Suchergebnisse

In this article I explore a number of ideas concerning civility and its relationship to democracy and empathy inspired by events (both political and cultural) in late 2017 and 2018. These ideas are a way of reflecting on the temper of our angry times, asking questions about how we engage with each other in ways that help to promote understanding and respect and the role that culture can play in facilitating this process. I end with a contemplation of three works I saw in 2018, Robin Campillo's 2017 film 120BPM, Lluís Pasqual's theatre production In Memoriam (Teatre Lliure Barcelona) and Albert Boadella's performative Tabarnia. By exploring the ways in which they engage with cultures of (mis)representation, I offer a series of reflections on the ways in which culture can reaffirm its civic responsibility and offer modes of thinking through issues of community, civility and camaraderie in troubled times.

María Casares has often been displaced onto histories of French theatre as one of the seminal tragédiennes of the twentieth century, a key collaborator of Jean Vilar's at the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) between 1954 and 1959 and an important Shakespearean actress (performing roles associated with sexual authority and transgression: Lady Macbeth in 1954, Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Le Songe d'un nuit d'été) in 1959 and Cleopatra in 1975). Her association with two of France's most dissonant post-World War II playwrights, Jean Genet and Bernard-Marie Koltès further reinforced her status as an outsider, performing 'otherness' in her realization of the contradictory mother figures of Les Paravants (1966, 1983) and Quai Ouest (1986). Casares, however, learned French only on her arrival in Paris in November 1936 and her differance, commented on by Roland Barthes in a 1954 essay, was played out on the French stage and screen across both across roles that referenced her Spanish origins as the daughter of a prominent Republican politician, forced to flee Spain as Franco's rebel forces seized control of the nation. My focus in this article is on ventures seen and presented in Spain, most specifically El adefesio (1976), a play written in exile by Rafael Alberti and directed by José Luis Alonso in Madrid the year after General Francisco Franco's death. This project, alongside her other Spanish-language ventures, indicates the complex ways in which she 'performed exile' to a nation-state haunted by the specters of those who had died or fled during the Civil War and its aftermath.

There has been something in Madrid's theatre that has seen a return to the spirit of the Greeks: plays inspired by or adapted from classical tragedies that ask fundamental questions about what democracy means and how it functions. At a time when Spain's right-wing government appears increasingly besieged, with a fractured left and a referendum on independence scheduled in Catalonia, theatre has offered a space in which to discuss issues of identity, self, and other. An exciting new initiative at the Pavón Teatro has sought to address issues of community, providing a stronger infrastructure for the generation and production of new writing. Wajdi Mouawad's Scorched has returned for a third spell at the Abadía theatre, where over 60,000 spectators have already seen Mario Gas's production, with Nuria Espert in a key role at the age of 82. It's still too early to see whether the reduction of value added tax (VAT) on theatre tickets from 21% to 10% introduced this summer will boost attendance, but all the performances reviewed below had buoyant if not full houses on the evenings I saw the shows; theatre still matters in Spain's theatrical capital.

Jordi Galceran has proved to be one of Spain's most commercially successful twenty-first century dramatists. His runaway hit, El método Gronholm (The Gronholm Method) by Sergi Belbel, was first staged at the Catalan National Theatre in 2003 in a pacey, disarming production (see Western European Stages, 17.1, Winter 2005, pp. 5–6); it played for over three years with an extended run at Barcelona's Poliorama Theatre and a second Spanish-language production in Madrid directed by Tamzin Townsend (see WES, 17.3, Fall 2005, pp. 122–23). By the time the play returned to Barcelona in 2010 it had played in thirty-five different countries and been seen by over 2 million people. Recent information suggests the play has now been staged in over fifty countries; its treatment of corporate buy and sell culture refracted through the prism of a dog-eat-dog job interview clearly resonates across both the global north and south. The film version, directed by Argentina's Marcelo Piñeyro in 2005, further consolidated Galceran's reputation in the Spanish-speaking world and led to a number of revivals of earlier works, including a timely staging of Fuga in 2011 (again directed by Tamzin Townsend), which played during the eruption of a number of high-profile political corruption scandals (see WES, 23.2, Spring 2011, p. 8).

