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This is an encounter with resilience: through the use of the verbatim techniques of theater, we created a search expedition through the last relics of a device of social control under which the sick of leprosy saw their freedom and their dignity restricted during almost a hundred years. It is an effort to put together the puzzle of lazar houses, before their ruins are lost under the fog of time and oblivion.
We could follow these traces thanks to the testimonies of some people sick with leprosy who survived the experience, and to the generosity of scholars and researchers of life in these centers of isolation and reclusion—they showed us how, in spite of the adversities, people are capable of building a sense for their lives.
Our expedition has coincided with the overwhelming presence of a pandemic seriously threatening world population to the point of never going back to the lives we once knew.
We the expeditionaries looked into the almost-extinct world of lazar houses, and we have been forced, although for reasons very different from those sick with leprosy, to isolate at home. This unprecedented situation lead us to modify our point of view, to consider and reflect about the dangers involved in isolation policies, discrimination and social control for which these confinement camps were an appalling example.
