Toni Casares, director of the Beckett room, confesses that he was moved when he read Pol Guasch’s novel Napalm al cor (Anagrama 2021 award), so when he found out that a student from the Institut del Teatre was doing a workshop based on that book , he was interested. The student is Guillem Sánchez Garcia, who now directs the theatrical version of Oriol Puig Grau.
The challenge seems gigantic, because Guasch’s novel has nothing theatrical about it. “It is a difficult and very suggestive text, with a strength and contemporaneity, which demonstrates a lot of knowledge of the current world,” declares Casares.
But what is Napalm about, the former student now director wonders. “Love seems to be the first response, but it involves many things, such as language, family, politics, violence… In the dramaturgical proposal we wanted to maintain that open and multiple reading, and not close the story” .
Puig Grau continues: “In all the work of theatrical adaptation, it was necessary to maintain the author’s words and bring them to the stage. What we have done is that the protagonist, who is the one explaining the story, does not appear on scene. The protagonist is the audience and the other characters accompany him, speaking to him. That’s very different from the novel.” It is the way to keep the unknowns about who the protagonist is, as happens in the novel.
On stage, Roser Batalla in the role of the deceased mother, considers that “we need to talk to ourselves, and this play can help us”, Montse Morillo, Marc Domingo and Joel Cojal, who has traveled the entire journey with the director since that first workshop at the Institut del Teatre.
The Beckett room has a unique way of celebrating Christmas and combines this premiere, co-produced with Magrana Escena and Raül Perales, with a production by Velvet Events and Teatro Circo Price of Madrid. This is the particular tribute that the circus director, María Folguera as playwright, and the Rhum clown troupe
Folguera invited Joan Arqué and his company to create this circus tribute to Picasso, on the condition that there be a female playwright; and he returned her invitation, so that a feminist playwright, who has always worked with female historical figures, had to face “the myth, a totemic figure,” she declares. “It was unavoidable not to address the figure questioned today. He is pure 20th century and the women who accompany him at every moment also explain the character. With the facts there is plenty.”
Jordi Martínez is Picasso and the other characters of Rhum
Catalan version, here
