Sanchez Ventura

The sequence of episodes which make up this narrative are linked by the logic of dreams. Separate strands of the story seem to run in parallel yet also to intersect. We enter a dystopian world from which various actors are seeking an escape. Language is itself implicated in the maintenance of this world in crisis. At the heart of the piece is the shapeshifting figure of Sanchez Ventura, gaucho, used car salesman, and Latin American man of letters.

"We enter the dream world of Simon Collings' Sanchez Ventura alert to hints of Bunuel, a touch of Borges, the cut-ups of the Cabaret Voltaire. Characters step into or out of paintings, watch themselves in movies, one may even be an ex-pat filmmaker. Sanchez Ventura himself is a gaucho, used-car salesman, waxwork model, writer, knave of hearts; he walks with a limp, he walks through sand, he walks through your dreams; he operates 'on the frontier between slumber and waking'. Collings' characters live in a restless search for identi-ty and meaning in this fabulous, allusive, labyrinth of myster-ies." (Mark Russell)