Catalan Culture: Experimentation, Creative Imagination and the Relationship with Spain [Hardcover ed.] 1786832011, 9781786832016

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IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

Catalan Culture

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Series Editors Professor David George (Swansea University) Professor Paul Garner (University of Leeds) Editorial Board David Frier (University of Leeds) Lisa Shaw (University of Liverpool) Gareth Walters (Swansea University) Rob Stone (University of Birmingham) David Gies (University of Virginia) Catherine Davies (University of London) Richard Cleminson (University of Leeds) Duncan Wheeler (University of Leeds) Jo Labanyi (New York University) Roger Bartra (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) Other titles in the series Catalan Cartoons: A Cultural and Political History Rhiannon McGlade Revolutionaries, Rebels and Robbers: The Golden Age of Banditry in Mexico, Latin America and the Chicano American southwest, 1850–1950 Pascale Baker Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death Julia Banwell Galicia, A Sentimental Nation Helena Miguelez-Carballeira The Brazilian Road Movie Sara Brandellero The Spanish Civil War Anindya Raychaudhuri The Mexican Transition: Politics, Culture and Democracy in the Twenty-first Century Roger Bartra Adolfo Bioy Casares: Borges, Fiction and Art Karl Posso

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IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

Catalan Culture Experimentation, creative imagination and the relationship with Spain Essays in honour of David George Edited by LLOYD HUGHES DAVIES, J. B. HALL AND D. GARETH WALTERS

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2018

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© The Contributors, 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP. www.uwp.co.uk British Library CIP A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-78683-201-6 e-ISBN 978-1-78683-202-3 The right of the Contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Correspondence/Correspondència Richard Thomson Typeset by Mark Heslington Ltd, Scarborough, North Yorkshire Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham

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Contents David George: Two personal recollections

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David George: Publications

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Notes on Contributors

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Introduction1 D. Gareth Walters A ‘Natural History’ of Return: Landscape, Myth and Memory in the Late Work of Mercè Rodoreda  Helena Buffery

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‘La totalidad de la obra se representará en perfecto castellano’: Censorship of Theatre in Catalonia after the Civil War 35 Michael Thompson Rodolf Sirera’s El verí del teatre (The Audition): Creating Performance, Reality and Politics On Stage John London

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‘Antes eterna o negra que rota’: ¡Ay, Carmela! and the Mythic Unity of Spain Dominic Keown

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‘… And the Great Bird of War Flew Past with Its Wings Outstretched’: The Aesthetic Recreation of Trauma in Jordi Coca’s Sota la pols (2001)117 Jordi Cornellà-Detrell Unmasking the Mask: Controversia del Toro y el Torero (Els Joglars, 2006) and the Craft of Theatremaking Lourdes Orozco

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On Influence, Tradition and Other Anxieties: Some Dilemmas of the Contemporary Catalan Stage Sharon G. Feldman

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La Cubana in the Twenty-first Century: The Popular and the Political173 Maria M. Delgado Index195 Tabula Gratulatoria

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David George: Two personal recollections

In 1966 I was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in Spanish in the then Department of Romance Studies at University College Swansea headed by the distinguished Racinian, Roy Knight. With the aid of a ­part-­time conversational assistant, Margarita Barker, Spanish was established as a Part One course only, the numbers of undergraduates being naturally limited to those who came in with A ­ -­level Spanish and intending to do, say, French for Part Two of their BA. After a couple of years, a Part Two General Degree in Spanish (later Joint Honours) was created and additional staffing was needed. I had met David George in 1969 at the first University of Wales ­Inter-­Collegiate Spanish Conference held at Gregynog Hall, Powys, and organized by Norman Shergold who had recently come to occupy the Chair in Cardiff. Among the various contributions was a joint analysis of Antonio Machado’s poem, ‘A orillas del Duero’, impressively delivered by three Cardiff ­final-­year undergraduates, D. Gareth Walters, Pamela Phillips (later to be Pamela Bacarisse) and David himself; all would subsequently go on to have distinguished academic careers. I was glad when, a few years later, David, then near to completing his PhD, was appointed first to a tutorship in Swansea and then, when Armel Diverres became Head of Romance Studies, to a lectureship. David proved to be an ideal friend and colleague, versatile, cheerful, indefatigable and always easy to get on with. Apart from language teaching, we both needed to lecture and give tutorials on the whole range of Hispanic literature – David, for instance, offering El Conde Lucanor, to the Medieval Texts syllabus: in those days academics were, of course, accustomed to teaching outside their specialist areas of research interest. In the

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early 1980s two more lecturers were appointed, one of whom, Paul Garner, would later occupy the Chair in Leeds. This eased the burden on David and myself and we were able to devote more time to research and to broadening the undergraduate syllabus. David was instrumental in developing Catalan with the support of his wife, Antònia Babí, originally appointed as a Spanish tutor. When Derek Gagen came from Manchester to head the newly created Department of Hispanic Studies in the early 1990s, David had the stimulus of a colleague whose research interests were close to his own; the subject now flourished: sabbatical leave became possible, new appointments were made, including Lloyd Hughes Davies who had first come to Swansea to do his PhD on the Uruguayan writer, Juan Carlos Onetti, after completing his BA at Bristol, and who has since made a name for himself as a leading Latin Americanist. David was by now becoming w ­ ell-­known for his work on modern Spanish and Catalan drama, and we were all pleased by his appointment to a Senior Lectureship, a Readership and eventually a Personal Chair: he continued to be a stimulating and effective lecturer and tutor who always won the respect and affection of his pupils. Under Derek’s benevolent guidance, the Department was always a pleasant place in which to work and remained so when, after his retirement, David took over and Gareth joined us from Exeter, the wheel thus turning full circle after many years. But my abiding memory is of that early time when Spanish at Swansea was represented just by David and myself: not long after he obtained his lectureship, our fi ­ nal-­year undergraduates presented us shortly before Christmas with a parcel which contained two bottles of sherry and was addressed simply to ‘Don Quijote and Sancho Panza’. Perhaps fittingly, they did not indicate which of us was supposed to be which but it was pleasing for us to be associated with that immortal and indissoluble duo, each in his different way a model of wit and wisdom. I shall always remain grateful to David for exemplifying both in his inimitably friendly and ­ good-­ natured manner over so many years. J. B. Hall† David George was born and bred in the Rhondda, and his sense of hospitality and positive outlook on life are traits that are readily

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David George: Two personal recollections 

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attributed to the people of the Valleys. He entered the Rhondda County Grammar School for Boys, Porth (better known simply as Porth County) shortly before his eleventh birthday in September 1959. With hindsight, one of the most important decisions of his life was made a couple of years later when he opted to study Spanish. The language was taught by Georges Rochat, a Swiss expatriate by then l­ong-­settled in the Rhondda, who has a claim to be the most influential teacher of Spanish in these islands at school level, as a ­roll-­call of Porth alumni who passed through his hands reveals: David was an exact contemporary of mine; he was immediately preceded by Brian Powell and Robert Havard; from an earlier generation, Jack Metford and Gareth Alban Davies had trodden the same path; while the writer Gwyn Thomas, for some years a Spanish teacher at a school in Barry, had also been a pupil of Rochat. Like others, David had been sufficiently impressed and nourished by Rochat, whose broad cultural interests and musical knowledge had opened the eyes of many of his charges to whole new worlds of experience, beyond as well as including Spain. In due course David entered the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, later to be designated as Cardiff University. I was again a ­fellow-­student of his, while Robert Havard, who had just started his doctoral studies, was a ­part-­time tutor. This was a department that at that time was headed by Stephen Reckert and where José María Aguirre, Lorna Close, Alberto Hauf and Alexandre Pinheiro Torres were then teaching. Reckert had established an ambitious programme of study that included Portuguese and Catalan as well as the whole range of Spanish literature. Indeed, the Cardiff course seemed, more than any other perhaps, designed as a preparation for university teachers. From David’s cohort, three of the six students progressed to academic careers: David himself, Pamela Bacarisse (then Phillips), and myself. In Cardiff in the 1960s, language degrees were of three years’ duration only, and the period of residence abroad was shared between part of the second year and the long vacation prior to the final year. Like others, David enrolled in the summer course in Coimbra, followed by a month in Lisbon, and a term at Madrid University, then subject to student protests and demonstrations in the dying years of the Franco regime. His first exposure to Catalan was in a t­hree-­week course organized in a theatrically clandestine fashion by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. There was little sign at this stage, however, of

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how significant Catalan would become for David, which was the product of a personal rather than academic involvement when he met Antònia Babí. Having secured an Upper Second Class Honours degree, David was days away from beginning a ­teacher-­training course when he discovered that he had secured a grant to pursue doctoral studies. His choice of topic was a study of the influence of the commedia dell’arte on Spanish drama. By this time, Stephen Reckert had moved on and David was supervised by his successor in the Chair, Norman Shergold. In his final year at Cardiff, David effectively started work as a university teacher by giving tutorials on Spanish literature. D. Gareth Walters

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David George: Publications

Monographs The History of the Commedia dell’arte in Modern Hispanic Literature with Special Attention to the Work of García Lorca (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995). The Theatre in Madrid and Barcelona, 1892–1936: Rivals or Collaborators? (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002). Sergi Belbel and Catalan Theatre: Text, Performance and Identity, Colección Támesis, Serie A: Monografías, 287 (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2010).

Edited volumes with Derek Gagen (eds), La Guerra Civil Española. Arte y Violencia (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1990). with C. J. Gossip (eds), Studies in the Commedia dell’arte (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993). with John London (eds), Contemporary Catalan Drama (Sheffield: The ­Anglo-­Catalan Society, 1996). with John London and Xavier Rodríguez Rosell (eds), Sergi Belbel’s After the Rain (London: Methuen, 1996). with John London (eds), Modern Catalan Plays (London: Methuen, 2000).

As editor of the MHRA Texts and Dissertations series Claire Taylor, Bodies and Texts: Configurations of Identity in the Work of Griselda Gambaro, Albalucía Angel and Laura Esquivel, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 59 (Leeds: Maney, 2003).

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Sarah Sanchez, Fact and Fiction: Representations of the Asturian Revolution (1934–1938), MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 60 (Leeds: Maney, 2003). Parvati Nair, Configuring Community: Theories, Narratives and Practices of Community Community Identities on Contemporary Spain, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 61 (Leeds: Maney, 2004).

Chapters/articles in books ‘Commedia dell’arte and Mask in Lorca’, in Robert Havard (ed.), Lorca, Poet and Playwright (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992). ‘From Modernismo to ­Post-­Modernism: Mime Theatre in Modern Hispanic Literature’, in Derek Harris (ed.), Changing Times in Hispanic Culture (Centre for the Study of the Hispanic ­Avant-­Garde, University of Aberdeen, 1996). ‘Iberian Peninsula, 1884–1913’, in Naturalism and Symbolism in European Theatre, 1850–1918, ed. Claude Schumacher, Theatre in Europe: A Documentary History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Eamonn Rodgers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Spanish Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). ‘Les traduccions de Guimerà a l’anglès’, in Enric Gallén (ed.), Actes del Col. loqui sobre Guimerà i el teatre català al segle XIX (Tarragona: Diputació de Tarragona, 2000). ‘Sergi Belbel’, in Mary Parker (ed.), Modern Spanish Dramatists: A ­Bio-­Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport, Connecticut/London: Greenwood, 2002), with Maria Delgado. ‘Catalan, Galician and Basque Studies’, in Catherine Davies (ed.), Companion to Hispanic Studies (London: Arnold, 2002). ‘About the Playwright’, in Sergi Belbel, La sang, trans. Marion Peter Holt, Estreno Contemporary Spanish Plays, 25 (New Brunswick: NJ: Estreno, 2004). ‘Forasters de Sergi Belbel: contingut i estructura’, in 1 Simposi Internacional sobre teatre català contemporani: de la transicó a l’actualitat (Barcelona: Diputació de Barcelona/Institut del Teatre, 2005). ‘Sergi Belbel’s Production of El alcalde de Zalamea’, in Sandra N. Harper and Polly J. Hodge (eds), El próximo acto: teatro español en el siglo XXI, Estreno Studies in Contemporary Spanish Theater, 3 (Delaware, Ohio: Estreno, 2006). ‘The Translator, the Censor and the Critics: Joaquín Dicenta’s Translation of Rusiñol’s El místic’, in David George and John London (eds), Spanish Film, Theatre and Literature in the Twentieth Century (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007).

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David George: Publications

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‘Ibsen in Early ­Twentieth-­century Barcelona’, in Héctor Brioso and José V. Saval (eds), Nuevas aportaciones a los estudios teatrales (del Siglo de Oro a nuestros días), Obras Colectivas Humanidades 07 (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2007). ‘Creating Catalan Theatre for the Global Era? Sergi Belbel’s Latest Work as Playwright and Director’, in Stephen M. Hart and Derek Gagen (eds), Essays in Hispanic Literature and Culture in Honour of David Henn (London: Centre of César Vallejo Studies, 2008). ‘Modernism and the ­Avant-­Garde in ­fin-­de-­siècle Barcelona and Madrid’, in Maria M. Delgado and David T. Gies (eds), A History of Theatre in Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), with Jesús Rubio. ‘La commedia dell’arte a l’obra d’Adrià Gual, Apel.les Mestres i Joan Brossa’, in Isabel Marcillas and Núria Santamaria (eds), Teatre breu: procediments, formes i contextos (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2013). ‘La commedia dell’arte i l’intèrpet contemporani’, in L’intèrpret: del teatre naturalista a l’escena digital, ed. Antònia Amo and Albert Mestres, Colección Teatro Siglo XXI, Serie Crítica, 21 (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2015). ‘La Guerra Civil Española vista por los mineros galeses y la revista católica The Tablet: dos versiones contrarias’, in Cultura y Guerra Civil: Formas de propaganda dentro y fuera de España, ed. Marta Olivas Fuentes and Emilio Peral Vega (Madrid: Escolar y Mayo, 2016). ‘¿Un género universal y eterno?: la commedia dell’arte en dos obras estrenadas en el Teatro de la Princesa, Madrid, en 1912’, in Teatro hispánico y puesta en escena: estudios en homenaje a Josep Lluís Sirera Turó, ed. José Luis Canet, Marta Haro, John London and Biel Sansano, Colección Parnaseo 31 (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2017).

Articles in journals ‘The Theme of the Journey in La familia de Pascual Duarte’, Quinquereme, 3 (1980), 101–10. ‘Some Thoughts on Cela’s Travel Books’, Iberromania, 19 (1984), 82–92. ‘The commedia dell’arte and the Circus in the Work of Jacinto Benavente’, Theatre Research International, IV/2 (1981), 92–109. ‘Notes sobre Apel.les Mestres i la Commedia dell’Arte’, Els Marges, 24 (1982), 121–4. ‘Harlequin Comes to Court: ­Valle-­Inclán’s La marquesa Rosalinda’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, XIX/4 (1983), 364–74. ‘El pan del pobre: a Spanish Version of Hauptmann’s The Weavers’, Theatre Research International, 12 (1987), 23–38. ‘The Commedia dell’arte and Catalan Modernisme’, Antípodas, 5 (1993), 155–69.

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‘Joan Brossa and the commedia dell’arte’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, 20 (1995), 331–49. ‘A Young Lad in the Arms of an Old Man – Sergi Belbel Directs Àngel Guimerà’s La filla del mar (The Daughter of the Sea)’, Spanish Theatre 1920–1995: Strategies in Protest and Imagination (3), Contemporary Theatre Review, VII/4 (1998), 45–64. ‘The Reception of Sergi Belbel’s Després de la pluja’, Estreno, XXIV/2 (Autumn 1998), 50–3. ‘Le «Mythe ­fin-­de-­siècle» par excellence’: Catalan and Spanish Versions of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé’, Romance Studies, XVIII/2 (December 2000), 113–24. ‘From Stage to Screen: Sergi Belbel and Ventura Pons’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, XXVII/2 (2002), 89–102. ‘La recepció del teatre català a Madrid i Barcelona entre 1890 i 1914’, Afers, 45 (2003), 395–419. ‘Enric Borràs and Margarita Xirgu: Two Catalans on the Spanish Stage’, Hispanic Research Journal, V/1 (2004), 43–56. ‘Beyond the Local: Sergi Belbel and Forasters’, in Maria M. Delgado, David George and Lourdes Orozco (eds), Catalan Theatre, 1975–2006: Politics, Identity, Performance, special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review, XVII/3 (2007), 398–410. ‘Belbel Rescues a Forgotten Guimerà’, Catalan Review, 23 (2009), 249–61. ‘Introducción’, in David George (ed.), El teatro catalán en los inicios del siglo XXI, monographic volume of Pygmalión, 1 (2010), 9–16. ‘La recepció de Mòbil de Sergi Belbel a Catalunya i a l’estranger’, in La recepció del teatre contemporani, ed. Ramon X. Rosselló, Josep Lluís Sirera and John London, Quaderns de Filologia: Estudis Literaris, 15 (2010), 87–99. ‘Sergi Belbel as Author, Translator, and Director’, Modern Language Review, 108, pt 2 (2013), 504–18. ‘Adrià Gual as Illustrator, Stage and Costume Designer’, Tesserae: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies: XX/3 (2014), 273–89. ‘Lo visual y la música en La família d’Arlequí de Adrià Gual’, Don Galán, 6 (2016) (revista digital, http://teatro.es/contenidos/donGalan/donGalan Num6/pagina.php?vol=6&doc=2_3&­lo-­visual-­y-­la-­musica-­en-­la-­fam% C3%ADlia-­d-­arlequi-­de-­adria-­gual-­david-­george)

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Notes on Contributors

Helena Buffery is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at University College Cork. Her teaching and research centres on contemporary Hispanic theatre and performance cultures, with particular focus on what happens to these cultures in translation, and she has a special interest in contemporary Catalan Studies. Publications include Shakespeare in Catalan: Translating Imperialism (2007), Stages of Exile: Spanish Republican Exile Theatre and Performance (2011) and Barcelona: Visual Culture, Space and Power (2012). The chapter included in the present volume was first presented as an invited lecture at the A ­ nglo-­Catalan Society Annual Conference in 2008, in celebration of the centenary of Mercè Rodoreda’s birth. Lloyd Hughes Davies teaches Modern Latin American Literature at the Department of Modern Languages, Translation and Interpreting, Swansea University. He is Director of the Centre for the Comparative Study of the Americas and editor of Romance Studies. He has published monographs on the Chilean writer Isabel Allende, and on the projection of Peronism in Argentine literature. He is currently working on a monograph on the portrayal of the irrational in Spanish and Spanish–American literature. Jordi ­Cornellà-­Detrell is Lecturer in Hispanic Studies and Spanish at the University of Glasgow. His research interests focus mostly on the ­post-­war publishing industry, censorship and translation during Franco’s regime, ­twentieth-­century Catalan and Spanish literature and multilingual literature. He has published the monographs Literature as a Response to Cultural and Political Repression in Franco’s Catalonia (2011) and El plurilingüisme en la literatura catalana (Vitel·la, 2014, ­co-­authored with Professor Albert Rossich).

