It was Xavier Francès who thought that the Congress of Vienna in 1815 could be very good material for a comedy from La Calòrica. “I discovered this episode by reading Josep Fontana’s book Capitalism and Democracy – explains the caloric actor. The capitostos buried the revolutionary ideas there so they could continue occupying power and agreed what they had to do if one day the people revolted again. In addition, a congress that was supposed to last four days was extended by nine months. It turned into a party, where there was no shortage of food and drink, even if the people of Vienna were starving. The congress attracted so many politicians from other countries, that the city was overwhelmed”.
Now, for La Calòrica to take a historical subject and turn it into a comedy, in this case with the title Le congrès ne marche pas, is a complex, hard and extraordinary process, which usually offers dazzling results. It has happened with each of the plays they have staged and, although it is not yet known how it will go, the public has put their absolute trust in them, so that the five weeks they have planned at the Teatre Lliure de Gràcia have already sold out 200 entries of all functions.
What Xavier Francès did not know when he proposed his idea is that the playwright Joan Yago and the director Israel Solà would make him the Spanish character of the function, sent by Ferdinand VII to the Congress of Vienna. Despite his last name, neither the actor nor the character he plays knows the language of Marguerite Yourcenar, so that “the other representatives will pass a lot of him because of his inability to communicate, in addition to representing an ancient empire in low hours “.
The other performers did have to practice French a lot in order to be able to premiere this multilingual comedy today, since this language was the one that used to be used as the language of culture and communication on an international scale. Because this has been one of the other challenges of La Calòrica: to make all the characters, based on historical figures, speak in their own languages.
Thus, although the narrator, Pau Masaló, does the voice-over in Catalan, the rest of the characters speak Russian, English, Spanish, German… and all, if they want to be understood, a little French, a work that a series of linguistic advisors have had to work with the company. “Languages ??have been one of the main challenges, which is where we worked on these characters”, declares Marc Rius, another historical caloric. And Júlia Truyol not only has to speak languages, but has had to change gender to play the Viennese host.
For the occasion, in addition, the company has expanded. “We had to grow as a company to be able to explain this congress and we added four more interpreters. It’s interesting to work with people from older generations, like Roser Batalla, and younger people”, says Solà. The performers will take on more than one character, a feature that is a trademark of the company, “although we haven’t done it as much as in other works”, points out the director.
The company is surprised by the validity of what happened at that congress. “Two hundred years later we are still the same – says Yago -. Things don’t change not because we are stupid, but because there is an oppressive class that rules and prevents us. They have no interest in the world changing, because it endangers their interests.”
Le congrès ne marche pas is a co-production of La Calòrica, the Teatre Lliure and the National Drama Center. After the functions in Gràcia, he will bowl in a few Catalan towns and next year he will perform in Madrid. Faced with the responsibility of having sold out the tickets before the start, the caloric Esther López concludes: “It’s brutal, but we’re calm because we’ve done what we wanted to do, we’ve gone where we wanted to go and we’ve tried what we wanted to try”.
