Hope depends on us. Click. It waits just one click away — inside us. Click.
Whether we choose attention and empathy — click — or surrender to a world imposing its own interests on us, depends entirely on us. Click.
These are the unsettling questions raised by Click, the dark and razor-sharp performance by Trukitrek. Lu Pulici — performer and co-director alongside Josep Piris — spoke to us about the future we are creating for ourselves.
What do you do in your everyday life, and as an artist, to avoid becoming like the protagonist of Click — someone completely absorbed by technology?
It’s difficult because we’re talking about a real addiction. I’m dependent on technology too — for work and everyday life — but we have to stay alert. That’s our responsibility. Technology itself is not evil. The problem is the way we are attached to it. It tries to shape every part of our lives: our health, culture, behaviour, even the way we think. Little by little, human ways of thinking and feeling disappear as technology takes control. I recognize that process in my own life as well.
What can you actually do without a phone?
A lot, actually. We make theatre, we make films — those are the two artistic paths of Trukitrek. Creating something never requires a phone. It requires time, concentration, imagination, skills. The moment the human mind creates a new world for the audience is precisely the moment when phones become unnecessary. People even take phones into the bathroom now — why? Why are we afraid of being alone with ourselves?
Recently I went fishing. At first I thought it sounded boring, but I spent two hours without my phone and it was incredible. My mind opened up completely — memories, ideas, and important thoughts kept surfacing. Two hours alone with myself felt phenomenal.
In the performance you also speak about how technology is taking over not only our minds, but our bodies.
We need to allow ourselves periods of disconnection. Technology changes our bodies as much as our minds — not only because we move less, but because it constantly pushes us toward artificial ways of living and consuming. Our bodies, emotions, and reactions are changing. In a sense, we are slowly losing ourselves. And for what? To live forever? Do we really need immortality?
How do you choose themes for your performances?
Often we don’t choose the themes — they choose us. Click emerged during the Covid period, when we had time to think about power, systems of control, and the way fear is used to manipulate people. Covid became a kind of global experiment in control through paranoia and fear. Today everyone feels informed about everything. Recently I mentioned having a headache at a birthday party, and suddenly everybody around me became a doctor, telling me what medicine to take and what was best for me. There’s this enormous culture of constant information and prevention, all driven by fear. For me, that’s deeply worrying. You start asking yourself where all of this is leading.
Politics also relies heavily on fear and control. Can Spanish theatre speak freely about that?
In my country, your country — in every country — politicians are mostly puppets. There are always larger interests behind them. You can see politicians manipulating people, but also being manipulated themselves. In Spain we currently have a prime minister many consider decent, and perhaps he is in some ways, but you can also see the limits of what he is allowed to do. The same is true in Italy, where we also spend part of our time. Power increasingly belongs to forces whose interests are in conflict with those of ordinary citizens. The tragedy is that technologies originally created to improve human life are now often being used against humanity. The advantages of technology have entered a dangerous zone — the zone of war. Again and again, every new technology ends up serving destruction instead of human progress.
If fear and interest are the defining words of our time, what are the important words in theatre?
I can only speak for myself. When we create a performance, we first create it for ourselves — for what we truly believe in, for what resonates deeply with us as human beings. And if it is honest, then it will resonate with the audience too. In theatre, the most important thing is to speak your own truth. Not someone else’s feelings or opinions — your own. If a performance is built on genuine beliefs and emotions, that truth can be transmitted to the audience.