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Maria M. Delgado is Professor and Director of Research at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, and Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Modern Languages Research at the University of London. She has published extensively in the area of Spanish-language performance and film and has served as a programme advisor on Spanish and Latin American film at the London Film Festival since 1997. She is a member of the Academia Europaea, a commander of the Order of Isabel la Católica and holds the Cross of the Order of Alfonso X the Wise for her contribution to Spanish culture. She writes regularly for the leading film magazine Sight & Sound and for the theatre journal European Stages. Her publications include ten co-edited volumes and three monographs, including «Otro» teatro español: supresión e inscripción en la escena española de los siglos xx y xxi (2017). Sharon G. Feldman is Professor of Spanish and Catalan Studies at the University of Richmond, where she holds the William Judson Gaines Chair in Modern Foreign Languages. A specialist in theatre and performance from the Iberian Peninsula, her publications include Els límits del silenci: La censura del teatre català durant el franquisme (with Francesc Foguet, 2016) and In the Eye of the Storm: Contemporary Theater in Barcelona (2009), which was awarded the Serra d’Or Critics’ Prize for Research in Catalan Studies. Her translations of Catalan plays have been staged and read at venues in Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Ireland and the United States. She is a ‘corresponding member abroad’ of the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona. J. B. Hall† was Associate Fellow of the College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University, and formerly Senior Lecturer in the Department of Hispanic Studies. His publications include studies of medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature and Modern Spanish and Spanish American literature, together with a critical edition of Vargas Llosa’s Los cachorros (2000). He died in 2017. Dominic Keown is professor of Catalan Studies at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He has published widely on the ideological dimension of Catalan literature with monographs on contemporary verse together with essays on cinema and Hispanic Cultural Studies. He edited A Companion to Catalan Culture (2011), and has

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Notes on Contributors

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produced bilingual critical editions of key works by ­Salvat-­Papasseit, ­Valle-­Inclán, Joan Fuster and Vicent Andrés Estellés. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Catalan Studies, and the general editor of the A ­ nglo-­Catalan Society’s Occasional Papers. John London is Professor of Hispanic Studies and Director of the Centre for Catalan Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of books such as Reception and Renewal in Modern Spanish Theatre (1997) and Contextos de Joan Brossa (2010); and the editor of Theatre under the Nazis (2000) and The Unknown Federico García Lorca (1996). He worked with David George at Swansea from 1995 to 1997, and together, they have edited Contemporary Catalan Theatre: An Introduction (1996), Modern Catalan Plays (2000), and Spanish Film, Theatre and Literature in the ­Twentieth-­Century (2007). Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds. She is the author of Theatre & Animals (2013) and ­co-­editor of Performing Animality. Animals in Contemporary Performance Practices (2015). She has published work on contemporary European theatre and performance, looking at cultural policy, director’s theatre, risk and the presence of children and animals on stage. She is an active member of the Animal Studies community in the north of England, and is also part of the editorial team for Performing Ethos. Michael Thompson is Associate Professor at Durham University. His research focuses on Spanish theatre of the twentieth and ­twenty-­first centuries. He is the author of  Performing Spanishness: History, Cultural Identity and Censorship in the Theatre of José María Rodríguez Méndez (2007) and of numerous articles on the work of other playwrights. He is currently investigating theatre censorship, having led an A ­ HRC-­funded collaborative project from 2008 to 2011, and is c­ o-­editor of Global Insights on Theatre Censorship (2016); he also has an interest in translation, and is c­ o-­author of the revised edition of Thinking Spanish Translation (2009). D. Gareth Walters is Emeritus Professor of Hispanic Studies at Swansea University, having previously occupied chairs at the universities of Glasgow and Exeter. He has written widely on Peninsular poetry (Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese), on translation studies and

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Spanish music. He has published monographs on the poetry of Quevedo (1985) and the work of Aldana (1988); more recent books include a study of Lorca’s Canciones and his early poetry (2002), The Cambridge Introduction to Spanish Poetry: Spain and Spanish America (2002), and The Poetry of Salvador Espriu: To Save the Words (2006). He has also published a verse translation of Quevedo’s poems to Lisi (2006).

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Introduction D. GARETH WALTERS Swansea University

The essays contained in this volume suggest two, interrelated, priorities: the innovative and experimental character of Catalan cultural production in the past one hundred years, and its fraught but creatively stimulating relationship with Spain as a whole, or, more precisely and provocatively, Castile and the ‘centre’. At the root of these issues is what has been perceived to be the distinctiveness of Catalonia, the ways in which it is different from its variously denominated counterparts. Such a dichotomy has indeed been apparent to ­non-­Spaniards down the ages. We find a perception of the ­socio-­political antithesis in V. S. Pritchett’s The Spanish Temper: In Castile, the unifying principle, despotic, aristocratic, conservative, frugal, tragic; in Castile, the medieval spirit, Don Quixote defeated, Sancho Panza in office and dominant. Castile, the rentier; Catalonia, the maker. In Castile, wheat; in Catalonia, cloth. In Catalonia, industrial society, middle class, optimistic, liberal, sceptical, and very anticlerical in religion, but split violently by the class wars of industrial society.1

Less rhapsodically, Robert Hughes speaks of Barcelona as ‘a citizen’s town … more a city of capital and labour than of nobility and commoners’, whose ‘democratic roots are old and run very deep’2 presumably in recognition of the medieval rights and liberties afforded to subjects, both in the kingdom of Aragon, through the official known as the Justicia, and in the states of Catalonia and Valencia through an institution known in Catalan as the Generalitat or Diputació. John Hooper also establishes a contrast with Castile in

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D. Gareth Walters

order to emphasize the f­ ree-­spirited and f­ orward-­looking character of the Catalans: Most of the ideas that have shaped Spain’s modern history – republicanism, federalism, anarchism, syndicalism and communism – have found their way into Spain by way of Catalonia. Fashions – whether in clothing, philosophy or art – have tended to take hold in Barcelona several years before they gained acceptance in Madrid. And although their greater sophistication has not necessarily helped the Catalans to produce better art or thought than other Spaniards, it only takes a few days in Barcelona before Madrid begins to look backward and isolated, its inhabitants incapable of comprehending the problems of an advanced ‘European’ society like the Catalans. It is but a short step from there to the view, which is undoubtedly held by many Catalans that the rest of Spain has acted as a brake on their advancement.3

Yet this perception of difference does not always favour Catalonia. Michael Jacobs cites the early ­twentieth-­century English traveller Edward Hutton, who found Barcelona ‘hateful … a city of the North, full of restlessness, an unnatural energy, haunted by the desire for gain, absolutely modern in its expression, that has made one of the oldest cities in Spain, a sort of Manchester’.4 While the foreign visitor might fault Barcelona for lacking what was deemed to be a typically Spanish and Mediterranean character and colour, a native writer like the ­arch-­conservative Jaume Balmés would see it, ­wrong-­headedly in the opinion of Felipe ­Fernández-­Armesto, as too ‘European’, ‘more like something imported from Belgium or England’, as if, following the dictum that Africa begins at the Pyrenees, Spain were somehow a ­non-­European country.5 What is undeniable, however, is that it was Catalonia that proved especially, if not uniquely, receptive to new ideas and movements in the field of the arts. On the one hand, the emergent middle class, moneyed and sophisticated, would serve as patrons of artists and, in particular, of architects, as the career of Gaudí epitomizes. Of the earlier foundation of the Liceu, Jaume Vicens Vives observed: The Catalan bourgeoisie of the industrial revolution needed an institution which could serve as a weapon to propagate its hegemony. Deprived of a court and without rooted social traditions, the bourgeoisie intuitively forged the organ which expressed its arrogance, focussing on the only root of spirituality still existing after the crisis of values of the turn of the century: the love for philharmonic art.6 (My translation.)

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Introduction

3

The poverty of musical life in Spain in the nineteenth century, exemplified by the dominance of the zarzuela, was not altogether reflected in Catalonia; the performance of Wagner’s operas in the later part of the nineteenth century demonstrates a refinement of taste and a readiness to embrace the new. Moreover, the rise of Catalan nationalism was an underlying force beneath much of the ­avant-­garde movement. The Mancomunitat provided support to artists and intellectuals and was instrumental in the emergence of the Noucentista movement, an ideological movement that characterized the hegemonic aspirations of the Catalan middle classes and which, through the creation of its own iconography and a complex corpus of linguistic signs, established modes of social behaviour that could enable reformist action.7 Slightly later, during the 1910s, the Cubist period of Picasso was influenced by international anarchism as it merged with Catalan nationalism and the symbolist movement in Barcelona. Catalan artists and intellectuals were, moreover, prominent in the European ­avant-­garde. The term itself was first employed in Spain by the modernista Jaume Brossa, while Futurism was the creation of the Mallorcan poet, Gabriel Alomar, who first coined the term in a lecture at the Ateneu Barcelonès in 1904. Alomar’s contribution to the a­ vant-­garde led to the appearance of a ­short-­lived magazine, entitled appropriately Futurisme, and, more significantly, inspired Marinetti to publish his First Futurist Manifesto in Le Figaro in 1909. In turn, as Carlota Caulfield points out, Catalan writers reacted against the political hegemony of Castile and looked to France and Italy for inspiration, experimenting with Italian Futurism and drawing on French literary Cubism; indeed Futurism became synonymous with the ­avant-­garde in Catalonia up until the First World War.8 Writers such as Foix and ­Salvat-­Papasseït were to form the basis for the subsequent development of visual poetry in Catalonia, a genre less conspicuous in poetry written in Spanish in the same period: the major poets of the Generation of 1927 showed little interest in such verse. Most of the essays in this volume are dedicated to theatrical works and performance art. Theatre in Catalonia has especially benefited over the last century and more by two tendencies, analogous to what can be discerned in the work of Joan Miró: an internationalist dimension and a local one. In her book on contemporary theatre in Barcelona, Sharon Feldman describes how, at the end of the

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nineteenth century, the modernist painters/playwrights Santiago Ruisiñol and Adrià Gual were instrumental in disseminating foreign drama in Catalonia, notably works by Ibsen and Maeterlinck, through translation and production, and that ‘since that time, Barcelona has arguably functioned as the predominant “gateway” to Spain for the European theatrical ­ avant-­ gardes’.9 As David George has pointed out, despite the domination of theatre in Catalonia by the ­Madrid-­based companies, Barcelona ‘was always regarded by Madrid as a city where experimentation was possible – in the theatre as much as in the other arts’.10 His observation forms the ­starting-­point for Michael Thompson’s survey of censorship of theatre in Catalonia after the civil war. He describes the mechanism of control, from the ­pre-­performance vetting of scripts and the inspection of most dress rehearsals to further inspections and interventions, if necessary, even after the opening night. The censorship files provide a comprehensive record of the whole range of theatrical activity in Catalonia, controlled from the centre. The consequences of the hegemony of Madrid and the Spanish language were drastic for Catalan dramatists, making the rebirth of theatre in the Catalan language ‘completely impossible up to 1946 and extremely difficult for the following three decades’. Nonetheless, these constraints were insufficient to jeopardize the survival of a distinctive theatrical culture; indeed, in the long run, they came to be seen as a challenge that provoked creative responses that nourished the development of theatre even after the abolition of censorship in 1978. As with book publishing, a greater tolerance was shown to productions of a religious nature: after 1946 the nativity plays known as Pastorets could be performed as well as the Castilian Pastorcillos. In fact, Pastorets in Catalan were allowed from December 1939, but only amateur productions in ­non-­commercial venues; professional productions in commercial theatres could only be in Castilian. From May 1946, any theatres/companies could stage Pastorets in Catalan. Thompson suggests that their survival ‘helped to nurture community performance groups all over Catalonia and maintain a theatrical infrastructure that later became useful to secular and s­emi-­ professional performance groups’. Unsurprisingly, greater indulgence was shown towards the Catalan language in the Països catalans outside Catalonia. The overall position, nonetheless, was bleak. Indeed, dramatists often wrote plays with no expectation that they would be staged. This did,

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however, enable certain playwrights a greater freedom of experimentation. Thompson notes the case of Joan Brossa’s ‘poesia escènica’, which he began writing in 1942, but which was not performed regularly until the 1960s. One could also cite Salvador Espriu’s puppet play Primera història d’Esther from the late 1940s, which had as much a linguistic as theatrical purpose: to demonstrate the richness of the lexicon of Catalan and perhaps to contribute to its survival by setting it down.11 As with other dramatic enterprises, mostly of works by Sagarra, Espriu’s play was destined for a premiere in a private house but it was called off at the last moment when the hosts got cold feet. One result of such pressures and constraints was that some Catalan dramatists ‘were pragmatically adapting themselves to the circumstances and writing plays in Castilian’. Thompson dedicates the remainder of the essay to a consideration of the career of Cecília Alonso Bozzo, who produced most of her work in theatre, radio, cinema, narrative and journalism under the pseudonym of Cecília A. Màntua. She had written plays in Catalan before the Civil War, but when she ­re-­emerged as a playwright working in various popular genres in the 1940s the texts were in Castilian, though sometimes with Catalan or Valencian settings. When she included phrases in Valencian Catalan in her play La riada, however, the censors were unprepared to allow even such a modest linguistic transgression, especially as it was going to be staged in Barcelona. It was not until the 1950s that contemporary ­Catalan-­language theatre was tolerated; even then, as Thompson points out, it was often a struggle as the case of Màntua’s popular success La Pepa maca, was to demonstrate: it was first submitted for censorship in June 1950, but it was not until July 1959 that the commercial premiere took place, the play in the meantime having been broadcast on the radio and performed in s­emi-­professional productions in n ­ on-­commercial venues. Thompson concludes that such persistence in the face of an attempt to treat Catalan theatre, like the other arts, as a ‘cultura con minúscula’, sowed the seeds of a revival – to such an extent that by the late 1960s ‘independent Catalan theatre was beginning to have an influence far beyond Barcelona and was regularly challenging the dead hand of state censorship’. Several essays in this volume reflect this legacy. Cecília Màntua’s switch from Castilian to Valencian Catalan is reflected in the work of the Valencian playwright Rodolf Sirera, as is demonstrated in an

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essay by John London. Sirera had started his career with a­nti-­ Francoist theatre in the 1960s, but in the following decade turned to the ‘realitat’ of the Valencian region, an issue that preoccupied him prior to the publication of his most popular work, the play El verí del teatre, first written for Catalan television in 1978. The linguistic dimension was by now social rather than political, Franco having died three years earlier. The Catalan language in Valencia differed from its use in Catalonia in terms of social status: the Valencian bourgeoisie used the Spanish language to distinguish themselves from the lower classes who spoke Valencian Catalan. For Sirera, therefore, the recourse to Catalan was appropriate for the creation of a new popular theatre, though, at the time, ‘there was no standard way of writing Catalan for the stage in serious theatre’. The outcome, according to Sirera himself, was a blend of local usage, archaisms, phrases from ‘standard’ Catalan, and new coinages and calques from Spanish. Yet while El verí del teatre contributed to a local debate about language and dialect, it also achieved an international renown, having been translated into fifteen languages, and thereby anticipating the success of later dramatists such as Sergi Belbel and of performance groups, such as ‘La Fura dels Baus’. London’s essay seeks to explain the reasons for its success and to ‘trace the wider ramifications of its content’. In the course of his analysis he describes how it pays homage to Diderot’s discussion of aesthetics and connects with the Futurists and the Theatre of Cruelty. More specifically, critics have also seen Anthony Shaffer’s play Sleuth as a precedent, while it is also reminiscent of snuff movies and has been linked to the vogue for putting violent or humiliating video recordings on the internet for public consumption. London adds that ‘a sensationalist, ­twenty-­ first century version in fiction for such activity’ is Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Sirera’s play is also metatheatrical in nature: a play that is concerned with the nature of performance, whereby theatre itself is a kind of poison or a drug. Another perspective on the international dimension of modern Catalan theatre is investigated by Sharon Feldman. She explores an observation by the dramatist Josep M. Benet i Jornet in which he expresses anxiety about the solitude and isolation that may often afflict the ­Catalan-­language writer. Yet, out of this precariousness, Feldman suggests, there emerge opportunities: belonging to a stateless nation, the dramatist ‘finds him or herself practically

