Written and Directed by Sergio Blanco

Translated and Performed by Daniel Goldman

Review by Jack Quinn

Summerhall – Red Lecture Theatre: Tickets

Taking our seats in the Red Lecture Theatre, we enter Sergio Blanco’s workspace. He sits at a table littered with books, a microscope, a laptop, a pad, a rib bone, stationery, headphones, and a Superman comic. He is writing as we enter as if polishing up his quasi-lecture in the final moments before he delivers it to us.

Part lecture, part memoir, Divine Invention is an emotionally engaged intellectual distribution of Blanco’s experiences and views on love. ‘Is it possible to write anything new about love?’ Sergio asks us and, as he provides a satisfactory examination of love, crafting a tapestry of romantic literature and experiences upon which his lecture is mounted. Blanco’s monologue speaks to the innate need for us all to experience and share love beyond intellectualism – ‘language must be shed for love’.

Tracing experiences from early exposure to sexual assault in a sports club gym, obsession with Superman, and falling in love with the work of William Shakespeare, Divine Invention combines the indulgence of a romantic piece of literature with the authenticity of lived experience, summarised into a piece which argues that the only antidote to death is love.

In a world where technology threatens to overtake our lives, sterilising genuine connection, Blanco suggests that love is the technology we have been yearning for as an interface which is constantly evolving and adapting in our quest for immortality.

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