Theater and football have collided, on this occasion due to the reference made in the play Cacophony, which is performed in the Beckett room, in which an RCD Espanyol player is cited who is accused of rape and is acquitted.
The work premiered on January 24 at the Poblenou theater and it was not until this weekend that the controversy broke out on the networks, causing a statement from RCD Espanyol and a counter-statement from the Beckett room.
The club considers it “a lack of respect” that one of the characters is “a rapist footballer who is linked as an RCDE player. We cannot tolerate that we can be related to this problem. And even more so when our Club has not been related never with this type of situation that arises.
For its part, the Beckett room today responded with another statement, emphasizing that it is a fiction: “The publication of this statement by RCD Espanyol, which demonstrates an absolute ignorance of the facts and a total ignorance of the meaning of the culture in democracy, represents a direct attack, not only against freedom of expression, but also against the very dignity of theater and art in general, irresponsibly fuels a false controversy, and endangers the integrity of specific people.
The play Cacophony, which has been performed at the Beckett for four weeks and ends performances on Sunday, February 25, is authored by the English playwright Molly Taylor, and has been translated and adapted to a Barcelona setting by Oriol Puig Grau and Anna Serrano Gatell, who also signs the direction.
Before the premiere, Serrano explained the work like this: “Cacophony tells the story of a girl, Abi, who is at a feminist demonstration against that rapist player, and in that demonstration an attack occurs. She posts a text, which immediately goes viral. At a given moment, it is discovered that she has not been completely honest, and that causes the situation to change and the same networks that have elevated her destroy her.”
The adapters insist on the fiction of their approach, especially distancing themselves from the original case, which was a player from an Ulster team, and also from the Dani Alves case, in everyone’s mind, because the work is about the power of networks, in this case in the rise of an influencer and her subsequent fall from grace and virtual destruction.