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obliged to embrace, in the process of literary creation, a series of specific paradoxes, dilemmas, and even anxieties’. While Catalan dramatists may seek authenticity or originality through innovation, their desire to belong also leads them to take an interest in places beyond both the Catalan and the Spanish borders: new ties have been – and are currently – sought in cities such as Paris, Berlin, London, New York or Buenos Aires. Feldman provides three examples of this international c­ross-­ fertilization. The work of Harold Pinter has left its stamp on the theatre of Benet i Jornet, notably in the theme and manner of a play like Desig, premiered in 1991; the subsequent appearance of Pinter’s Betrayal in Barcelona consequently ‘took on new resonances as a consequence of the prior production of Desig’. A similar reciprocity of resonance occurred with productions of Guillem Clua’s Marburg, premiered in 2010 and the North American dramatist Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. As Feldman puts it: ‘if we examine Clua’s text through the filter of Angels in America, we find ourselves confronted with a situation which may motivate us to consider Kushner’s play and see it in a new light. And vice versa’. Finally, she cites the case of Ets aqui?, a play by the Argentinian director and playwright, Javier Daulte, that makes political allusions to the ‘disappeared’ of the period of dictatorship in Argentina. According to Feldman, the Catalan version of the play, translated and staged by Toni Casares, ‘may have inspired another type of reading on the part of the Barcelona spectators, who were able to see in the play an alternative political interpretation’: the uncovering of the remains of those who vanished during the Spanish Civil War and in the years that followed. In conclusion, ‘the contemporary Catalan theatre scene goes about establishing its own traditions … in a domain whose cultural boundaries are indeed much broader than those designated by its physical limits’. It is perhaps in the burgeoning of performance groups that Catalan culture has made its greatest impact in recent years. María Delgado traces the development of La Cubana, which emerged in 1979, the year in which La Fura dels Baus was also formed. Delgado indicates that these were a legacy of Francoist repression: occupying illegitimate performance spaces and protesting through their ­non-­ textual dramaturgies against the prohibition of Catalan and the imposition of Castilian as part of an ‘official theatrical culture based around dramatic texts and fixed theatrical spaces’. Another feature

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of such theatre, evident in all of La Cubana’s productions since its inception, was audience involvement. The essay is mostly concerned with the company’s t­ wenty-­first-­century productions, marked by an ‘ever more prominent ­socio-­political agenda’, with an emphasis on topical issues. In Mamá, quiero ser famoso, the spotlight is on the confessional nature of celebrity and the role of television which functions as a therapy for our age whereby the remote control of the TV set is presented as a prosthetic limb. Additionally, this production also comments on the blurred distinction between the real and the artificial in reality TV shows, the fascination with ‘authenticity’, and what Delgado terms the ‘thrill of the live’. A more recent work, Campanades de boda, premiered in March 2012, also engages creatively with screen culture, exploring the different ways in which tablets, computers and streaming media have reshaped human relationships. Yet, over the years, La Cubana has also confronted the perennial issue of the Catalan language and its status in the Spanish state. In Cegada de amor, an audience plant, Paquito, heckles from the stalls as the producer, Andreu Marçal, addresses the audience in Catalan and responds to the outburst by defiantly asserting how Spain is a state made up of different nations.12 Again, in Campanades de boda, we discover a rabidly ­anti-­ Catalan attitude in the guise of the ageing Tía Consuelo, a fiercely conservative character who sports a ­walking-­stick, rather in the manner of Lorca’s Bernarda Alba. Not the least of La Cubana’s achievements has been the combination of ‘incisive political commentary on contemporary culture, language and ideology’ and striking commercial success: Campanades attracted over 250,000 spectators between its opening in March 2012 and February 2013. The focus of Lourdes Orozco’s essay is a work by Els Joglars, another highly successful theatrical troupe. Their 2006 production of Controversia del Toro y el Torero is inspired by debates about the banning of bullfighting in Catalonia, which was eventually implemented in 2012. Once more, then, Catalonia’s difference from Spain is highlighted, this time on a cultural level. The production is untypical of the company’s work. Rather than have recourse to media projections, music and a ­multi-­actor cast, the text takes a dialogical form, following the e­ighteenth-­ century literary genre known as controversia in order to explore the status of the bullfight in contemporary Spain. The exchange is centred on a debate between Paco, a fervent defender of tradition, now bleeding

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to death after being gored, and Miguel, whose many years of close contact with bulls have resulted in a physical and psychological identification with the animal. The work also draws upon the field of Animal Studies and comprises, among other things, a probing of human–animal relationships in a country which is currently considering its own cultural traditions. Paco, who embodies a conservative Spain, rejects a society ‘that has traded purity for puritanism, art for spectacle’. He extends his critique to blame globalization, responsible for the merging of eastern and western values, generating hybrid cultures and destroying ‘pure’ and ‘elemental’ traditions. Miguel rejects such sentiments: in his view, purity does not exist, traditions evolve to adapt to the necessities of each era, while art must reflect these changes and commit to its ethical responsibilities. Controversia, finally, is, rather like Sirera’s El verí del teatre, metatheatrical in nature: its reflections around bullfighting provide an opportunity to expose ‘the play’s obsession to investigate what theatre is’. Thus the production goes beyond the exposition of an historical debate, and supplies another example of Els Joglars’s ability to create a type of political theatre that, ‘while rooted in the popular, is also able to reflect on its own metacritical nature’. Issues relating to the Civil War and its effects on Catalonia are the subject of the final three contributions. The starting point for Helena Buffery’s essay on landscape, myth and memory in the late work of Mercè Rodoreda is what is termed ‘ecologies of exile’ in Spanish Republican exile theatre, whereby the relationship between literature and the environment is considered from an ecocritical perspective. Buffery argues that such a view provides a useful focus for the work of Rodoreda and her acknowledged sensitivity to environment. Two works are studied: the play El maniquí and the novel Quanta, quanta guerra, both written in the years of the transition to democracy and the production and ratification of Catalonia’s second statute of autonomy. Buffery aims to read the two texts ‘in terms of a deep ecological, ­post-­humanist episteme’, interrogating the nature/culture relationship that they embody while concentrating especially on the motifs of pastoral nostalgia and apocalypse, for these are landscapes that ‘evoke a sense of rupture, discontinuity and death’. She links the ‘playfully destructive’ impact of El maniquí to Rodoreda’s experiences over thirty years earlier when she was recovering from her struggle for

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survival in ­Nazi-­occupied France. The play is bleakly comical at times, reminiscent of the esperpentos of V ­ alle-­Inclán and, according to Buffery, evocative of the Virgilian Georgics in its depiction of three ­twentieth-­century harpies working with and recycling the landscape that has been left to them. In Quanta, quanta guerra, an adolescent boy follows a liminoid and nomadic existence in a search for freedom, and traverses different geographical locations. This quest narrative provides an ecocentric perspective: one whose navigation of post-human spaces mediates the cultural, social, political, economic and ecological anxieties of its time of writing through the lens of exile and return. Just as the sober lesson that the protagonist Adrià ultimately learns is that there is no way back to pure origins or innocence, so the monstrous landscapes of rupture, discontinuity and death evoked in these late texts reflect a particular ecology of exile, that of return to an irrevocably changed home. The themes of childhood and war are also present in the harrowing recollections of the narrator of Jordi Coca’s Sota la pols, published in 2001 when the ­so-­called memory boom, concerned especially with a r­ e-­examination of the Civil War and its aftermath, was starting to take shape. Indeed, at one point in his essay, Jordi ­Cornellà-­Detrell compares its depiction of reality as ‘a response to an array of external stimuli’ (sounds, smells, visual flashes and feelings) to Rodoreda’s La plaça del Diamant, with similar consequences for plot structure. Coca’s narrator remembers in great detail the grim events of his childhood in Barcelona in the 1940s but there is no clear sense of beginning, middle and end; moreover, the episodes do not fit into a sequentially coherent scheme of cause and effect. ­Cornellà-­Detrell’s main concern is with the exploration of trauma manifested principally through the protagonists’ dreams, one of which is interpreted in the light of Walter Benjamin’s eleventh Thesis on the Concept of History. More broadly, he also suggests that trauma is collective in nature: ‘the difficulties in isolating, assimilating and integrating a given historical event into a coherent narrative are precisely an indication of trauma’. Until recently the psychological scars of the Civil War have been underestimated; it is now recognized that, beyond the physical hurt and economic deprivations of the conflict, a significant part of the population had to confront the effects of p ­ ost-­traumatic stress disorder. The effects of the bombing of Barcelona loom large

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in the narrator’s memory, but the recuperative potential of recollection was thwarted by censorship which sought to prohibit graphic descriptions of these attacks, designed to demoralize civilians. Another indication of the novel’s revisionist agenda is its description of the protagonist’s family as dysfunctional, thereby subverting the Francoist ideology of the family, which was to be the foundation of Spanish moral values and the whole social structure. The Civil War is also the setting for Carlos Saura’s film ¡Ay Carmela!, the subject of the volume’s final contribution by Dominic Keown. He observes that the experiences of national minorities are by and large ignored by Spanish fi ­ lm-­makers, though he argues that Saura’s ‘keen interest in the periphery’ is manifested in the subtext of ¡Ay Carmela!, which ‘raises the thorny question of national plurality’. Like the previous theatrical version by the Valencian José Sanchis Sinisterra, the film proved to be a b ­ ox-­office smash, rivalling the successes of the emerging talent, Pedro Almodóvar. Its popularity outside Spain resides to some extent in the international dimensions of the plot, reflecting the involvement of foreign powers and foreign volunteers in the conflict. Yet, in a radical departure from the geographical vagueness of the stage version, Saura sets the action in the trenches of Aragon, ‘whose ancient crown – which extended outwards to include Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearics – constituted a secular rival to the hegemony and expansionist aspirations of the Castilian empire’. As a consequence, the context is suffused with the tensions and antagonism between the periphery and the centre. Plot details assume metaphorical significance: the desperate attempts by the protagonists to survive across borders by adopting flexible attitudes within the reality of sharply opposed ideologies, and the fog that envelops the troupe of players causing them to lose their way. In such ways Saura questions the notion of a nuclear or monolithic Spanishness, which, as Keown indicates, is a trait of the left as much as of the right: he refers to Josep Pla’s dictum that ‘el més semblant a un espanyol de dretes és un espanyol d’esquerres’ (‘what is most similar to a ­right-­wing Spaniard is a l­eft-­wing Spaniard’). Keown concludes his essay and this volume with a timely reminder of recent attacks by the Popular Party in Spain on Catalonia’s ‘privileges’ and, perhaps more disturbingly, the rejection amongst progressive and conservative circles alike of the revision of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy in 2005. His conclusion is bleak: ‘[i]t seems the ghost of centralist

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intransigence – in all its emotive and visceral reaction – will not just stay buried and returns inescapably from the grave, even in this era of consolidated democracy’. It may be an o ­ver-­ pessimistic assessment, not least because Catalans and Spaniards no longer live under the cloud of dictatorial repression and because of the fluidity of both the national political scene and of the European Union as a whole. At the time of writing, however, the subject of Catalonia’s status with respect to Spain is a live and burning issue.

Notes 1 V. S. Pritchett, The Spanish Temper (London: Chatto and Windus, 1955), p. 210. 2 Robert Hughes, Barcelona (London: Harvill, 1992), p. 5. 3 John Hooper, The Spaniards: A Portrait of the New Spain (London: Penguin: 1986), p. 233. 4 Michael Jacobs, Between Hopes and Memories: A Spanish Journey (London: Picador, 1994), p. 225. 5 Felipe ­Fernández-­Armesto, Barcelona: A Thousand Years of the City’s Past (London: ­Sinclair-­Stevenson, 1991), p. 197. 6 Jaume Vicens Vives, Industrials i polítics del segle XIX (Barcelona: Vicens Vives, 1958), p. 136. 7 Daniele Conversi, The Basques, the Catalans and Spain: Alternative Routes to Nationalist Mobilisation (Reno, NE: University of Nevada Press), p. 33. 8 Carlota Caulfield, ‘Breaking Boundaries: A Journey through the Catalan ­Avant-­Garde’, in Helena Buffery and Carlota Caulfield (eds), Barcelona: Visual Culture, Space and Power (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), pp. 11–29 (p. 15). 9 Sharon G. Feldman, In the Eye of the Storm: Contemporary Theater in Barcelona (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2009), p. 25. 10 David George, Theatre in Madrid and Barcelona, 1892–1936: Rivals or Collaborators? (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), p. 178. 11 Salvador Espriu, Primera història d’Esther, ed. Sebastià Bonet (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1995). 12 Such a reply recalls Salvador Espriu’s implied rebuke of Francoist linguistic policy in the lines from one of his poems from La pell de brau, in his plea to ‘comprendre i estimar/ les raons i les parles diverses dels teus fils’ (‘to understand and to love the different ways of thinking and speaking of your children’) (Espriu, Obres completes, p. 65).

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Bibliography Caulfield, Carlota, ‘Breaking Boundaries: A Journey through the Catalan ­Avant-­Garde’, in Helena Buffery and Carlota Caulfeld (eds), Barcelona: Visual Culture, Space and Power (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), pp. 11–29. Conversi, Daniele, The Basques, the Catalans and Spain: Alternative Routes to Nationalist Mobilisation (Reno, NE: University of Nevada Press, 1997). Espriu, Salvador, Obres completes. Anys d’aprenentage. II. Poesia, 2, ed. Francesc Vallverdú (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1987). —— Primera història d’Esther, ed. Sebastià Bonet (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1995). Feldman, Sharon G., In the Eye of the Storm: Contemporary Theater in Barcelona (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2009). Fernández-­Armesto, Felipe, Barcelona: A Thousand Years of the City’s Past (London: ­Sinclair-­Stevenson, 1991). George, David, Theatre in Madrid and Barcelona, 1892–1936: Rivals or Collaborators? (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002). Hooper, John, The Spaniards: A Portrait of the New Spain (London: Penguin, 1986). Hughes, Robert, Barcelona (London: Harvill, 1992). Jacobs, Michael, Between Hopes and Memories: A Spanish Journey (London: Picador, 1994). Pritchett, V. S., The Spanish Temper (London: Chatto and Windus, 1955). Vicens Vives, Jaume, Industrials i polítics del segle XIX (Barcelona: Vicens Vives, 1958).

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Landscape, Myth and Memory in late Mercè Rodoreda

A ‘Natural History’ of Return: Landscape, Myth and Memory in the Late Work of Mercè Rodoreda HELENA BUFFERY University College Cork

Al voltant de la gent de la meva època hi ha una intensa circulació de sang i de morts. Per culpa d’aquesta gran circulació de tragèdia, en les meves novel·les, potser alguna vegada involuntàriament, poc o molt, la guerra hi surt.1 (Surrounding the people of my era there is an intense circulation of blood and corpses. It is as a result of this great circulation of tragedy, that the war, sometimes involuntarily, tends to play some part in my novels.)

