“People will think that I have gone down the ranks because I did History of a Horse and now I play a donkey.” It is the actor Carlos Hipólito who jokes about his new show, Donkey, in which, indeed, his role is that of this animal. But it is not just any soliped. The one who takes the stage of the Romea theater is a 6,000-year-old donkey, and what he does is tell us our story, the history of humanity, through his eyes.
“It is a journey through our civilization,” says Álvaro Tato, author of the play. The donkey is the character who has never been able to speak but has always been there. In all these thousands of years, the first one who had a name was Platero. And Juan Ramon Jiménes’ donkey is the reason why I thought about writing this piece.”
It is texts like that of Platero and I that Tato has used for his show. There converge the golden ass of Lucius Apuleius and that of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, those of the fables of Aesop, La Fontaine and company, that of Shakespeare from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that of Anselm Turmeda from The Dispute of l’ ase, or Sancho’s dapple, still without its own name, among other quadrupeds.
“This show is a question, a demand,” continues Tato. There is a lot of comedy and a lot of laughter. But ultimately a 6,000-year-old donkey ends up asking us who humans are.” And he adds: “The documentation process has been fascinating. In the play, the donkey feels so alone, that he talks to his shadow.”
Hipólito considers that it is “a text full of poetry, beauty, a sense of humor, very festive and very emotional.” The actor confesses: “For me, who is an animalist, the work has made me very aware of the arrogance that humans have on this planet, how predatory we are as a species. What the donkey does is claim his place and mistreat him. Who has not felt neglected and mistreated at some point and has not been able to express themselves? And he adds: “Donkeys are intelligent animals, capable of learning many things, but someone, in the past, decided that, among animals, they were the stupid ones.”
The Madrid actor is the absolute protagonist of Donkey, who, in addition to the donkey, plays fourteen other characters. But she is not alone on stage. Next to him, very well accompanied, are the performers and musicians Fran García, Iballa Rodríguez and Manuel Lavandera, who perform the music composed expressly for this work by Yayo Cáceres, who is also the director.
“Original, live music takes us to those places,” declares Cáceres. Donkey is like a road movie, but with a tied character.” The show premiered in Madrid and has toured, with recognized success, and now stops in Barcelona, ??at the Romea theater, until June 2. “The show starts almost anecdotally and then turns around, looks us in the face and asks us questions. I think it is a show that leaves no one indifferent,” Cáceres concludes.
