They say that the play belongs to the three of them, but it is Albert Arribas who signs the dramaturgy and direction of Cadires, and it is Mont Plans and Oriol Genís who perform it on stage. This production by Centaure Produccions and Teorema Teatre, which has the collaboration of Bitò Produccions, has already been on a few stages, but is still very much alive. Premiered in September 2022 at the Goya theater, where it was performed on Tuesdays, now, after touring half of Catalonia, it stops for a month at the Espai Texas in Barcelona.
In performances on Monday and Tuesday, and also the first weekend in May, Mont Plans and Oriol Genís return to the stage playing themselves, but although at times they are them, they are not exactly them at all. What they are are two stage animals that tell us about the theater, the job, the dressing rooms, the halls, the audience, in short, about their world. Therefore, they are themselves and, at the same time, they are any artist who has lived professionally on stage.
The publicity for the piece reads: “Living memory of half a century of theater in Catalan, with an indestructible commitment and an unlimited love for the profession.” And it is exactly like that. “ Cadires is a tribute to the old craft of these fragile and fascinating beings that are actors and actresses. With its hilarious vicissitudes and dramatic precariousness. With its pantomimes and its half-lies. With his wonderful humanity.”
Because the show, in the end, is that: Mont Plans and Oriol Genís explaining to the public their memories, their evaluations, criticizing, complaining or praising everything that this profession has, bad and good, that the spectators are lucky to know these two veterans in the first person.
And how does the work come about? Well, they themselves explain it to us while they represent her: “Mont, after many years tired of carrying the stigma of being considered only a comic actress, wanted to do a ‘deep’ work, to reflect on old age and the passage of time. . A work like The Chairs of Ionesco, that myth of the theater of the absurd in which two old men prepare an empty room full of chairs to transmit to some guests – who may never come – the conclusive message of a lifetime.”
On the other hand, “Oriol was a little tired of the eccentricities of contemporary theater and had a huge desire to make more ‘relaxed’ theater. Despite his career in the world of the most alternative and bizarre scene, Oriol began doing zarzuelas and children’s theater, and from time to time he still wonders if he wouldn’t have been happier if he had been able to dedicate himself to doing popular theater without artistic aspirations. nor intellectuals.”
And here Mont Plans went to look for Oriol Genís thinking about a kind of joint venture that would be beneficial for both of them. The doors that would not open to him because he was considered a cult actor, would open to her as a prestigious comic actress. Her particular story about her milkmaid didn’t really work until years later. Finally, for more than a year and a half, the two have turned to stop with their chairs wherever the doors open for them.