The starting point for this chapter was my interest in recovering the particular ecologies of exile and migration, taking a broadly ecocritical perspective in exploring the relationship between literature and the environment traced and performed by exile writing. Inspired by Bonnie Marranca’s search for a ‘more worldly way of experiencing theatre’,2 I found the questions she asked to be particularly productive because of the way they challenged dominant approaches to exile theatre, in particular, as a theatre without a home or ‘place to live’.3 Marranca asks:

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How do geography and climate influence a work? What are the ways in which plant and animal life, animate and inanimate entities, the natural and the artificial interact? How do biology and the body determine the human drama? … What effect do [different kinds of landscapes, the quality of air and light and water and wind; the design of doors, windows, parks, and textures of stone and wood] have on the performing body, the perceptions of objects in space? (p. xiv)

The answers to such questions in Marranca’s own Ecologies of Theater, as in other influential works, such as Una Chaudhuri’s Staging Place,4 are largely to be found in a contemporary tradition of ‘“theater­writing” more conscious of the magnitude of performance worlds where landscape, myth, and cultural memory create and bear witness to all histories of life’ (p. xiv). However, I was far more concerned with the keys they offered to recovering documentary traces of performance, not just in order to assess the ways in which exile plays might be brought alive again (seen as one of the challenges for exile theatre research), but to access and trace the environments of memory they (re)present. Whilst it is not an approach I have applied in any depth to the case of Catalan exile theatre, even though certain plays, such as Josep Carner’s El ben cofat i l’altre (1951) and Cop de Vent (1966) and Ambrosi Carrion’s La Dama de Reus (1949), would certainly lend themselves to such a reading, I am convinced that an ecocritical perspective would be a particularly illuminating focus for the work of Mercè Rodoreda, whose sensitivity to environment has been persistently championed in both thematic and biographical readings of her work.6 Where such readings have borne most fruit has, I think, been in gender-based criticism, such as that of Nichols (1986), McNerney and Vosburg (1994) amongst others,7 centred on mapping Rodoreda’s creation in her writing of a separate distinct space beyond (patriarchal) culture. So her thematic preoccupation with physical and symbolic violence against women and other outsiders, her phenomenological sensitivity to the relationship between body and landscape, her constant return to the lost paradise of a garden ‘beyond the border’, became symptomatic of a wider concept of gender exile as expression and critique of the feminine experience of submission and dependence in patriarchal culture. Indeed, the tendency to read Rodoreda’s closeness to the natural world from a difference-feminist perspective would in itself be in tune with certain tendencies in ecofeminism, most obviously those that

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reverse the logic of domination through the exaltation of nature, emotion and the body against the mind, against reason, against culture. In many ways, this chapter takes such readings for granted, and gender exile as a critical vein that has been all but exhausted in the case of Rodoreda, at least. But, at the same time, it responds to calls for more context-sensitive readings of the stages of exile in Rodoreda’s works that do not privilege gender above other categories nor simply collapse all references to socio-historical context into a shared place of Spanish national memory. The texts to be negotiated here – Quanta, quanta guerra … and El maniquí – have consistently evaded such readings for reasons to do with both their circumstances of composition, after Rodoreda’s definitive return to Catalonia, and their discursive and aesthetic focus. Both were composed in Romanyà de la Selva, far from the Catalan capital and Rodoreda’s former home – Barcelona – which had played such a central role in many of her previous works. Both were completed between 1979 and 1980, coinciding with the transition to parliamentary democracy in Spain, the production and ratification of Catalonia’s second statute of autonomy, and the first democratic elections to the Catalan Generalitat since the Spanish Civil War. Neither work contains any explicit reference to this sociopolitical context; indeed, both might be considered to be resolutely anti-realist, or even escapist, in aesthetic, with El maniquí constituting Rodoreda’s only attempt at the genre of farce and Quanta, quanta guerra … categorised by numerous critics as characteristic of its author’s artistic aspirations to reach beyond and transcend sociohistorical circumstance,8 as supported by the following declaration in the prologue to Mirall trencat: ‘Si hagués volgut parlar deliberadament del meu temps històric hauria escrit una crònica. N’hi ha de molt bones. Però no he nascut per limitar-me a parlar de fets concrets’ (If I had wanted to speak directly about my historical period I would have written a chronicle. There are many very good ones. But I was not born to limit myself to talking about concrete facts).9 For many critics, a series of similar disavowals in the prologue to Quanta, quanta guerra …10 have justified an almost exclusive critical focus on the symbolic, the magical and even the esoteric, to the extent that some have refused any but the most fleeting connection to the Spanish Civil War at all.11 More recently, in articles by Jennifer Duprey (2008)12 and Alfredo Sosa-Velasco (2010),13 there have

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been attempts to reinterpret the novel in terms of cultural memory, transforming the voice of its nomadic protagonist Adrià Guinart into one alternately constituted by the memories of the people and places he has seen and heard or capable of tracing a space for their reconstitution in the in-between, border-crossing trajectory of the exile. Such readings respond in some ways to calls by scholars such as Joan Ramon Resina to attend more closely to socio-historical specificity in the analysis of Rodoreda’s fiction. His own work on La plaça del Diamant provides a compelling example, in recognising the full symbolic and phenomenological significance of the embodied voice of Natàlia in recovering in language a lost and ruined space: the space obliterated by the Civil War, that of a working-class, Catalan-speaking public space in Barcelona; the space of the ghosts of the dead who could not be honoured in the post-war period.14 However, unlike Resina, neither Duprey nor Sosa-Velasco explore the relationship between Rodoreda’s chosen medium for the evocation of the collective memories of the war much beyond the obligatory reference to the Spanish transition’s ‘pacto de olvido’. Furthermore, they fail to recognise the deep ecological and post-human episteme that imbues the novel, identified elsewhere by Margarida Casacuberta as characteristic of Rodoreda’s late works: ‘I no es tracta només de la vida humana: en aquestes últimes obres Rodoreda va molt més enllà de l’existència humana, una part ínfima de la vida universal, el macrocosmos que es reflecteix fins a l’infinit en els microcosmos on s’emmiralla’ (And it is not just a question of human life: in these late works Rodoreda goes far beyond human existence, which is nothing more than an insignificant part of universal life, the macrocosm that is reflected infinitely in the microcosm in which it mirrors itself).15 Here I propose to read both novel and play in terms of a deep ecological, post-humanist episteme, in line with some of the key intertexts offered in the epigraphs and prologue to Quanta, quanta guerra … .16 Combining ecocriticism with a more broadly cultural geographical approach, attentive to the mutually-constituting relationship between body and space, in order to trace the relationship between landscape, myth and memory, I aim to interrogate the nature/culture relationship set up in these texts, focusing specifically on the vagaries of return as read through two principal motifs that are represented and interrogated within them: pastoral nostalgia and apocalypse. However, unlike other readings which

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have been concerned with integrating the symbolic universe of Rodoreda’s fiction into an overarching personal and aesthetic philosophy, I am more interested in exploring the relationship between the landscapes of these late works and their socio-historical moment, both in the light of Rodoreda’s own return to Catalonia in the 1970s, and her decision to abandon Barcelona to live in the mountains of the Baix Empordà, and of a period that saw the appearance of other apocalyptic narratives, such as Manuel de Pedrolo’s Mecanoscrit del segon orígen (1974) and Llorenç Villalonga’s Andrea Víctrix (1974). It is certainly possible to read these monstrous, post-human spaces as mediating the cultural, social, political, economic and ecological anxieties of their time, but also, for the exile returning to an irrevocably changed home, or the survivors from the pre-war era, they are landscapes that evoke a sense of rupture, discontinuity and death. Beginning with El maniquí, it is tempting to link the playfully destructive force of this two-act play to a letter written over thirty years previously, when Rodoreda was beginning to emerge from her struggle for survival in Nazi-occupied France: He passat penes i misèries, vaig viure sola un any i mig, he viscut molt i he produït poc. D’ençà que els alemanys són fora, és a dir, d’ençà que sento una seguretat al meu voltant […] m’ha agafat la febre d’escriure. El drama és que no puc. Treballo fins a l’embrutiment per a mal viure. Faig camises de dormir i combinacions per a un magatzem de luxe. Això sí, ho faig magistralment. Tinc una màquina i un maniquí i el meu desig més fervent és de veure-ho tot en flames. Tinc una màquina de cosir i un maniquí, encara que a vegades renegui per culpa de la feina que faig a vegades em produeix un cert orgull de veure que sé guanyar-me la vida.17 (I have gone through all sorts of trials and tribulations, I lived alone for a year and a half, I have lived a lot and have produced very little. Ever since the Germans left, that is, ever since I have felt a sense of security around me … I have been filled with the desire to write. The problem is that I am unable to. I work myself to death in order to scrape together a living. I make nightshirts and lingerie for a luxury apartment store. And I make a fantastic job of it. I have a sewing machine and a mannequin and my most burning desire is to see it all go up in flames. I have a sewing machine and a mannequin, and even though at times I grumble because of the amount of work, at other times I am actually quite proud that I know how to make my own living.)

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The revenge she visits on the beautiful mannequin of the play sees this artificial, tulle-garbed surrogate recovered from a rubbish dump at the Camp de la Bota only to be dragged, bumped against walls and propped up in a shack occupied by three old tramps; stolen by a hunchback for whom she is a mermaid to be returned to the seashore; and finally torn apart by three harpy-like female seamstresses who sort second-hand clothing on a cold and abandoned beach in winter. Completed in 1979, El maniquí remained unpublished until 1993, and has since been republished after a production at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in 1999. Whilst the first act was probably written earlier in the 1970s, the second was composed partly in response to Araceli Bruch asking for a woman-centred act to play with her company Bruixes de dol.18 In the first act, set in late evening, we encounter three tramps in their seventies, Perot, Juli and Rebregat, whose dialogue vacillates between an urban argot reminiscent of Santiago Rusiñol and Juli Vallmitjana19 and Beckettian absurd.20 Observed by an even more marginal interloper, the hunch-backed Geperut, who is hidden from view, the tramps bring home to their hut a – to them – beautiful shop dummy dressed as a ballerina, upon whom they project their dreams and desires. For Rebregat, she is ‘[u]na nena molt delicada, però que molt delicada’ (a very delicate girl, extremely delicate) – a butterfly;21 for Perot, ‘his beauty’ is alive, like a swallow, like a starling, like a nightingale (p. 33); a lily amongst thistles (p. 50); and, for Juli, she is their queen (p. 47). Their declarations become increasingly sexualized at the height of their fantasies, as they encircle her in a strange dance to celebrate her presence. rebregat: Els teus ulls són dos coloms. perot: Com un fil d’escarlata, els teus llavis. juli: Els teus pits són dos cervatells. (p. 50) (Your eyes are two doves. / Like a thread of scarlet, your lips. / Your breasts are two fawns.)

There is slapstick humour produced by their attempted negotiation of the clash between her physical presence and their ramshackle dwelling-place, irony and burlesque in the gap between their descriptions and flights of fancy and the reality of their poverty, and a degree of satire against gender and class domination: the whole act is framed by resentful reference to rich theatre-goers, oblivious

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to the action taking place on the margins of their city.22 As can be observed in the previous examples, the most consistent source of paradox is, however, the constant use of referents to a cornucopian natural world to describe the artificial doll, with Juli exhorting his companions to admire her ‘asseguts per terra, en contacte amb la nostra mare sagrada que la va fer’ (p. 33) (Sitting on the ground, in contact with our sacred mother who made her). When they leave the hut to get a handout from the Marquesa de Llobregat’s cook, the Geperut enters and steals the dummy and they are left alone and destitute, shivering in the cold wilderness of their marginal existence. Perot reflects that ‘Dormíem en el bosc de la fada i ens ha despertat el silenci’; Juli recognises that ‘La nostra reina de debò ha estat i serà la misèria’ (p. 54) (We slept in the fairy’s wood and silence has awoken us./ Our true queen has been and will be poverty); and Rebregat mourns, ‘Som pobres, som vells com els cubells de les escombraries …’ (p. 55) (We are poor, we are old like the rubbish bins …). In the second act, the setting has shifted to a beach on which three old ladies, Sebastiana, Adelaida and Dominga, sort clothing for their boss, Baltasar, and reminisce about their youth, exchanging often salacious fantasies. dominga: Totes hem tingut la nostra glòria. sebastiana: Ah, ah, ah … la nostra hora de glòria. dominga: Sí. Si no haguessin estat els homes, que se’m van anar menjant la voluntat, ara ens li mengem la força … adelaida: A mi, si se’m van menjar, va ser perquè vaig voler. (p. 61) (We’ve all had our moment of glory. / Oh, oh, oh … our moment of glory. / Yes. If it wasn’t for the men, who ended up devouring my will, we would now devour their power … / If they devoured me, it was because I wanted it.)

Their playful sexual banter about Baltasar, who is their ‘king’, alternates with desire for a man who is clearly their only other human contact and more knowing reflection on the meaning of life, always punctuated by reference to a cyclic natural world. sebastiana: La meva vida és ben meva i puc recordar-la com vull. Engalanada i engarlanada. I si mentre m’arrossego per aquí amb els ossos enxiquits, recordo la meva joventut, i recordar-la em fa feliç … I saber ser feliç a la vora del mar amb el cansament de les onades i omplint sacs i més sacs de roba bruta … (p. 66)

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(My life is my own and I can remember it however I wish. Dressed up to the nines in all my regalia. So what if whilst I drag myself around here with my shrunken bones, I want to remember my youth, and remembering it makes me happy … And to know how to be happy here by the seaside with the tiredness of the waves and us filling sack after sack of dirty clothes.) […] sebastiana: El temps dels crisantems … adelaida: De la gent trista als cementiris. dominga: Em portareu flors quan seré sota la terra? sebastiana: Jo et portaré una flor sense nom. adelaida: Jo, un ram de llorer perquè sentis l’olor que enaigua si el nas et conserva el sentit que li toca, perquè em sentis a la vora. (The time of the chrysanthemums … / Of sad folk in the cemeteries. / Will you bring me flowers when I am beneath the ground? / I’ll bring you a flower without name. / I’ll bring a laurel branch so that you can smell the scent that brings tears if your nose still works the way it should, so you can sense that I am near.) […] dominga: I dia vindrà que no sentirem el soroll de les rodes … ni l’olor de la castanya que es va esberlant. adelaida: Viuré a tocar de les arrels. sebastiana: Voltada d’arrels. dominga: Que se li ficaran pels forats del nas i pels forats de les orelles. (p. 67) (And the day will come when we won’t hear the sound of the tyres … nor smell the chestnuts splitting. / I’ll live within reach of the roots. / Surrounded by roots. / Which will get into the holes that are your nostrils and the holes in your ears.)

Their expectant existence, waiting for Baltasar, waiting for death, waiting for something to happen – ‘Tota la vida és una espera. Encara no ho has après?’ (p. 70) (Life is nothing more than a wait. Have you not learned that yet?) – is met with a frustrated, tragicomic courtship of their boss by an alternately precocious and desperate Sebastiana, followed by the Geperut’s entry with his ‘nina de totes les nines’ (p. 78), his best of all dolls. Mild amusement soon escalates into intense, ritualised humiliation of the hunchback,23 culminating in the destruction of the mannequin in a frenzy of apocalyptic violence.

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The play stands out from Rodoreda’s other plays because of its focus on marginalized outsiders, on the very margins of the city,24 but also because of its radically hybrid tone. Both acts contrast the poverty, barrenness and brutality of the settings with a pastoral nostalgia for childhood and a garden, in the metaphors employed to describe the mannequin along with the dialogues between the three women in Act II, as we have seen. However, this pastoral nostalgia is radically overthrown, the possibility of return deconstructed through the undermining of the truth claims made by different characters and above all through the series of ambivalent encounters with the artificial ‘nina de totes les nines’. At the end of the first act, we are returned to the hopelessness of a Beckettian garden,25 where humanity is doomed to solitude and silence. At the end of the second act, the doll’s representation of the pastoral landscape – and arguably the woman/nature association that, for Karen Warren,26 is central to the logic of domination – is torn to pieces by the women, now transformed into Goyesque harpies reminiscent of Rafael Alberti’s fanatical old women in El Adefesio (1944 and 1976), who presided over the stifling of liberty in the body of Altea. Unlike Alberti’s play where this is symbolic of a loss of hope associated with the imposition of the Franco regime, here it underlines the impossibility of return, inscribing instead an apocalyptic vision to replace pastoral nostalgia, a dwelling in this environment outside culture, outside the spaces of the rich Barcelona theatre-goers. El maniquí, in its evocation of a transitory, liminoid space, provides grounds for close questioning of the relationship between the human and the environment, woman and nature, through the relationships drawn and destroyed and redrawn within the play, but also through their allusion to and dependency on an exterior reality. It is a space reflected in the fragile mannequin at its centre – on the one hand an idealised simulacrum of a female body, but one that is intended to be performed by a real actress.27 The play’s apocalyptic vision is tempered by the use of comedy and farce, but also perhaps by some appeal to the georgic in its representation of three twentieth-century harpies working with and recycling the landscape that has been left to them. In this it might suggest a social ecological perspective that contrasts with some of the more broadly deep ecological representations and concerns in Quanta, quanta guerra …, although I will argue that there is a strong commitment to social justice in Rodoreda’s final completed novel too. To read

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these two late works alongside each other is to perceive the destruction of pastoral nostalgia through the unleashing of apocalyptic violence. If in El maniquí it is the three old ladies who tear apart the model of androcentric dualism embodied in the youthful, feminine beauty of the mannequin’s body, identified by the men of the play with a lost pastoral landscape, then the violent and sadistic rape and murder of Eva described at the end of Quanta, quanta guerra …28 can be seen as the culmination of the novel’s anti-anthropocentric exploration of a landscape ravaged and polluted by disharmony, war and human domination of nature. Quanta, quanta guerra … is one of Rodoreda’s less ‘visible’ narrative works,29 particularly when compared with La plaça del Diamant, La meva cristina and Mirall trencat, which have been more easily read in terms of gender exile and the constitution of feminine subjectivity. As discussed earlier, this may be attributed in part to the tendency towards thematic and biographical readings of Rodoreda’s work, and to the positioning of Quanta, quanta guerra … as the only one of her novels to be fully composed after her definitive return from exile in 1974. Yet it is undoubtedly also due to its narrative focus: its episodic and at times disorientating structure; its blurring of the boundaries between myth and reality; its interpolation of other people’s stories and voices; the fact that the central protagonist and unifying narrative voice, Adrià Guinart, is male. Nevertheless, Adrià’s adolescent fluidity has often led him to be attributed with feminine characteristics, to the extent that one critic sees him as an alter-ego for Rodoreda, regarding his increasing understanding of the world as a reflection of the author’s world view,30 whilst another perceives an inversion of gender roles within the novel, reading Adrià as feminized and passive and Eva as masculinized and active, in her desire to go to war.31 The ‘in-between’ status of the narrator has led him to be read both as a picaresque anti-hero and as the hero of a quest narrative.32 Other scholars have seized on Rodoreda’s prologue to link Adrià’s vision to that of the exile or outsider intellectual,33 drawing on Michel de Certeau and Martin Heidegger to underpin readings of the space traced or cleared by his narrative meanderings or poetic sensibility. Such cases are indicative of the thematic and aesthetic multiplicity of the novel, which make it difficult to visualize and categorize from an all-embracing perspective. Yet this, in many ways, is precisely what the novel is about; the function of the novel’s structure and narrator is precisely to achieve

