“Thursday: Abracadabra premiered at the end of November 2019 in Bilbao, at La Fundición, as part of the Dantzaldia festival. The play revolves around a giant book, the size of a person, from which, as the play's title suggests, a handful of magic words are drawn. By reading them standing up, out loud and with the audience, you discover the power of words to move the world - starting with your own world. This is no fairy tale. “Cast your thunderbolt unto death” would be the translation of the Hebrew formula abreg ad hâbra, which gave rise to the popular ‘Abracadabra’. The expression is usually inscribed on a talisman in the shape of an inverted pyramid, which is worn on the chest to ward off illness. Thursday's “Abracadabra” is said to attack, not to defend. The general purpose of the words is to undo and remake the world, demonstrating the true relationship between things and words, the hidden names of injustice, inequality, oppression, the murders that victimize our comrades in everyday life and in poetry, and which can no longer be kept quiet. At stake is the meaning of words, in a world where the artifices of law and reason, even with the promise of emancipation, are used to count every step that a citizen takes. One of the purposes of the show is to radicalize unruly words and give them direction. Words are weapons. Cláudia Dias and Idoia Zabaleta hand them out to the audience. The recommendation is to use them with precision.

The play's book has now found its paper twin, which can be taken everywhere. Just as the audience is called to the stage to dance, put on their shirts and sing, and once they have recovered the meanings of the words they are invited to play with the ironies, so this volume asks the reader to come over and be part of the movement, without reservation. There will be plenty of reasons. Thursday: Abracadabra opened the book. Open it too.”