What does it mean to unearth the dead? What is contemporary society's responsibility to the disappeared? How do we live with the ghosts of history? In the midst of the search for the body of Federico García Lorca in 2009, Emilio Silva, cofounder and president of Spain's Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH)—a national organization assisting in the location and exhumation of the graves of Spain's desaparecidos, or disappeared, during the Civil War and its aftermath—wrote of "the silent bones of Federico García Lorca and the skeleton of our democracy." This essay traces the ways in which the remains of one of Europe's most resonant twentieth-century dramatists haunt contemporary Spain. In mapping the wider ideological framework in which his work has been produced in Spain, it engages with the politics of a statesanctioned "official" history that has shaped his appropriation by the nation-state. Using the search for Lorca's corpse in 2009 as a central focus, it examines how the exhumation of mass graves undertaken in twenty-first-century Spain can be viewed as a move toward a more nuanced understanding both of the events of the past and the fissures of the present in a country where issues of justice have been compromised for too long by a culture of silence.

In its evaluation of the performing arts scene in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Catalan daily newspaper 'La Vangiardia' opted for the headline 'El teatro de los directores' (directors' theatre). While its list of the top fifteen theatre pieces includes a range of international directors who have revolutionised stage practice since the early 1990s - including Romeo Castellucci, Kristin Lupa, Declan Donnellan, Robert Lapage, Frank Castorf and Thomas Ostermeier - it is worth noting the appearance of four Spanish directors on this list: Sergi Belle, Calixto Bieito, Mario Gas and Àlex Rigola. In addition, La Fura dels Baus and Els Comediants were named in Roger Alier's note on the ten most important operatic stagings of the decade. The conclusions were decisive. The director, once seen to be on the peripheries of Spanish theatre-making, is now, arguably, its most powerful agent, branding the theatrical product with a signature aesthetic. Mise-en-scène can no longer be judged the mere illustration or interpretation of a play text but rather the means towards creating a theatrical experience that may dispense with dramatic text in its engagement with varied cultural forms and/or pressing political and social issues. As the international trajectories of the figures and companies names above indicate, the director has become a commodity in the exchange of cultural entrepreneur and creative artist, he - directorial practice in Spain (to a greater extent than the United Kingdom, USA or France) remains dominated by male figures - has taken on board pedagogic and ambassadorial roles and championed the state's support of the arts through contentious political and social times. The director emerged during the mid-nineteenth century as Spain was shifting towards a textually centred theatre (driven by commercial packaging of plays through both performance and lucrative print-runs, as José Luis González Subías details in Chapter 11, pp. 232-43). While the presentation of a play text may have governed the practice of early directors, mise-en-scéne has now evolved into a form of authorship, a mode of creation and interpretation rather than the mere harnessing of stage resources towards the 'service' of a text.

Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ambitious and unprecedented overview of many of the key directors working in European theatre over the past fifty years. It is a vivid account of the vast range of work undertaken in European theatre during this period, situated lucidly in its artistic, cultural and political context. The resulting study is a detailed guide to the generation of directors whose careers were forged and tempered in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1994 the Arts Council of Great Britain brought together a number of theatre directors as part of the City of Drama celebrations. This is a collection of interviews and discussions with directors who have helped shape the development of theatre in the last 20 years. They include Peter Brook, Peter Stein, Augusto Boal, Jorge Lavelli, Lluis Pasqual, Lev Dodin, Maria Irene Fornes, Jonathan Miller, Jatinder Verma, Peter Sellars, Declan Donnellan, Ariane Mnouchkine, Ion Caramitru, Yukio Ninagawa and Robert Wilson. In addition to the art and craft of directing, there are discussions on multiculturalism; the "classical" repertoire; theatre companies and institutions; working in a foreign language; opera; Shakespeare; new technologies; the art of acting; design; international festivals; politics and aesthetics; the audience; and theatre and society. Finally, there is an epilogue by Peter Brook, Jonathan Miller and Oliver Sacks.