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an ecocentric perspective, to capture the diversity and chaotic nature of existence and experience in a single text. It is as if ‘quanta, quanta guerra’ might be read as a Catalan translation of Meredith’s ‘my dear, these things are life’;34 hence the choice of protagonist – an adolescent boy before the passage to adulthood, whose search for freedom (from home?) leads him into a liminoid and nomadic existence, through different geographical locations and encounters with otherness. Constituted by his family experiences, education, stories and dreams, by the ways in which other people read him and the sign – of Cain – on his forehead, he ‘[s]omiava Història Sagrada, somiava àngels, somiava sants, em somiava a mi vivint Història Sagrada, travessant deserts i fent rajar aigua de les fonts’ (dreamed Sacred History, dreamed angels, dreamed saints, dreamed myself living Sacred History, crossing deserts and making water spring forth from fountains).35 It is a dream motif that is revisited throughout the novel: he is asleep (‘adormit’) when he arrives at the front (p. 38); his experiences and the stories he mediates often blur the boundaries between dreams and reality, as in his ‘dreams’ of Eva (pp. 82, 111,198); and later he reflects that it has all been a dream: ‘Res no era de debò. Jo no havia fugit mai de casa meva, tot ho havia somiat’ (p. 207) (Nothing was true. I had never fled from home, I had dreamt it all). His innocence and confusion, his uncertainty in distinguishing between reality and myth, his reluctance to judge, his openness and his spontaneity, make him the vehicle through which we are able to see the world around him, and perceive it differently, through other eyes, other viewpoints. Often these are explicitly the eyes of nature, as when Adrià’s eyes are compared with those of a wide-eyed owl (‘la meva manera de mirar, massa de mussol’ (p. 28)) or he desires to become one with his environment;36 or else they are the violet eyes of Eva that, for the narrator, looked at him as if they were looking at the world (‘em miraven com si miressin el món’ (p. 82)). Indeed, this visionary quality is perhaps most poetically expressed in the central protagonist’s reflections after the apparent suicide of Isabel: s’han de tenir ganes de saber com era el món quan tot just començava, quan ningú no sabia que tenia ossos ni per què servien ni per què serveix el cuc ni l’agulla que vola ni la fulla que es despenja de la branca sense plorar, que és el que faria una persona si caigués així, perquè la fulla sap, ho porta a la sang de fulla, que a la primavera tornarà a ser fulla; per les arrels de l’arbre s’haurà encabit el seu

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fantasma soca amunt fins a respirar altra vegada tots els vents de la rosa, rosa sota del sol la rosa tornarà a ser rosa, si no ho sabré jo més que ningú, creu-me, rosa quan la rosada, no, quan la claror de la rosada, no, quan encara la rosada nascuda de la nit humida, no, quan encara la rosada en els brins d’herba … Voler saber el per què de la mort que és feta expressament per treure gent del món, n’hi ha massa. Fora, fora, fora gent. (p. 116) (You have to really want to know what the world was like just at the very beginning, when nobody knew they had bones nor what they were for nor what a grub was for nor the eagle that flies nor the leaf that falls from the branch without crying, which is what a person would do if they fell in such a way, because the leaf knows, it has it in its leaf blood, that in the spring it will be a leaf again; it will have been absorbed into the tree roots and its ghost will have gone up the trunk until it can breathe again all the winds of the rose, rose beneath the sun the rose will be a rose once more, as if I don’t know it more than anyone, believe me, rose in the dew, no, not in the daylight dew, nor when the dew is born from the damp night, no, when the dew is still in the tips of the grass … To want to know the reason for death when it’s there precisely to take people from the world, because there are too many of them. Out, out, people out.)

Through Adrià’s apprehension of the world around him, and particularly that of the ‘significant’ other in the text, the figure of Eva, we are offered a model for seeing: one that does not appropriate or project, one capable of receiving in oneself the disembodied form of the other (‘Rebre en si la forma de l’altre sense la seva matèria’ (p. 148)). This is the answer the novel presents to the question posed by the man with whom Adrià identifies in the ‘house by the sea’ (chapters XXI–XXV), who raises the very question of identification through his vision of ‘other’ eyes when he looks in his hall mirror: ‘De quina manera el mateix pot esdevenir un altre?’ (pp. 146–7); in what way can one become (an) other? It is an ethical position, one reflected in Adrià’s increasing ability to see with Eva’s eyes, as his perception of his place in the landscape and his desire for liberty increasingly reflect hers, and in the novel’s finale, with his vision of the souls coming out of the mass graves;37 it is the ability to see the invisible, linked to the ‘need for justice’, that Rodoreda provisionally associates with the desire for freedom in her prologue (p. 22). Just as the mark of Cain is given alternative readings in this novel – ‘hi ha qui el considera aquell que vol saber, que no s’atura mai, que no l’atura res, que ho vol conèixer tot’ (p. 228) (There are

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those who believe him to be one who seeks knowledge, who never stops, who cannot be stopped, who wishes to know everything) – so we, as readers, are encouraged to see identity as a function of the landscape in which we apprehend it, ‘to open our eyes to … the interplay between identity’s pull towards homogeneity and its counter-assertion of essential difference’.38 Whilst it is true that Adrià finally chooses to return home at the end of the novel, it remains unclear that this is the end even of this particular ‘quest’: On era a casa? Encara tenia casa? Hi tornaria carregat amb muntanyes de records de tota la gent que havia conegut … tants ulls dolços, tants ulls sorpresos, tants ulls desesperats … S’esborraria el record del mal o el duria sempre amb mi com una malaltia de l’ànima? La carretera era ampla, el camí de casa l’hauria de buscar, no sabia on era. Vell com el món. Pensava en tot el que acabava de veure i que no era enlloc: ni àngels, ni mort acostant-se a buscar la seva pau en l’acabament d’aquella nit. Només jo i la febre. Mentre el sol començava a pujar cel amunt com cada dia, com sempre … (p. 246) (Where was home? Did I still have a home? I would return loaded with mountains of memories of all the people I had met … so many sweet eyes, so many surprised eyes, so many desperate eyes … Would the memory of evil disappear or would I carry it with me like a disease of the soul? The road was wide, I would have to search for the way home, I did not know where it was. Old as the world. I thought of everything I had just seen and that was nowhere to be found: not angels, not death coming towards me in search of its peace at the end of that night. Just me and my fever. While the sun began to rise high into the sky like it did every day, like it always did …)

In a novel filled with violence, destruction and apocalyptic visions, that link it inexorably to the dark tone of La mort i la primavera or parts of Viatges i flors, it is perhaps surprising to find such an open ending. What we see here to a certain extent is a deep ecological frame, in which the doings – and the ultimate destruction – of human kind are presented as insignificant from the perspective of the planet, a position that might ultimately belie a benign and comic vision: in the continuing motif of the sun rising and in Adrià learning from Eva to see with the eyes of nature. However, it is the weight and meaning of return at the end of this novel, and its simultaneous impossibility, that I would like to end by discussing, as the pieces fall into place and we recognise that it is home in this novel that is always different, in the undermining of the childhood garden

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and the violation of the pastoral we see from the very beginning. For as Adrià learns, there is no way back to pure origins or innocence, if they were ever there in the first place. The pastoral landscape is a myth, and the relationship to the other and to the environment is always clouded by myth and memory. It is simply another version of what Rodoreda tells us in her prologue, in her explanation of one of the central episodes of the novel, in which she blurs the boundaries between real and imagined journeys, between memory and déjà vu, to leave us with the sense of the uncanny produced in seeing things differently. Explicaré les fonts d’uns quants capítols.— El somni que pertorba la vida de la casa vora el mar, ve de lluny. A finals de l’hivern de l’any 1971, vaig haver d’anar a Viena a fer companyia a un malalt molt greu. A mitjanit del primer dia d’haver arribat, sortia de la ‘Allegemeine Krankenhaus der Stad Wien-Universitas Klinken’. No es veia ànima vivent. Anava pel carrer Garnison i no sé com va anar que tot d’una vaig trobar-me davant de la Votiv Kirchen que encara no sabia com es deia. Vaig tornar enrera cap al carrer Garnison i caminant caminant em vaig trobar a la plaça Roosevelt. Després va venir el carrer Lazaret. Sabia que havia d’anar avall i no parava d’anar amunt. La casa dels amics on m’estatjava era a l’altra banda de Viena, a la vora del Belvedere. S’havia aixecat el vent. Desorientada, em vaig trobar a dintre d’un parc entre edificis molt grans. Palaus separats els uns dels altres que un excés de vegetació i les grans arbredes centenàries a penes em deixaven veure. El vent cada vegada era més fort. Les branques gemegaven. Un moment vaig tenir la sensació que no sortiria mai més d’allà dintre, que no hi havia camí que menés en alguna banda. Estava al mig d’una ciutat morta. No passava un cotxe, no passava un tramvia ni una persona, no es veia ni una mica de cel. I quan l’angoixa m’ofegava em vaig adonar que tot allò ja ho coneixia. Venia d’un somni que havia tingut feia anys. Un somni que venia de qui sap quines profunditats de la meva consciència. En el somni hi havia una ciutat poc coneguda, un parc sense sortida, palaus desconeguts, i, dintre meu, les mateixes ganes de xisclar. El somni l’havia tingut a París, podia recordar-ho, la nit de la primera tarda que havia anat a passejar pel jardí del Luxemburg. Aquells palaus de Viena, la Rathaus, la Universitat, el Parlament i els Museus, no m’eren estranys. És coneguda aquesta sensació de trobar-te en alguna banda on ja havies estat anteriorment. Em vaig asseure en un graó del Museu d’Història Natural, morta de fred i de cansament, fins que es va fer de dia. El somni del senyor de la casa vora el mar té les arrels en aquella meva nit de Viena. (pp. 17–19)

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(Let me explain the sources for some of the chapters.—The dream that troubles the life of the house by the sea has a long history. At the end of winter 1971, I had to go to Vienna to spend time with a man who was gravely ill. At midnight on the day I arrived, I was coming out of the ‘Allegemeine Krankenhaus der Stad Wien-Universitas Klinken’. There was not a living soul to be seen. I was walking along Garnison Street and I don’t know how but all of a sudden I found myself outside the Votiv Kirchen though I didn’t know then what it was called. I retraced my steps to Garnison Street and after some time walking I found myself in Roosevelt square. Then came Lazareth Street. I knew I had to go downhill but instead I was going up and up. The house of the friends I was staying with was at the other end of Vienna, near the Belvedere. The wind had risen. Disorientated, I found myself in the middle of a park amidst very large buildings. Stately mansions separated one from the other by an excess of vegetation and the enormous hundred-year-old groves barely allowed me to see. The wind grew stronger by the moment. The branches groaned. For an instant I felt I would never escape from in there, that there were no paths that led anywhere. I was in the middle of a dead city. Not a single car passed by, nor a tram nor any people, you couldn’t even see the sky. And when my anxiety was almost suffocating I suddenly realised that I had seen all of this before. It came from a dream I had had many years before. A dream that came from who knows what depths of my consciousness. In the dream there was a city I hardly knew, a park without an exit, unknown mansions, and, inside me, the same desire to scream. I had had the dream in Paris, I could remember it, the night after the first afternoon I had gone for a walk in the Jardin de Luxemburg. Those Viennese mansions, the Rathaus, the University, the Parliament and the Museums, were not foreign to me. There is a well-known feeling of finding yourself in a place you have visited previously. I sat down on a step of the Museum of Natural History, deathly cold and tired, until day broke. The dream of the man in the house near the sea has its roots in that night of mine in Vienna.)

If we read this hypotextually and intertextually, relating it to Rodoreda’s life and work, we will find strong links to personal trauma, to the paths of her exile, to physical and psychic journeys, to literary episodes such as the scream of Natàlia in La plaça del Diamant, encouraging readings in terms of her own biography, and affirming insights such as that of Montserrat Casals: ‘Diu Jorge Amado que un escriptor és com una ciutat, que aixeca les noves obres damunt les ruïnes de construccions anteriors’ (Jorge Amado says that a writer is like a city, who builds new works on top of the

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ruins of previous constructions).39 It is a return to the past, yet one that is mediated by dreams, by a sense of the uncanny and of difference. It is a return that carries personal and cultural baggage, and that also refers to nature and the garden. And it is a narrative that maps closely in its discourse the one told at the centre of the novel, where reality, fiction, culture, science and dream all overlap to produce an uncanny landscape in the posthumous papers of the man by the sea (Pere Ardevol – the ‘loved reaper’). It places a fulcrum on this dream-reality and the sense of return that it contains, and connects it unavoidably to Rodoreda’s in the prologue, to her sitting on the steps of the Museum of Natural History, freezing and exhausted. It links the sense of return to natural history and its observation, thus pointing to Teilhard de Chardin, and the eye of the naturalist. As read by Margarida Casacuberta, Vienna is the ‘larva’ of decadence, decomposition and death that links the geography of Rodoreda’s own traumatic encounter with the decline and passing of her long-time lover, Armand Obiols, with the multi-layered landscapes of her later writings.40 Pretty well all the dominant modes of exploring humanity’s relationship to the environment can be found in the novel. What becomes more of a problem is the question of how to recover and situate these landscapes. Whilst the Any Rodoreda in 2008 saw this recovery addressed primarily through the proliferation of exhibitions, trips, itineraries and maps – the exhaustive cataloguing impulse of a Borgesian ‘Funes el memorioso’ – might not another route be in uncovering the relation between body and landscape, the mode of seeing and of dwelling projected in her writing?

Notes 1 2 3 4

Mercè Rodoreda, Quanta, quanta guerra … (Barcelona: Club Editor, 1980), p. 14. Bonnie Marranca, Ecologies of the Theater (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. xiv. See especially Manuel Aznar Soler, ‘El drama de la dramaturgia desterrada’, in M. Aznar Soler (ed.), Las literaturas exiliadas en 1939 (Barcelona: GEXEL, 1995), pp. 23–30. Una Chaudhuri, Staging Place. The Geography of Modern Drama (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

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6

The most persistent source for such readings is the work of Carme Arnau, who wrote the first doctoral thesis on the Rodoredan corpus and has dedicated much of her subsequent work to elucidating the basis for the Catalan author’s complex symbolic universe. See, especially, Carme Arnau, Introducció a la narrativa de Mercè Rodoreda. El mite de la infantesa (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1979). 7 Geraldine Cleary Nichols, ‘Exile, Gender, and Mercè Rodoreda’, Modern Language Notes, 101 (1986), 405–17; Kathleen McNerney and Nancy Vosburg (eds), The Garden across the Border (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1994). 8 See, for instance, Margarida Aritzeta, ‘Mercè Rodoreda, el mirall i el miratge’, Serra d’Or, 337 (1987), 47–51; Maria Campillo, ‘Mercè Rodoreda: la realitat i els miralls’, Els Marges, 21 (1981), 129–30; Carme Arnau, Miralls màgics: Aproximació a l’última narrativa de Mercè Rodoreda (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1990); Carles Cortés i Orts and Imma Contrí Contreras, Una lectura de Quanta, quanta guerra de Mercè Rodoreda (Alicante: Llibres Compas, 2000). 9 Mercè Rodoreda, Mirall trencat (Barcelona: Club Editor, 1975), p. 16. 10 ‘¿Per què no una novel·la de guerra amb poca guerra? S’han escrit tantes novel·les sobre la guerra que una més no hauria afegit res a la col·lecció. […] És lluny aquell temps en què em pensava que, per escriure una novel·la, bastava saber català i saber escriure a màquina. […] En “El manuscrit trobat a Saragossa”, Saragossa no hi sortia. En “Quanta, quanta guerra…”, de batalla, allò que se’n diu una batalla, no n’hi ha cap’ (Why not a novel about war with hardly any war in it? So many novels have been written about the war that one more would not have added anything to the collection … The time has long passed when I thought that to write a novel it was enough to know Catalan and to be able to type … In “The Manuscript found in Saragossa”, Saragossa did not appear. In “Quanta, quanta guerra …” likewise there is not a single battle, at least not what you’d call a battle, to be found). See Rodoreda, Quanta, pp. 14, 17, 23. 11 See, for instance, Carme Arnau, ‘El viatge iniciàtic: Quanta, quanta guerra de Mercè Rodoreda’, Catalan Review, 2/2 (1987), 65–82; Janet Pérez, ‘Presence of the Picaresque and the Quest-Romance in Mercè Rodoreda’s Quanta, quanta guerra’, Hispania, 76/3 (1993), 428–38; Cortés and Contrí, Una lectura. 12 Jennifer Duprey, ‘Memoria y violencia: el mito de Caín y Abel en la representación de la guerra en Cuánta, cuánta guerra de Mercè Rodoreda’, Hispanófila, 151 (2008), 53–64. 13 Alfredo Sosa-Velasco, ‘El sujeto exiliado y la construcción de la memoria colectiva en Quanta, quanta guerra … de Mercè Rodoreda’, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 64/1 (2010), 48–62. 14 Joan Ramon Resina, Barcelona’s Vocation of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), pp. 119–41. Resina entitled his chapter on the novel ‘A sojourn with the dead’ and used a fragment of

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the same sentence from the prologue to Quanta, quanta guerra … that I have chosen as an epigraph to this chapter in order to frame his exploration of this space of memory. 15 Margarida Casacuberta, ‘Les larves de la descomposició: Viena’, Revista de Girona, 247 (2008), 78–84 (p. 82). 16 A fragment from Teilhard de Chardin is quoted in the prologue (Rodoreda, Quanta, p. 21), and both Saul Bellow and D. H. Lawrence are included in the epigraphs beneath Goya’s words, ‘El sueño de la razón engendra monstruos’ (The sleep of reason engenders monsters). 17 Letter to Anna Murià, 1945, reproduced in Mercè Ibarz, ‘Nina Berbèrova i Mercè Rodoreda al Louvre’, in Maria-Mercè Marçal (ed.), Cartografies del desig (Barcelona: Proa, 1998), p. 199. 18 See Montserrat Palau, ‘Paraules, somnis i records’, Programme notes to El maniquí (Barcelona: Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 1999). 19 See Montserrat Casals’s introduction to her edition of Mercè Rodoreda, El torrent de les flors (Valencia: Eliseu Climent, 1993), p. 32. 20 See Francesc Massip, ‘La sirena esparracada’, Programme notes to El maniquí (Barcelona: Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 1999). 21 Mercè Rodoreda, El maniquí (Barcelona: Proa; Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 1999), pp. 30, 32. 22 PEROT ‘… [Calla i escolta un xiulet i la remor dels cotxes.] Els rics van al teatre. Els rics’ (p. 29) ([He falls silent and listens to a whistle and to the sound of the cars.] The rich are going to the theatre. The rich); ‘[per les botzines] Els rics ja surten dels teatres … Una altra perla’ (p. 55) ([Hearing the horns]. The rich are coming out of the theatres … Another pearl). 23 This includes explicit and increasingly sadistic sexual taunting: ‘Si ens poguessis veure les cuixes et quedaries parat. / Ensenyem-li les cuixes? / No li posis la mel a la boca que no sabria què fer-ne. / Que se l’empassi, que se l’empassi … / Que s’empassi la mel melosa fins que l’ofegui! / Que la nostra mel el mati. / Que no el deixi respirar. / mel de cuixa de senyora’ (p. 82) (If you could see our thighs, just imagine the surprise. / Shall we show him our thighs? / Don’t go putting honey in his mouth, he wouldn’t know what to do with it. / Let him swallow, let him swallow it … / Let him swallow the sweet honey until it chokes him! / Let our honey kill him. / Let it suffocate him, / this honey from a lady’s thighs). 24 Some critics have suggested that the first act is set near the Paral·lel because of the reference to the rich theatre-goers that opens and closes the action (Rodoreda, El torrent, p. 232; Rodoreda, El maniquí, pp. 29, 55), and the second act evokes the isolated beaches of Can Tunis beyond Barcelona’s Zona Franca. However, the indication that the mannequin was really found on a rubbish tip at the Camp de la Bota might suggest that the first act is set nearer to Poble Nou; whereas the allusions to the Marquesa de Llobregat point to the opposite edge of the city, beyond Montjuïch.

