My family was very religious and I, at the age of 16, in an act of rebellion, stopped going to mass. Over the years, I realized that people need something intimate.” These are the words of Lluís Homar, director of the National Classical Theater Company (CNTC), who is now arriving at the Romea, “his Barcelona home”, as Josep Maria Pou, director of the theatre, recalls, to present a select double programme.
From yesterday until February 11, you can see Alma y palabra. San Juan de la Cruz, a piece that approaches the work of the mystic. Lluís Homar and Adriana Ozores are accompanied by the piano of Emili Brugalla, who interprets fragments of Música callada, by Frederic Mompou.
“Art is timeless – declares the musician -. There are some bridges that we wanted to discover, such as combining Joan de la Creu with Mompou. If they had been born in the opposite times, today Saint John would be an artist, and Mompou, who was a very good person, would be a saint. Both multiply one another, also with Velázquez’s painting of Christ, and this helps to better enter these worlds. We transform ourselves.” It was Xavier Albertí, playwright of the CNTC, who proposed to complete this show with Mompou’s music.
Homar gives more clues: “We aim to bring these figures together, to break this image that the mystics are separated, hung. Because mystics can change our lives for good. Sant Joan is one of the great anti-systems, as were Gandhi and Mandela, both mentioned in the show. Saint John was in prison for wanting to reform the Discalced Carmelites and they imprisoned him themselves. He had no paper or pencil and there he began to compose the spiritual Canticle from memory. Santa Teresa helped him escape”. And he adds: “With this will, we put together this show. We talk about how these materials speak to us and reach us, and we talk from our personal experiences.”
The actress Adriana Ozores points out: “The most remarkable thing is Lluís’ will to bring the mystics to our days. They are very distant and, on the other hand, they are not alien to us. There is a consideration that runs throughout the show, and that is that art in three manifestations (music, painting and words) places us in a place where it is easier for us to transit to a more intimate place. The music of Mompou, the Christ of Velázquez and the word of Saint John are unquestionable. Art is a tool to discover our interior”.
This “mystical double program”, as Homar calls it, is completed with El templo vacío, which is presented at Romea from February 13 to 18. In this case, the actor is only accompanied by the vocal quartet formed by Manon Chauvin, Gabriel Díaz, Pablo Acosta and Lluís Frígola, who interpret music by Bach.
The words are from playwright Brenda Escobedo, who co-directs the show with Homar. It is a text filled with fragments taken from Ibn Arabi, Calderón de la Barca, Ramon Llull, Mestre Eckhart, Miguel de Molinos, Sant Joan de la Creu, Santa Teresa de Jesús, Angelus Silesius and Jacint Verdaguer.
“If dramatic poetry is already difficult to read, it is even more so the lyrical poetry of the mystics – assures Escobedo-. The temple is the soul and the void is the emptying of the ego. All these writers are on the path of the search for individual faith”.
For the occasion, in addition to saying in Catalan, as he does throughout Spain, the texts of Llull and Verdaguer, the actor will also say the text of Escobedo in Catalan. “We made our own version for this occasion”, concludes Homar.