The first theatrical adaptation of ‘Nada’ places as we speak’s youth in dialogue with post-war youth | Culture | EUROtoday

Above the stage stands the lounge of a home and a bed room above. Everything seems to be fairly ramshackle. The wallpaper sample is blurred, the furnishings is disorganized. In a nook, chairs, a trunk, a desk and varied dilapidated belongings are piled up. There can be a desk, a piano, a sofa, lamps that emit dim lights. More or much less that is how the author Carmen Laforet imagined the home in Barcelona the place an excellent a part of her novel takes place. Nothing, in the course of the 1939-1940 educational 12 months, simply after the Civil War. In that surroundings he positioned his protagonist: Andrea, an 18-year-old lady who would find yourself turning into some of the emblematic characters in post-war Spanish literature, a mirror of that era that grew up marked by battle and was drowned by Francoism. upon reaching maturity.

Nothing, Published in 1945, it was instantly transferred to the cinema, in a movie directed by Edgar Neville in 1947. But past faculty or novice productions, it had by no means been taken to the stage professionally. The National Dramatic Center premieres this Friday on the María Guerrero theater in Madrid the primary main stage manufacturing of the novel, tailored and directed by two younger creators of the Spanish modern scene who’ve discovered a deep reference to Andrea, although they’ve already handed eighty years since Laforet launched it into the world and made a splash within the literary scene by successful the primary version of the Nadal Prize, in 1944, on the age of 23 and unknown. The playwright Joan Yago (Barcelona, ​​37 years previous), founding member of La Calòrica, an organization in vogue amongst new generations of spectators, indicators the model. Beatriz Jaén (Madrid, 36 years previous), chargeable for the staging, received final 12 months the rising path award from the Association of Stage Directors of Spain for Brief historical past of the Spanish railway, which he additionally stood up with Joan Yago. Together they’ve launched into the journey of materializing and placing flesh on a textual content that 1000’s of readers have engraved of their hearts not solely due to the crude historic context it describes, however above all as a result of it narrates an initiatory journey that transcends the generational story: the passage from adolescence to the world of adults.

Joan Yago confesses that her first response when she acquired the fee from the National Dramatic Center was panic. “We’re going to kill her!” he thought. But upon rereading the novel he discovered so many factors of dialogue with the modern world and with himself that he threw himself headlong into the variation. “Obviously the reality today is different, but many of the conflicts that Andrea faced in 1939 have not been overcome. Sexist violence, for example. But what really connects us directly to the book is the wonderful description of the trauma that growing older means for any person. The disenchantment of adult life, the pain of discovering that adult love is not like the love you dreamed of as a child. At the same time, the character always maintains a drop of light, the desire to become independent, make the most of life and maintain his dreams despite adverse circumstances,” observes Yago.

The sturdy existentialist cost of the novel positioned the adapters in a troublesome dilemma. “Option A: turn it into a realistic drama with its fourth wall, like Ibsen or Strindberg, completely loading us with Andrea’s inner world or, at most, occasionally introducing a cold voice in off. Option B: create a monologue and eliminate the dialogues. We didn’t like either of the two possibilities, so we decided to combine the two: the story progresses with dialogue scenes during which Andrea makes asides to express out loud her thoughts and feelings about what is happening,” explains Yago. A difficult challenge for the actress chosen to play Andrea, Júlia Roch, ten years older than the character but young enough to still have her own experience of the transition to adulthood fresh in her memory.

How does a young woman from today dialogue with one from 1939? Júlia Roch is especially reverberated by the way Andrea searches for herself. “I am moved by his free, independent and rebellious character. I think that the Andrea of ​​today would be a feminist, because she was one intuitively, without making noise. We have made progress in that: Andreas Today we are more aware of the violence that surrounds us,” displays the actress. “It’s curious, because Laforet did not write a disruptive novel, but read today it is deeply feminist,” provides Roch.

Faithful to the “intuitive” spirit of the novel, those responsible for the adaptation did not want to add emphasis to their version. “You don’t need them. Laforet did not make them, in fact they passed the censorship without problems, but everything is there: the aftermath of the war, the repression, the violence, the misery, the machismo, the reality of the women of the time. We have made a version ninja, trying to ensure that we are seen as little as possible,” says Joan Yago. However, Beatriz Jaén highlights another aspect that resonates strongly in current reality and that she did want to accentuate in her staging: “Friendship between women. What today we call ‘sorority’. In that sense, Laforet also broke molds. It didn’t put its protagonist into the typical ‘girl meets boy’ plot, but rather this is a girl meets girl story. Andrea’s relationship with Ena moves away from the cliché of female rivalry, it is the friendship between them that saves them. It teaches us that you can find your strength by holding onto the hand of a friend. That is sorority.”

We return to the beginning: the house. The decadent set designed by Pablo Menor Palomo becomes another character in this show. In that space, Andrea discovers the consequences that the war has left on her relatives, turning them into remains: grandmother (Amparo Pamplona), aunt Angustias (Carmen Barrantes), uncle Román (Peter Vives), uncle Juan (Manuel Minaya ) and his wife, Gloria (Laura Ferrer), the maid (Andrea Soto). Out of there he will find the light with his friend Ena (Julia Rubio).