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25 ‘[S’abracen i van dient: “Som pobres … som pobres … som pobres … som pols … Quin fred a dintre i a fora … quin fred …” Tots tres de cara al públic es posen a tremolar]’ (p. 55) ([They embrace and repeat over and over: “We are poor … we are poor … we are poor … we are dust … How cold it is in here and outside … how cold …” All three turn to face the audience shivering]). 26 Karen Warren, Ecological feminism (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 129. 27 ‘Si el maniquí fos una noia de debò, malgrat el problema que pot representar al final … seria molt més bonic’ (p. 25) (If the mannequin were a real girl, in spite of the problems the ending might cause … that would be far more beautiful). 28 ‘Fins que una nit … en van arribar set de color de castanya, tots de color de castanya i els la vaig donar per la nit. Aquí la teniu. Se la van endur bosc enllà, quieta com morta sense fer ni un crit … se la van endur aguantant-la enlaire com una cabrida … mentre la vaig tenir no va plorar mai …Mai. Ja no va tornar. No me la van tornar. Me la vaig trobar l’endemà a punta de dia, nua sota dels arbres amb una branca clavada allà on neix la vida’ (p. 239) (Until one night … six dressed in brown arrived, all in chestnut brown and I gave her to them for the night. And here you have her. They took her deep into the forest, stiff and silent as a corpse, without letting out a sound … they held her high in the air as they took her … whilst she was with me she never cried once … Not once. And she never returned. They did not return her to me. I found her the next day, first thing in the morning, naked under the trees with a branch buried in the place where life comes from). 29 The novel has only recently been translated into English by Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent, as War, So Much War (Rochester: Open Letter Books, 2015). 30 Rosa Cabré Monné, ‘Apocalipsi i edat d’or en Quanta, quanta guerra’, Antípodas, 5 (1993), 185–201. 31 Maryellen Bieder, ‘Cataclysm and Rebirth: Journey to the Edge of the Maelstrom: Mercè Rodoreda’s Quanta, quanta guerra’, in Peter Boehne et al. (eds), Actes del Tercer Col·loqui d’Estudis Catalans a Nord-Amèrica (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1982), pp. 227–37. 32 The first viewpoint is supported in Pérez, ‘Presence’; the second in Manuel A. Esteban, ‘Quanta, quanta guerra … : de la teoría a la práctica’, in Philip D. Rasico and Curt J. Wittlin (eds), Actes del Cinquè Col·loqui d’Estudis Catalans a Nord Amèrica (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 1988), pp. 301–12. 33 Duprey, ‘Memoria’, and Sosa-Velasco, ‘El sujeto’, respectively. 34 The quotation is, of course, the epigraph to La plaça del diamant. 35 Rodoreda, Quanta, p. 27. 36 ‘Volia que em sortissin arrels: ser tot branques i fulles’ (p. 31) (I wished I would sprout roots: to be all branches and leaves); ‘Hauria volgut ser riu per sentir-me fort’ (p. 53) (I wished I were a river to feel strong).

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37 ‘Abans de veure’ls els vaig sentir: una remor sorda damunt de la terra. S’anaven aixecant foscos i quiets. Una mica de vent els escabellava. Sortien de les fosses, del mig del riu per damunt de l’aigua; el travessaven. Arrossegaven els peus, segurs, alts i cecs. Anaven tots cap a la muntanya metrallada, a milers. […] No els veus? Tinc els ulls oberts i només veig núvols que corren enribetats de lluna’ (pp. 243–5) (Before I saw them I heard them: a muffled sound above the ground. They were beginning to get up dark and quiet. A soft breeze ruffled their hair. They were coming out of the graves, from the middle of the river over the water; they were crossing it. They dragged their feet, certain, tall and blind. They were all going towards the shrapnel-covered mountain, in their thousands […] Can’t you see them? I’ve got my eyes wide open and I can only see clouds that are moving lined by the moon). 38 Susana Carvalho, Contemporary Spanish American Novels by Women: Mapping the narrative (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007), p. 41. 39 Rodoreda, El torrent, p. 9. 40 Casacuberta, ‘Les larves’, p. 81.

Bibliography Aritzeta, Margarida, ‘Mercè Rodoreda, el mirall i el miratge’, Serra d’Or, 337 (1987), 47–51. Arnau, Carme, Introducció a la narrativa de Mercè Rodoreda. El mite de la infantesa (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1979). —— ‘El viatge iniciàtic: Quanta, quanta guerra de Mercè Rodoreda’, Catalan Review, 2/2 (1987), 65–82. —— Miralls màgics: Aproximació a l’última narrativa de Mercè Rodoreda (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1990). Aznar Soler, Manuel, ‘El drama de la dramaturgia desterrada’, in Manuel Aznar Soler (ed.), Las literaturas exiliadas en 1939 (Barcelona: GEXEL, 1995), pp. 23–30. Bieder, Maryellen, ‘Cataclysm and Rebirth: Journey to the Edge of the Maelstrom: Mercè Rodoreda’s Quanta, quanta guerra’, in Peter Boehne et al. (eds), Actes del Tercer Col·loqui d’Estudis Catalans a NordAmèrica (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1982), pp. 227–37. Cabré Monné, Rosa, ‘Apocalipsi i edat d’or en Quanta, quanta guerra’, Antípodas, 5 (1993), 185–201. Campillo, Maria, ‘Mercè Rodoreda: la realitat i els miralls’, Els Marges, 21 (1981), 129–30. Carvalho, Susana, Contemporary Spanish American Novels by Women: Mapping the narrative (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007).

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Casacuberta, Margarida, ‘Les larves de la descomposició: Viena’, Revista de Girona, 247 (2008), 78–84. Chaudhuri, Una, Staging Place. The Geography of Modern Drama (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). Cortés i Orts, Carles, and Imma Contrí Contreras, Una lectura de Quanta, quanta guerra de Mercè Rodoreda (Alicante: Llibres Compas, 2000). Duprey, Jennifer, ‘Memoria y violencia: el mito de Caín y Abel en la representación de la guerra en Cuánta, cuánta guerra de Mercè Rodoreda’, Hispanófila, 151 (2008), 53–64. Esteban, Manuel A, ‘Quanta, quanta guerra … : de la teoría a la práctica’, in Philip D. Rasico and Curt J. Wittlin (eds), Actes del Cinquè Col·loqui d’Estudis Catalans a Nord Amèrica (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 1988), pp. 301–12. Ibarz, Mercè, ‘Nina Berbèrova i Mercè Rodoreda al Louvre’, in MariaMercè Marçal (ed.), Cartografies del desig (Barcelona: Proa, 1998), pp. 195–212. Marranca, Bonnie, Ecologies of the Theater (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1996). Massip, Francesc, ‘La sirena esparracada’. Programme notes to El maniquí (Barcelona: Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 1999). McNerney, Kathleen, and Nancy Vosburg (eds), The Garden across the Border (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1994). Nichols, Geraldine Cleary, ‘Exile, Gender, and Mercè Rodoreda’, Modern Language Notes, 101 (1986), 405–17. Palau, Montserrat, ‘Paraules, somnis i records’. Programme notes to El maniquí (Barcelona: Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 1999). Pérez, Janet, ‘Presence of the Picaresque and the Quest-Romance in Mercè Rodoreda’s Quanta, quanta guerra’, Hispania, 76/3 (1993), 428–38. Relaño, Maruxa and Martha Tennent (trans.), War, So Much War (Rochester: Open Letter Books, 2015). Resina, Joan Ramon, Barcelona’s Vocation of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008). Rodoreda, Mercè, Mirall trencat (Barcelona: Club Editor, 1975). —— Quanta, quanta guerra … (Barcelona: Club Editor, 1980). —— La mort i la primavera (Barcelona: Club Editor, 1986). —— Cartes a l’Anna Murià 1939–1956 (Barcelona: Edicions de l’Eixample, 1992). —— El torrent de les flors, ed. Montserrat Casals (Valencia: Eliseu Climent, 1993). —— El maniquí (Barcelona: Proa; Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 1999). Sosa-Velasco, Alfredo J., ‘El sujeto exiliado y la construcción de la memoria colectiva en Quanta, quanta guerra … de Mercè Rodoreda’, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 64/1 (2010), 48–62. Warren, Karen, Ecological Feminism (London: Routledge, 1994).

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‘La totalidad de la obra se representará en perfecto castellano’: Censorship of Theatre in Catalonia after the Civil War MICHAEL THOMPSON Durham University

In his landmark study of theatrical relations between Madrid and Barcelona from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the civil war, David George shows how close, complex and influential those relations were. He argues that ‘it would be a mistake to view Madrid as the sole or even the principal theatre centre in Spain’, and concludes that ‘Barcelona’s claims to equality with Madrid are compelling’.1 The story told by George is largely one of the domination of theatre in Catalonia by M ­ adrid-­based companies and the Spanish language. However, ‘Barcelona was always regarded by Madrid as a city where experimentation was possible – in the theatre as much as in the other arts’, and attempts to establish an authentically Catalan theatre in the early twentieth century had some success.2 This impetus was annihilated by the Nationalist victory in the civil war and not significantly renewed until after the r­e-­establishment of democracy in the late 1970s. The period from 1939 to 1954 is thoroughly documented by Enric Gallén, who shows the extent of

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the hegemony of ­ Spanish-­ language theatre in Barcelona, only gradually and tentatively eroded after the removal in 1946 of the total ban on performances in Catalan.3 The draconian censorship imposed by the Francoist regime was not the only obstacle to the development of Catalan theatre, which continued to be held back by the conservatism of impresarios and audiences, a lack of investment and initiative by the private and public sectors, and a scarcity of professional training opportunities. However, the immediate impact of authoritarian state control from January 1939 was devastating and censorship continued to act as a powerful constraint on theatrical activity in Catalonia throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. My aim in this chapter is to enhance understanding of theatre in Catalonia during the ­post-­war period by providing new evidence on how censorship was exercised and how it conditioned the relationship between the theatrical worlds of Madrid and Barcelona from 1939 to the 1950s, contributing to a more incisive and detailed assessment of the impact of state control on the evolution of Catalan theatre in this period. The quotation in my title (‘The work in its entirety is to be performed in perfect Castilian’) is from one of the censorship files I shall discuss – an interesting example of a ­Barcelona-­based dramatist tentatively challenging the dictatorship’s ban on theatre in Catalan. The present study is part of a larger collaborative project investigating theatre censorship in Spain between 1931 and 1985.4 The Franco regime established an elaborate system of censorship that lasted from 1939 to 1978, involving p ­ re-­performance vetting of all scripts as well as inspections of most dress rehearsals and, in some cases, further inspections and interventions on and after the opening night. The primary source of data for our investigations is the collection of files (expedientes de censura) held in the Spanish state archive in Alcalá de Henares, the Archivo General de la Administración (AGA).5 These contain applications for professional and amateur theatrical productions all over Spain, submitted though the provincial office of the relevant ministry (Ministerio de Gobernación from 1938 to 1941, Secretaría General del Movimiento from 1941 to 1945, Ministerio de Educación Nacional from 1945 to 1951, and thereafter Ministerio de Información y Turismo). Each file also contains one or more copies of the script showing proposed cuts; the censors’ reports; a record of the definitive decision; a copy

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of the certificate (guía de censura) to be issued to the applicant; a copy of the notification sent to the provincial delegate of the ministry (including instructions relating to the inspection of the dress rehearsal); and, in some cases, additional correspondence (for example, appeal documents). Copies of the notifications sent to the provincial delegate in Barcelona, together with a few other documents such as reports on inspections, can be consulted in the Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya. Alongside these archival sources, we are also drawing on academic publications, biographical and autobiographical accounts, legislation, newspaper reports, listings and reviews, and interviews with playwrights, directors and actors.6 The censorship files provide a comprehensive and detailed record of the complete spectrum of theatrical activity that was taking place throughout the country and of the extent to which that activity was controlled and constrained from the centre. In addition to the censorship department in Madrid and its provincial offices and inspectors, the state’s apparatus of control comprised the licensing of venues and companies, and the power of Civil Governors (in close consultation with Madrid) to impose their own restrictions on cultural activity. These overt mechanisms were backed up covertly by the maintenance of police files on suspected dissidents. Inevitably, the constraints imposed by this repressive network massively reinforced the hegemony of Madrid and the Spanish language over theatre in Barcelona, making the rebirth of theatre in the Catalan language, by Catalan authors and about Catalan concerns completely impossible up to 1946 and extremely difficult for the following three decades. On the other hand, the various sources we are examining provide plenty of evidence of gaps and contradictions in the system, idiosyncrasies in its application to Catalonia, and increasing resistance to state control. They cast valuable light on specific ways in which a distinctive Catalan theatrical culture survived and grew in spite of repression, and in the long run imaginatively turned some of the constraints into creative strengths that continued to nourish the evolution of theatre in Catalonia after censorship was abolished in 1978. The complete ban on performances in Catalan imposed by the Nationalists as their forces occupied Catalonia in January 1939 was the most draconian and ­wide-­ranging act of theatre censorship committed by the Franco regime. Other censorship decisions affected individual playwrights, texts, companies and productions,

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and were prompted by particular political and religious factors. This one was an automatic, absolute ban on all forms of theatre in Catalan, covering new plays, revivals of classics from the p ­ re-­war repertoire and translations into Catalan, regardless of the identity of the author, the content of the script or the nature of the production. It was not validated explicitly by legislation. The unacceptability of cultural production in Catalan was generally taken for granted as the obvious consequence of the defeat of the Republic, and was enforced at regional, provincial and local levels largely through decisions taken by army officers, Falange officials, Civil Governors and mayors, guided by public statements and internal circulars from central government. The new regime’s position had been made clear in declarations by Franco during the war: ‘El carácter de cada región será respetado, pero sin perjuicio para la unidad nacional, que la queremos absoluta, con una sola lengua, el castellano, y una sola personalidad, la española’ (‘The character of each region will be respected but not at the expense of national unity, which we expect to be absolute, with a single language – Castilian – and a single identity – Spanish’).7 Even the abolition in April 1938 of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy (which had established Catalan and Castilian as the official languages of Catalonia) was presented as a barely necessary r­ ubber-­stamping of what was claimed already to be an undeniable reality: ‘El Estatuto de Cataluña, en mala hora concedido por la República, dejó de tener validez, en el orden jurídico español, desde el día diecisiete de julio de mil novecientos treinta y seis. No sería preciso, pues, hacer ninguna declaración en este sentido’ (‘The Statute of Catalonia, so imprudently conceded by the Republic, ceased to have any constitutional validity as from the 17th of July 1936. Consequently, there is no need for a formal declaration to this effect’).8 Theatres in Barcelona had closed down on 22 January 1939, four days before Nationalist forces occupied the city. On 6 February, the victors signalled their intention to keep the newly reprivatized theatrical industry under tight control: A fin de poner en marcha, a la mayor rapidez, todas aquellas actividades que atañen al Teatro, la Música y los espectáculos de análoga naturaleza, el Departamento correspondiente del Servicio Nacional de Propaganda del Ministerio de la Gobernación, convoca con carácter de urgencia a cuantas personas tengan relación e intereses

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con aquellas actividades, para que se presenten en sus oficinas […], advirtiendo que cuantas disposiciones y medidas hayan de tomarse sobre el particular, lo serán, naturalmente, con carácter de obligatorias para todos los locales de teatro, música o espectáculos análogos de Barcelona.9 (In order to ensure the swift r­ e-­establishment of activities related to the theatre, music and public spectacles of a similar nature, the National Propaganda Service urgently requires all persons with an interest in such activities to present themselves at its [Barcelona] office. Interested parties are advised that any measures introduced to regulate said activities will apply mandatorily to all venues in Barcelona offering theatrical, musical and similar spectacles.)

