain. These storytelling events must be attended with a spirit fully open to surprises, so we suggest you sign up for one of the first three sessions, as well as the last, which will be held in the auditorium.

1. The kitchen. 6:30 p.m. Stories here can be expected to bear some relation with the shared intimacy of a kitchen, though the story may also be spiced up with some voluptuousness and exotic aromas. (Sign up here.Capacity limited to 5 people)

2. The hall of paintings. 6:50 p.m. Art and reflection converge in this room. Major life decisions and the inspiration of the ancients coexist in this place. Perhaps the story will have something to do with an important encounter or a furtive rendez- vous between lovers, who use these rooms to hold hands before visiting more hidden places. (Sign up here.Capacity limited to 10 people)

3. The drinking trough courtyard. 7:10 p.m. In principle, this site is suggestive of a welcoming or departure. An arrival or a farewell. The place of that final moment right before entering the great outdoors. However, it may also denote a physical meeting to defend the home or castle. (Sign up here.Capacity limited to 20 people).

4. The auditorium. 7:30 p.m. Here the stories become a public affair. Whilst in the first few rooms, the audience participates in a rather more intimate atmosphere, in this last room everybody comes together and all the loose ends get tied up. The stories told here can be expected to have had preludes in the earlier rooms where more private sessions were held, with endings revealed before the very eyes of the whole community. It is a festive climax that brings the storytelling event to its end. (Sign up here. Capacity limited to 100 people)

Héctor Urién (Madrid, 1977) makes his living from telling stories. As a professionalstoryteller, he performs his art and stage work at theaters in Spain and Latin America. Drawn by his curiosity and and a deeply ingrained scientific streak, Urién has developed his own regular storytelling workshop in Madrid, where students and teacher discover the inner workings of stories and the mystery of oral storytelling together. As an on-stage storyteller, his most original and exciting project is related with “The Arabian Nights,” whose tales he normally tells one by one every Tuesday night at a small theater in downtown Madrid. A short, straightforward storyteller, he
has taken part in several national and international festivals and co-directs the annual festival “Ávila de cuento.” He has had several essays published, including La narración fractal: arte y ciencia de la oralidad (Fractal Storytelling: Art and science of orality, Palabras del candil, 2015), El arte de contar bien una historia (The Art of Telling a Good Story, Planeta, 2001), Teoría y práctica de la narración fractal (Fractal Storytelling Theory and Practice, Amazon Dkp, 2021).