Created in response to the political protests in Peru against the government of President Dina Boluarte and the Congress of Peru over 2022 to 2023, UPROAR by the Rieckhof/Silva collective is a quiet, powerful invitation to raise one’s voice against injustice. The performance opens with a bilingual welcome encouraging the audience to use shakers to ‘make sound with us’—the ‘us’ meaning costume and installation designer Carolina Rieckhof and movement director-performer Moyra Silva, as well as the implied many other protests against ongoing violence around the world.
The performance begins in near-darkness. Silva, dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt, enters and kneels before a black cloth. Silva’s hands trace over the cloth, pausing over each of the three gold pins laid upon it, and then, as if by magic, draws a white cloth from under each pin. Drawn on each of these cloths is a face. Silva ties each face over her own as excerpts of interviews with family members who have lost loved ones in the protests are played. Silva alternates between strong, resistant punches and animalistic postures to ethereal, reverent floating as each of the deceased is honoured—bringing the audience into a funeral procession mourning those killed in the protests. Finally, Silva’s hands sink into the ground, then begin to peel back the black cloth, revealing a glimmering, gold underside. Silva slowly rolls backwards, taking the sheet with her, and disappears under the mesmerising cloak.
It is this kind of theatrical magic which makes UPROAR shine. There is an understated pleasure in UPROAR’s revelations: gold fabric underneath a funeral shroud; a gold sheet levitating above the stage; Silva holding a long bundle of cloth just so, resembling a Madonna. When Silva re-emerges as a piñata-headed caricature of President Dina Boluarte, complete with elongated nails and a bloodied white and red sash, the political critique is both salient and unexpectedly humorous.
Silva as a performer, demonstrates remarkable stage presence, holding her own throughout the forty-five-minute run. Her physical commitment is impressive, writhing as a formless puddle across the floor or bouncing with increasing intensity until collapse. There is an intuitive generosity to her movement that makes even the more abstract images feel deeply personal and immediate—Silva inhabits each transformation completely. When Silva emerges in the final sequence with arms spread like wings, rising from the floor as a neon-fringed condor, she embodies both the mythological and the political, bringing to life the promise that ‘One day, the condors will return.’ Her ability to shift—between comedy and tragedy, reverence and rage; her own grief and collective memory—anchors the production's emotional terrain.
UPROAR raises intriguing questions about the role of political art in our interconnected yet fragmented world. The archival footage and interviews connect the performance to the realities outside of the theatre. We are not necessarily watching Silva's mourning so much as participating in a broader ritual of remembrance and resistance. We shake along with our pallares (strips of cloth with Lima beans), hit the piñata (the parallel of state violence is clear), and sing along to a song of protest. The participatory elements feel crucial to the work's political project, closing the usual distance of spectatorship. Yet it also raises questions about what it means to shed light on one particular injustice while seated in London, thousands of miles away, as several conflicts and acts of violence rage across the world. UPROAR doesn't resolve these tensions but rather creates space to process them at a more personal level, suggesting that bearing witness—even from afar—can be a meaningful event. The performance transforms witnessing into emotional and political solidarity, demonstrating its potential to transcend borders while acknowledging the specific experience of those who witnessed the protests firsthand. A particularly poignant duet between Silva and a violinist who emerges from the audience demonstrates this: Silva, her back on the floor, moves only her legs to the sombre strings—a wordless dialogue that feels both intimate and universal.
The piece ends as promised—the audience is invited to make sound with Rieckhof and Silva onstage as live singing merges with archival audio of the protest:
'El día que yo me muera… morir luchando por nuestra Patria. Viendo tanta injusticia…'
'The day I die... I'll die fighting for our country. Seeing so much injustice…'
UPROAR was performed on 1 August 2025 at The Playground Theatre in association with the Camden Fringe Festival, 28 July-24 August 2025.
Review: ELT