The authorities must have found that compliance with their requirements was less than total, for an official reminder was published in the press on 8 March insisting that all details of professional and amateur theatrical productions needed to be approved in advance by the ministry.10 When a new commercial season opened in a small number of theatres less than a month after the closure, productions were exclusively in Castilian, and listings in the press were punctuated by ‘¡Viva Franco! ¡Arriba España!’.11 There is only one censorship file in the AGA for a play in Catalan in 1939. This was Un revolcó a temps (A Tumble in Time) by Francisco Marín Melià, who made the application himself without specifying any production details. The author lived in Castellón, in the north of the Valencian region, and the application was presumably for performances in Castellón or Valencia. Xavier Fàbregas notes that theatre in ­Catalan-­speaking areas outside Catalonia was censored slightly less severely than in Catalonia itself: ‘A València, on el teatre “regional” fou considerat un producte inofensiu, i alhora podia ésser manipulat com un ferment de la fragmentació lingüística entre les capes populars, s’escolá també alguna autorització’ (‘In Valencia, where “regional” theatre was regarded as harmless and could also be manipulated to further linguistic fragmentation amongst w ­orking-­ class communities, a few authorizations were allowed to slip through’).12 However, Marín Melià’s application, submitted on 24 November 1939, was clearly premature, as authorization was refused. Unfortunately, theatre censorship files from the first few years of the dictatorship rarely include reports, correspondence or records of meetings. Censorship was being administered on a shoestring by

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a handful of Falangists in the censorship section created in July 1939 as part of the Servicio Nacional de Propaganda, and at this time the writer Samuel Ros appears to have been responsible almost ­single-­handedly for theatre. His decision on this application is conveyed curtly: ‘Suspendida su representación’ (‘Production suspended’).13 The grovelling tone of the author’s application letter, though, is revealing: El autor de la referida obrita, consciente de la labor honrada, literaria, que precisa hacer en estos momentos de exaltado patriotismo, ha tenido sumo cuidado en no poner en boca de los personajes, cuya trama desarrollan, frases, que ni sutilmente puedan zaherir los oídos de los espectadores ni mucho menos desahogos, que con carácter de ‘chistes’ puedan mortificar a determinadas personas. Por todo lo cual, espera que esa Sección de censura, se dignará concederle el oportuno permiso, para que dicha obra pueda ser libremente representada.14 (The author of this modest work, conscious of the responsibility of literature to make a fitting contribution in this time of exalted patriotism, has taken great care to avoid putting in the mouths of its characters any expressions that might cause even mild offence to spectators’ ears, and least of all the kind of vulgar outbursts that sometimes, in the guise of jokes, might mortify certain persons. The applicant hopes, therefore, that the Censorship Section will be so kind as to license the play for performance.)

There are no records in the AGA files of applications for plays in Catalan in 1940, and only one in 1941. El Negre, a rural drama by Fernando Lluch Ferrando set in Valencia, was approved for performance by the Compañía Rafael Balaguer, presumably in Valencia. The brief handwritten report by José María García Escudero is disparaging but not hostile, and does not comment on the fact that the script is mostly in Catalan: ‘Obra de ambiente valenciano, en que el autor lo sacrifica todo por conseguir tremendos efectos dramáticos. El lenguaje, a veces impropio; quizá mejor que otras de este fecundo autor’ (‘A play with a Valencian setting, in which the author sacrifices everything for the sake of exaggerated dramatic effects. The dialogue is occasionally improper. Possibly better than other works by this prolific author’).15 The concern about indecorous language leads to the imposition of eight cuts, most of which are exclamations using religious terms (‘¡Redéu!’, ‘¡Cristo!’) and one an idiom with possible sexual

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connotations: ‘¡Fuerza en cánut!’ [i.e. ‘Força al canut!’] (‘Power to your pipe [or pouch]!’).16 The work clearly fitted the category of ‘inoffensive’ regional drama, and could be authorized for performance in Valencia as long as it was tidied up so as not to ‘offend the ears’ of ­right-­minded spectators. Authorization of ­Catalan-­language productions in Catalonia was not possible for another five years. The only exceptions to the blanket ban were the traditional Nativity plays (Pastorets) and Passion plays, which the Church insisted should continue to be done in Catalan. The Civil Governor of Barcelona, Wenceslao González Oliveros, visited the Bishop of Barcelona on 27 December 1939.17 Their meeting may have been connected to this issue, since he announced on 31 December that Pastorets could be performed in Catalan, albeit under very strict conditions: Primera. – Que un ejemplar sea previamente remitido a este Gobierno Civil. Segunda. – Que la representación no constituya espectáculo público y por consiguiente que no se verifique en locales habitualmente destinados a cine, teatros, bailes ni sociedades recreativas en general y que la entrada no se pague directa ni indirectamente, y Tercera. – Que dicha representación revista un exclusivo carácter religioso familiar. Sólo al Gobierno Civil deberá ser solicitada la autorización para esta especie de representaciones. La que no haya sido directa y expresamente autorizada por este Gobierno Civil, queda prohibida con apercibimiento de sanciones, sea cualquiera el organismo que se haya pretendido arrogar atribuciones que no le competen en esta materia.18 (1. That a copy of the script be submitted to the Civil Governor’s office; 2. that the performance not be open to the general public, and consequently not be carried out in premises normally used as cinemas, theatres, dancehalls or leisure clubs, and that tickets not be sold either directly or indirectly; 3. that the performance have a purely religious, ­ family-­ oriented character. All applications for the approval of such performances must be submitted to the Civil Governor’s office.

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Any performance that has not been directly and explicitly authorized by the Civil Governor’s office is prohibited and will be subject to official sanctions, whichever body may have attempted to exceed its powers in this matter.)

Professional productions of Nativity plays in commercial theatres had to be performed in Castilian until 1946, at which point a mixed economy of Pastorcillos (in Castilian) and Pastorets (in Catalan) emerged. Once the exception of performances with a ‘carácter religioso familiar’ had been established, the Pastorets genre gradually acquired more and more importance as one of the very few channels available for the public use of Catalan, although with minimal publicity. As Josep Maria Benet i Jornet explains, this became a more widespread and influential cultural phenomenon than one might suspect: Eran obras en las que pasaban muchas cosas. Al final había lo que se llamaba la apoteosis en que veías a los pastores llegar al portal de Belén, etcétera, pero mientras tanto pasaban muchas historias; estas obras duraban tres o cuatro horas, la gente iba mucho, había varias, cada año se hacía en un sitio distinto. Porque había teatros pequeños que dependían de parroquias, teatros muy interesantes, muy bien acondicionados.19 (All kinds of things went on in these plays. At the end there would always be what was known as the apotheosis, when you would see the shepherds arriving at the stable, and so on, but in the meantime plenty of other stories were woven in. The shows lasted three or four hours, people attended them frequently, there were various versions, and they would be performed in different places from year to year. They used the small theatres run by individual parishes, very interesting little theatres, very well equipped.)

As well as providing a small but safe public space for the celebration of the Catalan language, the survival of the Pastorets tradition helped to nurture community performance groups all over Catalonia and maintain a theatrical infrastructure that later became useful to secular and s­emi-­ professional performance groups. In principle, these plays were not subject to state censorship, but local authorization could be refused if there was a suspicion of the purely religious function being compromised. Surprisingly, there are a few authorizations for Pastorets amongst the notifications in the censorship files held in the Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya. The parish choral society in the town of El Vendrell applied for

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permission to stage Los pastorets musicals del Vendrell by Rosendo Fortunet in December 1966. Even more surprisingly, the censors cut the script in two places and specified that an inspection of the dress rehearsal was required – an unusual condition for a performance authorized for ‘Todos los públicos’ (audiences of all ages). The offending lines contain what look like innocuous references to Joseph initially suspecting Mary of adultery until he is reassured by an angel that ‘el que está engendrat en ella és per obra del Sant Esperit’ (‘the child has been engendered in her by the Holy Spirit’).20 Also in the 1966–7 Christmas season, the celebrated L’Estel de Natzaret (The Star of Nazareth) by Ramon Pàmies, performed by the Centro Parroquial in the Barcelona suburb of Sant Vicenç de Sarrià every year since 1907 except during the war, was submitted for approval by the Board of Theatre Censorship. It was authorized for audiences of all ages, but in this case too an inspection of the dress rehearsal was required.21 It may be that, in the rebellious atmosphere of the mid-1960s, some Pastorets groups were suspected of introducing subversive elements into their performances. The scarcity of censorship applications for performances in Catalan before 1946 indicates that commercial producers were not even attempting to put the ban to the test – or were being dissuaded by local authorities from doing so. A few dramatists were writing plays in Catalan in the early 1940s with no expectation that they would be staged. Salvador Espriu wrote Antígona in 1939; Josep Maria de Sagarra returned from exile in 1940 and devoted much of his time to translating Shakespeare’s plays; Joan Brossa began writing experimental ‘poetry for the stage’ in 1942 which did not begin to be performed regularly until the 1960s. Fàbregas records a small number of unauthorized readings and amateur performances in Catalan in private houses in the early 1940s, mostly of works by Sagarra.22 More recently, Gallén has gathered further evidence of amateur groups staging plays in Catalan in various locations between 1943 and 1946, below the radar of censorship.23 Amateurs were also performing n ­ ineteenth-­century and ­pre-­war works by dramatists such as Soler, Guimerà, Gual, Rusiñol and Sagarra translated into Castilian, while commercial theatres in Barcelona were showing very little interest in the work of these authors. The only productions of plays by Guimerà announced in the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia Española between 1939 and

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1945 are Tierra baja (Low Country) in November 1940 and October 1943, and María Rosa in March 1943. That production of Tierra baja constitutes Guimerà’s only appearance in the censorship files for the years 1939, 1940 and 1941; Rusiñol appears only once with El místico (The Mystic) in 1940, and Soler, Gual and Sagarra not at all. In the meantime, a few Catalan dramatists were pragmatically adapting themselves to the circumstances and writing plays in Castilian. The most successful – though she gets only one passing reference in Fàbregas’s Història del teatre català – was Cecília Alonso Bozzo (1906–1974), who produced most of her extensive and popular work in theatre, radio, cinema, narrative and journalism under the pseudonym Cecília A. Màntua. She had begun to write plays in Catalan before the war: her romantic comedy Ha passat una oreneta (A Swallow Has Flown By) was broadcast in April 1936 by Ràdio Barcelona.24 She seems to have been involved in agitprop ­film-­making during the war, as she is identified as the director of a documentary made for the Comité de Milicias Antifascistas, Salvaguarda del miliciano (The Militiaman’s Safeguard) shown in Barcelona in February 1937.25 When she ­re-­emerged in the early 1940s as a playwright working in various popular genres, the texts were in Castilian, though sometimes with Catalan or Valencian settings. In general, they posed only minor problems for the censors in terms of their moral or political content. However, they did not all have an easy passage through the system, and it seems to have been the Catalan provenance of some of her plays that provoked hostility or suspicion amongst the censors in Madrid. The first of Màntua’s works to be considered by the censors was a zarzuela (operetta) entitled Serenata de Schubert o A ti vuelan mis canciones (Schubert Serenade, or My Songs Fly to You). On 13 September 1941 Màntua applied for authorization of a production at the Teatro Nuevo in Barcelona, with the intention of opening on 30 September. The censor’s report recommends prohibition on what appear to be linguistic and stylistic grounds: ‘Está escrita en pésimo castellano. No tiene ni pies ni cabeza. No puede autorizarse’ (‘It is written in appalling Spanish. A complete mess. It cannot be approved’). The decision issued on 7 October was: ‘Suspendida transitoriamente su representación’ (‘Production temporarily suspended’).26 The theatre advertised the show as due to open on 9 October, then on the 16th, then on the 17th. The censors must have accepted a revised script and allowed the premiere to go ahead

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on 17 October, for the listing on the following day announces the second night of the ‘éxito apoteósico’ (‘triumphant hit’).’ 27 This may have been on the initiative of the authorities in Barcelona, since there is no record of official authorization until 6 December, following an appeal submitted on 26 November. The appeal requests authorization of a production at the Teatro Apolo in Valencia starting on 4 December. It refers to the earlier suspension and points out that the authors have revised the text to make it less bohemian, ‘dando al diálogo una mayor pulcritud, matizándolo en grado máximo’ (‘rendering the dialogue more refined and as subtle as possible’). At the end of their letter they make a plea that provides a striking reminder of the practical and economic consequences of censorship: QUE la Empresa del Teatro Apolo de Valencia, se dispone a estrenar la obra el próximo día 4 de Diciembre, suponiendo que la obra hubiera sido censurada favorablemente, dado que no ofrece reparos inmorales o políticos, y confiando en ello y dado el trabajo y estudio que requiérese para montarla, hizo pintar el decorado, está realizando el vestuario y los artistas ensayan la parte musical. TENIENDO en cuenta todos estos extremos, suplicamos de su recto criterio nos la autorice con toda urgencia, tomando en consideración el cambio realizado en ella, así como el trastorno que representaría para dicha empresa, que abonó ya a los artistas una parte de su nómina, para los ensayos de la música.28 (We declare that the management of the Teatro Apolo in Valencia is making preparations to premiere the work on 4 December in the hope that it will by then have been approved by the censorship office, given that it poses no moral or political problems and given the mental and physical labour invested in the production, including the painting of the set, the execution of the costumes and the rehearsal of the music. In view of the extremity of these circumstances, we appeal to your good judgement and request that the work be licensed as quickly as possible, bearing in mind the revisions carried out as well as the damage that could be caused to the company, which has already paid the artistes part of their wages for the musical rehearsals.)

On this occasion there was no obstacle to authorization, though not in time for the planned opening on 4 December. The censor, Sr Palazón, commented: ‘La obra está escrita con gran decoro, limpieza y gusto literario. Puede autorizarse’ (‘The play is composed with great decorum, refinement and literary taste. It can be

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authorized’).29 The authors clearly did an excellent job of tidying up their libretto – or perhaps Palazón was simply less hostile than Suárez to texts originating from Catalonia. Between 1942 and 1944, six other works by Màntua were licensed for performance in Barcelona without significant problems. In almost every case, however, the date of authorization is at least a week after the planned date of the first performance. The application for La canción del Tirol (Song of the Tyrol) was made on 17 February 1942, giving a date of 15 March for the opening; authorization was given on 19 May after requests for costume sketches and song lyrics had been satisfied; the premiere did not actually take place until 12 August 1943. These delays may have been caused partly by production problems or the failure of theatres to submit the correct documentation, but they also point to the chronic inefficiency of a system that required paperwork to go from Barcelona to Madrid and back again. The inefficiency may indeed have involved a degree of deliberate obstructiveness stemming from hostility towards a Catalan playwright, however commercially successful and politically unthreatening she may have been. Màntua’s story becomes more interesting with La riada (The Flood), a play that posed a direct challenge to the regime’s language policy. The action is set in rural Valencia, offering a costumbrista evocation of country life including numerous phrases in Valencian Catalan. Translations into Castilian are written on the script by hand. The censor José María Ortiz remarks dismissively that the author’s attempt to recreate the ambience of the Valencian huerta (the fertile countryside surrounding the capital) is a complete failure. He objects in particular to expressions in the vernacular, and the authorization issued on 29 August 1944 was subject to the following condition: ‘Que la totalidad de la obra se representará en perfecto castellano, sin palabras ni frases algunas en Valenciano’ (‘The work in its entirety is to be performed in perfect Castilian, without any words or phrases in Valencian’).30 The author may have chosen Valencia on the assumption that it was a less risky setting than Catalonia, but the show was to be staged in Barcelona and the censors in Madrid were still not prepared to allow even snatches of Catalan to be spoken on stage in Catalonia. There is no record in Barcelona newspaper listings in 1944 or 1945 of performances of La riada, which indicates that the condition imposed by the censors killed off the planned production.

