The Rotting Hart

The Rotting Hart combines traditional theatre, storytelling and choreography to create an unsettling exploration of homosexuality through the ages and the effects of toxic masculinity, ignorance and stoicism on queer bodies. It is summer in the valleys of Toledo, c. XVII. HIM and his father live in isolation in the shadow of an abandoned Augustinian monastery. One day, a stranger comes into their lives: Diego, tall and proud and full to the brim. Diego talks to HIM like his father never does, he drags HIM out on adventures around the abandoned monastery, reads HIM poetry. HIM doesn’t know what any of it means. All he knows is that, since Diego arrived, something has started to change: feelings he doesn’t understand are bursting through his skin like black fur; words and language are starting to lose their meaning; and intrusive thoughts make him wonder whether Diego’s proud neck would fit between his growing canines…