The revisions of literary works, which rewrite characters, situations or endings to make them politically correct, opens up a debate that also reaches the theatre. The classics are ubiquitous on our stages, but rarely are they presented in plays as they were written. Not even the Compagnia Nacional de Teatre Clàssic, which is directed by Lluís Homar and which these days visits the Romea theater, does not present the works being faithful to the original. La Vanguardia spoke to five directors to express their point of view and, also, how they do it.
“What I like is contextualizing the work when it’s needed,” declares Carme Portaceli, director of the TNC. That is, to see the moment in which it was written and what it would mean in the present moment. From here I start working. What I do is look at it as a woman and from the 21st century; in my case, I can’t do it any other way.”
And he gives an example: “In the adaptation I made of Terra baixa, by Àngel Guimerà, I don’t touch his words, I don’t change his plain. But I do consider that, with his text, other things can be created, which help to interpret and update it. On the other hand, in the case of La madre de Frankenstein, by Almudena Grandes, all the words that appear in the performance are from the author”.
Josep Maria Mestres, who has just premiered Els Watson, by Laura Wade, at the TNC, explains: “You always have to consider a classic and look at it from a here and now perspective. If it doesn’t tell us anything, there’s no point in assembling classic texts. If the view on things that come out is dubious, I think this should be maintained, because we cannot deny the past. Having the perspective from where it was written, we have to explain it, drawing attention to the things with which we do not agree”.
“The Watsons, even though it is a contemporary work, is based on Jane Austen’s novel – continues Mestres. At the time it was explained that a woman could not have a complete life if she did not marry and Wade has done the work in the play. Austen romanticized marriage, because it was the feminist gesture she could do.”
Sergi Belbel explains: “Each case is different, but I am not in favor of excessive adaptation because the public is intelligent enough to make the change. When a work is really good, it is when it touches on what is universal. In this sense, the problems are more of form than of substance”.
And Shakespeare comes out: “I have never liked a work like The Taming of the Harpy. It’s a minor work and when I read it as a young person, I could already see that I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t need the feminist movement of the 21st century to see that. I think that in this work he lost a little, because it was very sexist. On the other hand, The Merchant of Venice, which touches on the subject of racism and Jew-hatred, has always seemed interesting to me because Shakespeare splits and when he deals with the Jew, he gets inside, he doesn’t judge him from the perspective of the Christian . It seems to me to be a universal work and when the work addresses the universal, as most of the Greek tragedies that have been preserved go along these lines, why shouldn’t we be able to visit it?”
The director Sílvia Munt also mentions Shakespeare’s work: “In Lluís Pasqual’s last year at Teatre Lliure, he proposed to me to direct The Taming of the Harpy and I told him no, because if I have to start fixing things , I won’t stop If you have to tame a woman, we are no longer good. And I proposed to him to do Dogville. On the other hand, you can make a thousand adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, because the spirit of the work is there in all of them”.
Munt adds: “When you are faced with a classic text, there is no single truth. When we made Eva contra Eva, with Pau Miró, he wanted to do a revisitation of Tot sobre Eva, that iconic and wonderful film. But eighty years have passed, life has changed and so has the role of women, so you revisit it with the eyes of today. If you watch the film today, there are moments, like when the critic slaps the actress, that are intolerable today. Now, when I did The Price, by Arthur Miller, in 2016, I did it as is, I didn’t need to place it now, because the problems of an era and the crash of 29 were still the same as the cracks we have now. They were period characters absolutely in force. I think that each creator has the freedom to do what he considers in each case, and that any decision is honest”.
Ferran Utzet declares: “In theatre, as it is a living representation, there is room to intervene in the text and make a revision of it. If you make it literal, what it causes is rejection. You have to intervene a little, not to go for the politically correct, but to ensure that what the author wanted to say continues to arrive, but trying to smooth out the rough edges and obstacles that could prevent it, not to be purists” .
And he gives an example: “Hamlet is a manual abuser. He is a great character in the history of the theater, with great complexity, but he psychologically abuses Ofèlia, who ends up committing suicide. He is not a model of behavior, but to bring back Hamlet and soften this is not fair, because you are whitewashing the character”.
Belbel adds: “The theater must be violence, conflict, so that the spectator reacts. What tires me is the artist telling me what to think. What superiority does it have? Is he so sure of his morality? I’m a bit sick of the pamphlets on stage. On the stage of the theater I need what is politically incorrect, I need it to shake me”.
“There are no canonical readings, but each text is different – continues Utzet. Now, with Beckett, for example, you can’t, because his works are like sculptures. Luckily, since we have to translate it, we have a little leeway here. In the case of Waiting for Godot, it seemed to me that if it was done by a mischievous poet with Josep Pedrals, then we would win. But because it’s so deeply abstract, you can’t manipulate it. You have to lock yourself in a room with those two guys and wait for something to happen that you know won’t happen.” “Now, if you want to be realistic, make movies. Theater doesn’t have to be documentary”, he concludes.
