Jon Fosse’s theater lands in Spain: “Evidently, this is not a fashionable musical” | Culture | EUROtoday

Some titles give clues to the character of Jon Fosse’s theater: autumn dream (1998), Winter (2000)I’m the wind (2008), robust wind (2021). Icy and sharp like a polar air mass, but additionally deep like a prayer within the darkness of winter. These 4 are exactly those that the Madrid publishing home De Conatus has simply introduced collectively within the first quantity in Spanish of their dramatic work, translated by Cristina Gómez Baggethum. The publication comes a yr after the Norwegian author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and in parallel with the premiere of Strong wind, this Thursday on the Spanish Theater in Madrid, which involves settle Spain’s debt to Fosse in his position as a playwright: regardless of being probably the most carried out outdoors his nation, his works (there are greater than 30) have hardly ever been taken to theaters. tables right here.

Perhaps it’s due to its intentionally cryptic nature. His writing has the incomprehensible texture of goals. The characters are blurred, they aren’t psychologically developed, they don’t have names, however fairly generic names similar to The Man, The Woman, The One, The Other, Father, Mother. The conversations are minimalist, within the method of Samuel Beckett. Space and time are additionally not outlined. Instead, like Harold Pinter, he strictly grades silence: pause, quick pause, very quick pause. Which additionally marks a exact and extremely poetic rhythm. Short phrases, repetitions, metaphors, inner rhymes. This would be the legacy of his confessed admiration for Lorca. That’s what Fosse’s theater is basically fabricated from: Pinterian abysses, Beckettian expectations, Lorca’s poetry.

In I’m the windone in all his most carried out works, The One and The Other share a brandy on a ship, drink in silence and marvel in regards to the which means of life. autumn dream develops a love story in a cemetery. In Winter, A girl and a person meet every now and then in a metropolis the place the person travels on enterprise. robust wind It is outlined by the writer himself as a “poem scenic”. There are three characters that make up a love triangle: The Man, The Woman, The Young Man. The Man, returning home from a trip, discovers that The Woman has moved to a new home with The Young Man. At first, what we deduce is that The Man is married to The Woman and that The Young Man is her lover. But as the piece progresses, doubts arise: could it be that the two men are the same character at different ages? “In the end, we realize that is irrelevant. More than characters, what there is in Fosse’s works are forces. In this case, it is about an old force facing a new force,” says actor Alberto Amarilla, who plays the role of The Young Man in the Spanish theater production, in a meeting with EL PAÍS.

At his side, the director José María Esbec emphasizes that the true character of strong wind is the text. “Rather than trying to understand it with logic, you have to embrace it in a holistic way. The meaning emerges from the whole. It is like a nightmare in which many human anxieties come together: existential, fear of death, loneliness, old age,” says the director. Amarilla adds: “The feeling I have with the work is that it is like the wind. So thought and wind go together. “Sometimes it’s warmer, other times it’s colder.”

How does something so abstract materialize on stage? The director responds: “We approach it from the founding concepts of the text: love, death, time and God. Also from the beauty of the writing itself: with the scenic atmosphere, the sound space, the movement. We have tried to do it in the most objective way possible and trying not to give a closed interpretation. The work has to be completed by the viewer.”

Actress Zaida Alonso, who plays The Woman, observes the advantages of such open writing: “The fact that the characters are somewhat blurred offers you many possibilities as an actor. As you go through it you find a lot of things that you don’t see on a first reading. In the case of my character, for example, I have been realizing how nullified that woman is by the man. The thing is that Fosse doesn’t show it to you in an obvious way, it’s much more subtle. Like life.”

Aren’t you afraid that such a cryptic theater can be too dry for the general public? “Evidently, this is not a fashionable musical,” feedback actor Felipe García Vélez—who performs the position of The Man—. “We don’t expect it to connect everyone. Sometimes it feels like the billboard is too uniform, when something works it is repeated and repeated. That’s quite alienating. We also need a poetic theater like Fosse’s.”