Lola Arias is a writer, theatre and film director and performer. She collaborates with people from different backgrounds (war veterans, former communists, Bulgarian children, etc.) in theatre, literature, music, film and art projects. Her productions play with the overlap zones between reality and fiction.

Since 2007, she develops her work in the field of documentary theatre. Mi vida después (CTBA, 2009) is based on the biography of six performers who re-enact their parents’ youth during the dictatorship in Argentina. Familienbande(Kammerspiele, 2009) deals with role models in a contemporary family with three parents. That Enemy Within (HAU, 2010) is a project about identity made in collaboration with two identical twins. The year I was born (Teatro a mil, 2012) is based on biographies of people born during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Melancolía y Manifestaciones (Wiener Festwochen, 2012) is a play about her mother’s depression. The art of making money (Stadttheater Bremen, 2013) takes a concept from The Threepenny Opera by Brecht for a play performed by beggars, prostitutes and street musicians from the city of Bremen. And The art of arriving(Stadttheater Bremen, 2015) uses the example of Bulgarian kids living in Germany to develop a scenic tutorial which reflects upon how to start a new life in another country.

Her last theatre plays are Minefield (2016), which brings together British and Argentinian veterans of the Falkland / Malvinas war to share their experience of the conflict and life since, and Atlas des Kommunismus (2016), which puts together stories of women between the ages of 8 and 84 with GDR backgrounds (Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin).

She also created the exhibition Stunt Double (2016), in which four different installations rebuilt the last 40 years of Argentinian social and political history through documents, reenactments, interviews and popular songs; the durational performance Audition for a Demonstration (2014), which was presented in Berlin, Prague, Athens and Buenos Aires; and Ways of walking with a book in the hand (2017), a site specific project for readers in libraries and public spaces.

Her feature film Theatre of war (2018), starring the same protagonists as her theatre project Minefield, was selected for the 68th Forum of the Berlinale Film Festival.

Together with Ulises Conti, she composes and plays music and released the albums Love is a sniper (2007) and Those who do not sleep (2011), and together with Stefan Kaegi, she developed the projects Chácara Paraíso (2007), Airport Kids (2008) and Ciudades Paralelas (2010), a Festival of urban interventions in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Zurich and other cities.

She published poetry, fiction and plays: Love is a sniper (2007, Entropía), The postnuclear ones (2011, Emecé), My life after and other plays (2016, Penguin Random House) and a bilingual edition of her play Minefield (2017, Oberon Books)

Lola Arias’ works for theatre have been performed at festivals such as: Lift Festival, London, Under the Radar, NY, Festival d’Avignon, Theater Spektakel, Zurich, Wiener Festwochen, Festival Theaterformen, Brunswick/Hanover, Spielart Festival, Munich, and Berlinale, as well as in venues like Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, Redcat, LA, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, Parque de la memoria, Buenos Aires,