The Monastery of Santa María de la Sierra comes to life with an immersive theater.

The millennia-old silence of the Cistercian monastery of Santa María de la Sierra (Segovia), home to ÁBBATTE, will be interrupted—or rather, interpreted—by a unique theatrical proposal. For the first time, this Site of Cultural Interest will host a theatrical event open to the public. It will take place on July 18, 19, and 20 at 8:15 p.m. , with Hacia echoes de lo sagrado (Towards Echoes of the Sacred ), a production by the renowned company Nao d'Amores , which won the National Theater Award in 2023.

This is not a typical performance. The show, originally created for the ruins of the Monastery of Santa María la Real in Valdeiglesias (Madrid) and produced by the Community of Madrid for the Teatros del Canal, invites the audience to tour the monastery in a sort of contemporary ritual , in which the sounds of the past—chant, footsteps, bells, psalms—emerge again thanks to the artistic intervention.

The premise is clear: hearing as a privileged access route to the sacred . Throughout the tour, spectators will witness a sensorial reconstruction of the spiritual life of medieval monks, reinterpreted from the present. "We are not interested in spectators from the past, but in those of today," explains the company, which proposes an aural and emotional immersion in the liturgical, philosophical, and musical heritage of the Cistercian order.

An essential theatre in a space full of meaning

Nao d'Amores' aesthetic is inspired by Jerzy Grotowski's " poverty theater ," with an austere and stripped-down staging that eschews the showmanship to reclaim theater as a shared ritual and reflection of the human soul. This approach resonates deeply with the philosophy of ÁBBATTE, the textile workshop and space for contemplation located in the monastery.

“These stones, steeped in history and silence, help us understand who we are as a brand every day,” explains ÁBBATTE. “Our textiles, sober and silent, offer refuge and balance amidst the hustle and bustle of today. Welcoming this work is a way to deepen the coherence of who we are.”

Cistercian architecture, its sobriety and its capacity to invite contemplation, are transformed here into active scenographic elements . The experience does not aim to reconstruct the past, but rather to reactivate it through contemporary emotions : how do the voices of the Middle Ages sound today? What do these forgotten liturgies reveal about our current search for transcendence?

Cistercian architecture is transformed here into active scenographic elements

The starting point was the sound mapping of the monastery : the word in the chapter, the song in the church, the dripping of water in the fountain in the washbasin, the echo of footsteps in the cloister... All of this is woven into a spectacle that challenges perception, rather than history, and transforms the heritage into a living space.