Fire Never Dies

In Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project, bestselling author and Electric Company Core Artist Carmen Aguirre explores the intersection of art and revolution through the life of Italian photographer and activist Tina Modotti.

Modotti’s story unfolds in 1920s Mexico City, where her art flourished and she engaged with icons like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. However, after seven years, she abandoned photography to join the antifascist cause, ultimately running the Red Aid Hospital during the Spanish Civil War.

Modotti’s journey from working-class roots to revolutionary martyrdom raises urgent questions: What is the purpose of art in the face of fascism? Can art serve the poor? Through a dynamic blend of styles and theatrical forms, the play unfolds in twenty episodes set during Modotti’s final moments — a fatal heart attack in a taxi in Mexico City at age forty-five.

Performed by a seven-actor ensemble, scenes shift fluidly: film noir for her espionage in Berlin, naturalism for parties in Mexico, runway theatrics to introduce characters. Aguirre mirrors Modotti’s struggle to reconcile passion, creativity, and political conviction, ultimately asking: What is the personal cost of militancy?

Cast of 7 diverse actors

AUTHOR

Carmen Aguirre

Carmen Aguirre is a Vancouver-based theatre artist who has worked extensively in North and South America. She has written and co-written twenty-one plays, including Chile Con Carne, The Trigger, The Refugee Hotel, and Blue Box. Her first non-fiction book, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, was published in 2011 by Douglas & McIntyre in Canada and Granta/Portobello in the United Kingdom and is now available in Finland and Holland, in translation. Something Fierce was nominated for British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, the international Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, was a finalist for the 2012 BC Book Prize, was selected by the Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, and the National Post as one of the best books of 2011, was named Book of the Week by BBC Radio in the United Kingdom, won CBC Canada Reads 2012, and is a number-one national bestseller. Aguirre has more than sixty film, TV, and stage acting credits, is a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop facilitator, and an instructor in the acting department at Vancouver Film School. She received the Union of B.C. Performers 2011 Lorena Gale Woman of Distinction Award, the 2012 Langara College Outstanding Alumnae Award, and has been nominated for the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award, and the prestigious Siminovitch Prize. Aguirre is a graduate of Studio 58.