These days I find myself rehearsing my work ‘Quant temps em queda’, which will premiere at the Grec Festival at the Teatre Goya from July 15. Writing plays has nothing to do with writing a novel or short stories. In the case of narrative, the writer believes in the solitude of the desk and, at best, will use a trusted reader to give him feedback on what he is writing. But when he decides that the material works, it stays there, it doesn’t evolve. It does not usually happen that, once the novel or the stories are published, the writers change their works. On the other hand, in the theater, at least in my case, it’s the opposite. Generally, I start rehearsing with the text ‘finished’. A first version that, once finished, I read aloud at home to confirm that it works. Before finishing the piece, I always share it with accomplices by profession, colleagues with whom we share the works and discuss them, and also with trusted family or friends who have nothing to do with the performing arts. I usually choose people who don’t go to the theater or read often. My goal when I write a work is to reach as many people as possible, I’m not looking for a scholarly or knowledgeable audience. The comments of someone who is not used to reading or going to the theater are gold for me and I tend to pay even more attention to them than to my fellow playwrights. I start the essays with a closed text that I know will evolve. As always when I direct the first production of a new work, I choose the cast and I do it bearing in mind that I need actors who are willing to change the text. Often it is not easy for them, more than once they have already learned pages and pages, and weeks later I propose to cut them, change them, add scenes… But the theater is teamwork and we all row towards the same place.
This is how I am spending these days of heat wave, with crossed out pages, making new versions at night and writing with the complicity of my team. The work, which, read on the first day, worked, with the sum of all, and, above all, being tested on stage, evolves towards a Improved version, more alive, more real, more authentic and also more fun. A final version that would have been impossible to achieve writing at home by myself. I didn’t direct my first works, because at first directing wasn’t a job that interested me too much, but I immediately realized that theater is written on stage. That it is there, with the actors, with the lights, with the music, that takes on all its meaning, that highlights the mistakes and enhances the successes. It’s exhausting, I assure you, but the satisfaction of seeing how a text grows, how it evolves and also the feeling of not being alone, of doing it with the complicity of a team rowing together in the same direction is the closest thing to success. One of my teachers, when I was starting out, was Javier Daulte. He and Rafael Spregelburd landed in Barcelona and some they changed our way of understanding and writing theater. If until then the word was the most important thing, now they told us that what had more relevance should be the situation. And you can’t write brilliant situations sitting at your desk. Daulte has a phrase that I always quote in my workshops: “one must write like a child and correct like a mathematician.” And for me that writing of a child, of play, of freedom, also takes place in rehearsals. How much fun we have now adding situations, changing phrases, restructuring entire scenes if necessary, is the closest thing to going back to childhood. I’m more writer than director, of that there is no doubt, that is why for me the rehearsal process more than directing actors, which also, is above all rewriting the work, polishing it, getting the entire cast to make it their own. After the game and the laughter comes the process of fix comedythe time to act like a mathematician and, with precision and discipline, fix what works and discard what is not necessary. The premiere is a month away and it’s been a long time since I’ve laughed so much in rehearsals. And I suppose that, if it amuses us, that we know it by heart, the same will happen with the public. Excited to share it with you! What a luxury to be able to make people laugh in these times. My accomplices and playmates are four actors like the top of a pine tree: Lluís Villanueva, Marta Bayarri, Betsy Túrnez and David Vert. Thanks for the complicity and for the laughs.