The thrilling lesson in theater and life from Joan Font | News from Catalonia | EUROtoday

As with nice occasions, at some point individuals will ask “where were you the day Joan Font performed his one-man show at the Poliorama, in a single performance?” The smoke vendor?” The luckiest will have the ability to reply with the delight of Henry V's troopers in San Crispin: “I was there.” The efficiency final night time by Font, one of many founders and director for a few years of Comediants (the present was created in celebration of the corporate's 50 years), was undoubtedly one thing to recollect, a celebration of theater and life. With such phenomenal and, sure, magical moments (Joan's fetish phrase), just like the paper boats that we spectators made following a enjoyable tutorial by the artist and that then, at his command, all of us waved over our heads creating an impact fantastic, a white sea, above our heads.

And but, not one of the present's many unforgettable moments, wealthy in them, greeted with laughter and spontaneous applause, had been as spectacular as its finale. Rarely has one thing so stunning been seen on stage. In distressing distinction to the festive tone of your complete efficiency, a pleasant tour – with its doses of irony and dangerous mood however at all times throughout the cheerful and fortunately hooligan line of Font and Comediants -, the merry-go-round appeared to cease abruptly when Joan obtained a name . She was, he instructed us very critically, Death, characterised as Persephone, the infernal goddess. The artist then proceeded in a solemn silence that put a lump within the throat to slowly take away his garments. The sneakers, the socks, the t-shirt, the pants, the underpants. Him till he was fully bare, simply as he got here into the world (considerably extra worn, however definitely in form for his 73 years). Then, stripped of every part after that existential striptease, he headed to a door that had been ajar on the stage and from which smoke was popping out. And he crossed it. It was one thing overwhelming, with goosebumps. He created an ominous, large sensation over the theater. The dying that marked us all. You didn't know the place to place the little boat. It was a kind of theatrical moments that stay etched in his reminiscence.

The present (created with Piti Español from his guide of conversations, Joan Font, the invention of a brand new theatrical language) had began on the different finish of the emotional and important spectrum, with Joan Font, “the smoke seller”, getting into the stage to jokingly inform us about his life from the start. Still, there’s something in that determine of the dream vendor along with his suitcase and greatcoat that implies the bittersweet and fairy tales of a Ray Bradbury. Font carries in his suitcase and on his physique the identical tales because the lightning rod vendor and the illustrated man. “Calcutta,” she wrote on one of many labels of the previous suitcase. Font instructed us one in all its contents: “Utopia”. Because the journey proposed by the artist, “maker of emotions”, in his one-person journey is “the chronicle of an invention and the story of a miracle” (Comedians, and himself).

It began at the start along with her delivery (May 3, 1949) and with the joke proper from the beginning that her mother and father, an ironer and a baker, needed a lady. He arrived at a household in Olesa de Montserrat overflowing with widespread theater (“today they would be reported for excessive theater”): the Passió, Els Pastorets, Reyes, Sant Antoni, Holy Week, Sant Joan, the Fiesta Mayor, and simply in case little, newbie theater and a puppet (recreated on stage). Font did theater within the sluts along with his brothers. He already went on stage earlier than he was born, as a result of his mom, pregnant with him, acted in ardour, he instructed us. He realized many issues: that on stage it’s important to do one thing to attract consideration to your self, or that with theater, “in addition to having a good time, you could earn some money.”

The masks that might accompany him all his life quickly appeared. She confirmed us some early designs, with humble shoe containers. The sui generis journey by way of the artist's life, illustrated with priceless images from the household album and, later, from the Comediants album, grew to become a stroll by way of everybody's reminiscence (at the very least all of us who had been within the theater, a big majority of his colleagues Font technology). This is how we perceive the complicit laughter when the actor referred to the grays, the Civil Guard barracks or the chewing gum “Bazoka, always in the mouth.” The seminal group Tespis —with “super modern works that no one understood anything about” (and a primary scare with the forces of order when staging a play by the banned Arrabal; new lesson: “when doing theater you have to be careful with those in charge ”—; the initiation journey to Barcelona in 1969 with 550 pesetas from his godfather and with the assistance of Maria Aurèlia Capmany and Josep Anton Codina; the benefit as a theater boy for every part (there was a time when the lights had been made with coloured cellophane, what issues), the Cova del Drac, dramatic research and the bizarre double standing of pupil and trainer on the Institut del Teatre de Hermann Bonnin (which he imitated within the efficiency). All this instructed and pampered with a rare approach. You must see how Font did final night time concerning the hearth, the wind and the fireplace revived by the wind.

He obtained the title of actor though at the moment the one which was wanted was that of the vertical union. But he additionally achieved a card of which he was as proud as he was astonished when commenting on it: “Juan Font y Pujol, an entertainer common to all genres.” He then obtained a closing 12 months mission that might be decisive for Catalan theater. They had been invented No extra creases, “which explained the time in which we had lived”, utilizing components of widespread tradition taken from the streets and put into the theater, and meant the explosion of the delivery of Comediants, “collective dream”. “It was a party that expanded everything, people cried, Fabià, Iago.”

Font jumped from one factor to a different, pulling ahead, then again. Imma Colomer adopted every part excitedly from the viewers. The actor left for us in Paris—she represented him—to check with Lecoq (“the same night Comediants is born, they offer me to go to their school,” he doubles). A giant-headed Jordi Pujol appeared on the display, with the respectable man shouting on the former honorable man; then Grandma Paula's nightgown, was a ghostly ingredient. And the Promethean dimonis emerged and introduced the fireplace to Comediants. Venice Carnival. Avignon. “Touch and you will be touched.” There was even a theater critic (Font with a masks) who acknowledged that lovely description of the corporate: “Comedians, the joy that passes.” And the closing of the Barcelona Olympics arrived, with the paper boat (which we spectators reproduced). Comedians, an invite to dream and play.

Font gestured, imitated, joked, took treasured reminiscences out of his suitcases, acquired excited and moved us by following his fantastic thread like a tightrope walker of reminiscences. The Comediants solar (snicker on the York one with the chepudo) grew to become an incandescent flame within the hearth at her headquarters in Canet that destroyed it. “Not everything is joy in life, which is made of tragedy and comedy,” Willy Font mentioned. He was very glad in Seville, with the Expo Parade, with the extravagant floats of him and his vacationers a l'ast; 13 million individuals noticed it stay (one other lesson: “There is no genius without a budget”). His masks burned. He was in a position to get well some. And within the closing stretch of the efficiency, after speaking concerning the operas, the good reveals and a thousand tasks of current instances – the fox of The guide of beasts—, from the collection, the films, the programs, the books, he used them: there have been his favourite, the Good, and Fulgencio, the retiree, whom I now “borrow.” And he took Joan Font la Muerte away from us. Although he reappeared, carrying a porn actor's pink bathrobe, rescued like an unimaginable Eurydice by the applause and bravado of the viewers, standing as much as greet one of many greats of our theater. Joan Font, what a man. And we love him a lot.

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