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Curiously, there is a long gap in Màntua’s theatrical career after the premiere of her last play in Castilian, Bajo el cielo mejicano (Under the Mexican Sky) in February 1945. There were no further censorship applications until 1950, and no commercial stage productions until 1959, when she burst back onto the Barcelona theatrical scene as an enormously successful author of plays in Catalan with Catalan settings. What makes her absence surprising is that this was precisely when the regime finally began to allow performances in Catalan: the new situation created in 1946 should have provided Màntua with a golden opportunity to be one of the leaders of the rebirth of Catalan theatre. Before turning our attention to her reinvention as a vernacular playwright, let us take a look at the early days of that rebirth. Like the original ban on performances in Catalan, its removal in 1946 was not enshrined in legislation. As the regime redefined itself in less totalitarian terms following the defeat of Germany and Italy by the Allies, the Falange’s influence waned rapidly. Concessions made in response to the new international situation included a slight easing of the repression of n ­ on-­ Castilian languages and cultural production. In July 1945, the propaganda and censorship functions of the Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular were transferred from the Falange to the new Subsecretaría de Educación Popular in the Ministerio de Educación Nacional. In January 1946, Luis Ortiz Muñoz (a member of the Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas) was put in charge of the Subsecretaría and Gabriel García Espina took over from Gabriel A ­ rias-­Salgado as Director General of Theatre and Cinema. These changes of personnel in Madrid were accompanied by the appointment of a new Civil Governor in Barcelona: Bartolomé Barba Hernández took office in August 1945. He is recorded as having visited Madrid in March 1946 ‘para gestionar diversos asuntos de interés para Barcelona y su provincia’ (‘to deal with various matters of interest for Barcelona and its province’), which may have been when he was given the g ­ o-­ahead for liberalizing measures such as the relaxation of the ban on performances in Catalan.31 Gallén quotes a strikingly disingenuous comment from Barba’s account of his time in charge of Barcelona (published in 1948): El director general de Cinematografía y Teatro me comunicó que autorizaba las representaciones teatrales en lengua catalana siempre que se cubriesen los trámites reglamentarios establecidos con carácter

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general para toda clase de representaciones. La gente no acudió en tropel al primer estreno, ni siquiera manifestó entusiasmo, como hubiera podido, tal vez, esperarse después del tiempo durante el cual no habían sido representadas en catalán obras teatrales, e incluso parece ser que los resultados económicos obtenidos por las compañías no eran muy brillantes. De todos modos, la autorización del teatro catalán privó a los elementos catalanistas de la única bandera fácil y popular que les quedaba, fue un paso hacia la normalidad y, por otra parte, no fue acogida con ninguna manifestación extraordinaria de entusiasmo por el público, lo que daba a entender que la masa de población no hace ni pretende hacer bandera de combate de su lengua, como quisieran los cuatro agitadores que aún quedan flotando sin punto posible de apoyo después de estas disposiciones.32 (The Director General of Cinema and Theatre informed me that he would allow theatrical performances in Catalan as long as the official procedures required for all forms of performance were adhered to. People did not exactly flock to the first performance. They did not even show much enthusiasm, as one might perhaps have expected them to do at the end of a period in which no plays in Catalan had been performed, and nor did the companies involved make much money. Anyway, the unbanning of theatre in Catalan deprived the Catalanists of the only easy and popular rallying point they had left. It was a step towards normality and was, in any case, not greeted with any great show of enthusiasm by the masses, which indicated that the majority of the population has no desire to use their language as a campaign banner, despite the urgings of the handful of agitators who have been left drifting without support after the introduction of these measures.)

Although press censorship ensured that the ­re-­establishment of performances in Catalan was not reported or reviewed, there is evidence that at least some of the first professional productions were received with considerable enthusiasm and became b ­ ox-­office successes. There certainly was popular demand for Catalan theatre, and Barba’s confidence that Catalans were uninterested in making a banner of their language was eventually proved to be spectacularly ­ill-­founded. If the impact of the lifting of the ban was limited, this was largely due to continuing restrictions on press coverage and advertising, the prohibition of particular authors, and limits on the number of venues licensed for productions in Catalan. The first play authorized for production in Catalan was Lo ferrer de tall (The Knifemaker) by Frederic Soler (under the pseudonym

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Pitarra), a rural drama first staged in 1874. There is no indication in the censorship file that the language in which the text was written was a significant issue, and the censor’s report is entirely positive: ‘Tesis: Un canto al honor y su defensa. Valor puramente literario: Positivo teniendo en cuenta la época en que fue escrita la obra. Valor teatral: positivo’ (‘Message: a celebration of honour and its defence. Literary merit: positive, bearing in mind the period in which the play was written. Theatrical merit: positive’).33 It is interesting, though, that the initial application (submitted by Jaume Borràs in April for a production at the Teatro Apolo) appears to have posed a problem of some kind. The application is marked: ‘20.4.46: Con esta fecha se devuelven sin censurar los dos ejemplares al interesado’(‘Both copies of the script returned uncensored to the applicant on 20/4/46’). This may indicate that it was initially assumed that a play in Catalan would not even be considered for authorization – that the change of policy was still under negotiation. A second application was submitted on 30 April for a run at the Apolo beginning on 10 May; this was approved but not until 16 June. In the meantime, local authorization must have been given, for the commercial premiere did take place on 10 May and ran until 18 June. It was first advertised in the Barcelona press on 8 May as the opening attraction of a season of Catalan theatre.34 By 14 May, it was being billed as a ‘grandioso éxito’ (‘great hit’).35 It ran again at the Apolo from July to September, was taken on tour around Catalonia by the Romea company, and was revived in May and September 1947. There was little about this rather ­ old-­ fashioned play that would have excited Barcelona audiences in 1946, and no reviews were published in the press: its success must have come primarily from the simple fact of constituting the first opportunity for more than seven years to hear Catalan on stage. What is not recorded either in histories of Catalan theatre or in the censorship file is that the first performance of Lo ferrer de tall was given by the ­Borràs-­Clapera Catalan theatre company on 2 May 1946 at a n ­ on-­ commercial venue, the Fomento Martinense in Barcelona.36 This must have been a ‘trial run’ approved by the local authorities in advance of authorization from Madrid, perhaps arranged with the help of the Church. The Fomento Martinense played an important role in getting this first season of Catalan theatre under way: the first performance of Guimerà’s Terra baixa was held there on 23 May 1946 before a commercial production at the Apolo.

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The success of Lo ferrer de tall was not an isolated phenomenon. The ­Borràs-­Clapera season included revivals of three other Catalan classics: Santiago Rusiñol’s La bona gent (Good People) from 21 May and El pintor de miracles (The Painter of Miracles) from 26 May, and special tribute performances of Terra baixa on 18 June. Lo ferrer de tall was brought back to the Apolo in July by Josep Bruguera’s company alongside Lo nuvi (The Fiancé) by Feliú i Codina and Rusiñol’s L’auca del senyor Esteve (The Ballad of Senyor Esteve). One of the hits of summer 1946 was Sagarra’s L’Hostal de la Glòria, which after two months at the Teatro Barcelona transferred to the Victoria for a further month. The restriction of the number of theatres licensed for performances in Catalan has sometimes been exaggerated: Ciurans claims that plays in Catalan could be performed in only one Barcelona theatre at a time, with a few venues taking turns.37 However, listings in the press from 1946–49 frequently show at least three Barcelona theatres simultaneously offering shows in Catalan. The cartelera for 24 July 1946 lists six Catalan titles (at the Apolo, Barcelona, Coliseo Pompeya, Condal, Romea and Victoria) and seven Castilian ones (at the Borrás, Calderón, Español, Poliorama, Tívoli, Comedia and Principal Palacio). ­Long-­established companies that had turned themselves into compañías de teatro español in 1939 were now r­e-­branded as compañías de teatro catalán ­(Vila-­Daví, ­Borràs-­Clapera and ­Pujol-­ Fornaguera) and were joined by new companies specializing in theatre in Catalan. Sagarra is often identified as the first Catalan playwright to have a new play staged: his El prestigi dels morts (The Prestige of the Dead) was authorized with no problems in September 1946 and premiered on 17 October at the Teatro Romea. However, the Valencian ‘comedia lírica folklórica’ (‘folkloric musical comedy’) La cotorra del mercat (The Parrot in the Market) by Paco Barchino and Leopoldo Magenti, could be regarded as the first new work in Catalan to be staged in Barcelona, at the Teatro Condal from 17 July 1946 following a successful run in Valencia. This show had some trouble with the censors, but not for its linguistic identity: ‘Alguno de los ritmos, como el b ­ ugui-­bugui, eran considerados escandalosos por aquel entonces. No obstante la revista alcanzó un éxito extraordinario, representándose también en Barcelona, con lo que sobrepasó el millar y medio de puestas en escena’ (‘One or two of the musical styles, such as the b ­ oogie-­woogie, were considered

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scandalous at the time. Nevertheless, the show was extraordinarily successful and was transferred to Barcelona, the total number of performances reaching more than 1500’).38 El prestigi dels morts was also preceded by Salvador Bonavia i Panyelles’s musical La Pinxeta i el noi maco (La Pinxeta and the Likely Lad), which premiered at the Teatro Victoria on 24 July 1946 and ran until 1 September. By the time Cecília A. Màntua made her theatrical comeback in the 1950s, performances in Catalan by professional and amateur companies were a normal feature of the Barcelona theatre scene, although not a prominent one. Theatre in Catalan received no official encouragement or investment and little press coverage, and was still overshadowed by theatre in Castilian. Advertisements for Catalan plays still had to be in Spanish, and the names of playwrights, directors and actors were still given in their Castilian form. The vernacular repertoire continued to be dominated by classics, and few new plays in Catalan were being produced. The lists drawn up by Gallén show the imbalance between new works in Castilian and in Catalan (see Table 1): Table 1: Number of new plays staged in Barcelona in Castilian and Catalan, 1947–5439 Year

Premieres in Castilian Premieres in Catalan (professional companies) (some in ­non-­commercial venues)

1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954

Number 88 80 95 74 74 89 60 70

Number

% of total

16 15 12 13 13 12 23 24 11 13 15 14 14 19 12 15

Màntua’s first play in Catalan, La Pepa maca (Our Pepa), a romantic drama set in a fishing village on the Costa Brava, was first submitted for censorship in June 1950 by the Compañía María ­Vila-­Pío Daví. Although the censor’s report complains about an inconveniently topical reference to rationing and the possibility that a female character might appear in a bathing suit, the

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production was authorized with one cut – a mildly suggestive piece of dialogue about camping. The censor’s report sneers at the work’s ‘sentimentalismo un tanto vulgar’ (‘rather clichéd sentimentality’) and appears – or feigns – to underestimate its potential impact: ‘Es posible que se represente, pero suponemos que sin pena ni gloria’ (‘A production is possible, but is unlikely to attract much attention, either favourable or unfavourable’).40 Despite the fact that no serious problem was identified, the decision was delayed for more than two months, with the result that this production was abandoned. It is unlikely that the author herself – a prominent member of the cultural establishment in Barcelona – was the problem, unless her Republican past had come to light. As in the early 1940s, this looks like deliberate obstruction, perhaps motivated by undeclared antipathy to the work’s Catalanness. Màntua, however, was patient and had other resources at her disposal. She used her contacts at Radio Barcelona to have a version of La Pepa maca broadcast in March 1954, which paved the way for semi-­ ­ professional productions in n ­on-­ commercial venues in Barcelona in June (three performances at the Círculo Cultural Español de San Andrés, starring the author herself) and December 1954 (one performance at the Teatro Cine Doménech in Rubí).41 The music for the sardana in the play, composed by Jaume Torrents, was released as a record in 1958 and sold well. Consequently, by the time the commercial premiere finally took place on 13 July 1959, La Pepa maca was already well known. The censor’s patronizing prediction that it would go almost unnoticed was satisfyingly confounded. The run at the Teatre Romea lasted until 18 September, followed by a further month at the Talía and a successful tour around Catalonia. Amateur groups were queuing up to perform the work (which they were still doing occasionally in the early 1970s): Cecilia A. Mantua nos suplica publiquemos la siguiente nota, para agradecer a toda la prensa y público en general la excelente acogida que durante 200 representaciones consecutivas de “La Pepa maca” se le ha dispensado en la ciudad de Barcelona […]. Todas las compañías de aficionados pueden representarla a partir de esta fecha en Barcelona ciudad, sin necesitar previas autorizaciones por parte de autora. En el resto de Cataluña sigue representándola brillantemente la Compañía del Teatro Romea, agotando las localidades en cuantos teatros se representa, y es la única compañía autorizada para representarla.42

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(Cecilia A. Mantua has asked us to publish the following note to express her thanks to the press and public for the excellent reception extended to La Pepa maca in Barcelona over the course of 200 performances. As from today, all amateur companies may perform the play in Barcelona city without the need to seek permission from the author. In the rest of Catalonia, the Teatro Romea company continues to perform La Pepa maca brilliantly to full houses wherever it is staged, and is the only company authorized to stage it.)

By April 1960, when Màntua published a novel based on La Pepa maca, there had been more than a thousand performances all over Catalonia. Whatever obstacles had been standing in the way of her triumph as a Catalan playwright writing about Catalan people and settings were now swept away. Between 1959 and 1963 she enjoyed a string of successful premieres of new work and plays written years earlier, some of them having been piloted in the same way as La Pepa maca, by means of a radio production and a small number of performances at a ­non-­commercial venue. La cançó de la florista (The Song of the Flower Girl, 1959), La cinglera de la mort (The Crags of Death, 1960), Princesa de Barcelona (Princess of Barcelona, 1960), María Coral (1960), Diana a l’oficina (Diana at the Office, 1961), L’inventor del Carrer Gran (Inventor on the High Street, 1962) and Història d’un mirall (Story of a Mirror, 1963) were all authorized relatively quickly and unproblematically, albeit with occasional cuts. Another sign of the gradual loosening of the constraints on theatre in Catalan was that these plays were being reviewed fully (if not always enthusiastically) in the press. These years in which Màntua established herself as one of the leading authors on the commercial Catalan stage also saw the beginnings of the Independent Theatre movement: the Agrupació Dramàtica de Barcelona was set up in 1955 and the Escola d’Art Dramàtic Adrià Gual in 1960. Màntua’s focus on Catalan popular and folk culture was generally regarded by the censors as unthreatening, part of her sentimental appeal to ‘el gran público’ (‘a mass audience’).43 Princesa de Barcelona, her biggest hit after La Pepa maca, was approved in 1960 and ­re-­examined in 1967. On this second occasion, Barceló’s report notes the ‘trasfondo de exaltación localista de la vieja Barcelona’ (‘localist celebration of old Barcelona in the background’) but does not identify it as a problem. Aragonés is more explicit in distinguishing between politically motivated nationalism and folksy

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regionalism: ‘No hay sentimientos separatistas, sino aldeanismo’ (There are no separatist feelings expressed, merely provincialism’).44 Cuts were imposed, however, including the following moment of diglossic tension: locutor. – Le ruego señora que si quiere interrumpir, no se exprese en lengua vernácula. catarina. – I faci el favor de no dir males paraules que una servidora i la mena no l’heu ofés en res …45 (tv announcer [in Spanish]: Madam, if you want to interrupt, would you mind not using the vernacular? catarina [in Catalan]: And do us the favour of not using bad language, ’cause yours truly and this bloke here haven’t said anything against you.)

Màntua does not represent an extreme example of the repressive effect of censorship on theatre. Her pragmatic acceptance of the need to write in Castilian in the 1940s, together with the aesthetic conventionality and ideological conservatism of her work, allowed her to build a reasonably successful career. However, her case casts revealing light on the difficult conditions in which theatre in Barcelona developed in the p ­ ost-­war period, providing specific evidence of both the outright suppression of the Catalan language and the vaguer circumstantial constraints that seem to have weighed particularly heavily on Catalan dramatists. The disdain with which her work was regarded by censors and critics alike was occasioned largely by its Catalan populism, but there is also a gender dimension. A review of Diana a l’oficina (1961) asks ‘¿Hay una masa que responde a los resortes sentimentales todavía?’ (‘Is there a mass audience that still responds to sentimental devices?’) and answers patronizingly: ‘En ciertos ángulos del pueblo, sí, y a éstos va destinada la obra. ¿Quiénes son? Los oyentes de seriales radiofónicos. Cultura con minúscula, pero que llena un vacío a quien no tiene en su haber otra cosa que sentimentalismos’ (‘Yes there is, in certain sectors of the public, and it is at these sectors that the play is targeted. Who are these spectators? People who listen to radio serials. It’s culture with a small c, but it fills a void for someone who has nothing to draw on but sentimentality’).46 A statement published by Màntua on Història d’un mirall exposes the sexism behind the constant sneering at sentimentalism: ‘Yo soy una autora

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popular, […] he tenido éxitos de público, […] mi teatro es directo y […] lo corriente es que reciba elogios de ese público – particularmente del femenino, que me sigue a través del teatro y de la radio – y censuras de la crítica’ (‘I’m a popular author, I’ve had plays that have been a big hit with the public. My theatre is straightforward and what usually happens is that it receives warm praise from the public – especially women, who follow me in the theatre and on the radio – and hostility from the critics’).47 Her work was seen as ‘culture with a small c’ both because of its Catalanness (the language, the settings, the popular culture) and its femininity (the sex of the author and of most of her protagonists, the emphasis on emotional relationships). Its importance in the cultural life of Barcelona in this period was systematically downplayed and undermined by both censors and critics – and we should not forget that some of the censors were themselves critics. The evidence presented in this chapter provides a more complete and nuanced picture than has previously been available of a series of key phases in the evolution of theatre in Catalonia from 1939 to the 1960s: the enforcement of the complete ban on performances in Catalan; the slightly greater leniency shown towards Valencian regionalism; the significance of the Pastorets tradition and the extent to which it was subject to censorship; the difficulties encountered by a Catalan dramatist writing plays in Castilian; the lifting of the ban in 1946 and the extent of the impact of the first seasons of theatre in Catalan; the beginnings of the importance of the n ­ on-­commercial circuit; the continuing hegemony of S ­ panish-­ language theatre through the 1950s; and the underestimated triumph of Màntua as a fully Catalan playwright at the end of the 1950s. The constant factor running through all these phases is the Franco regime’s insistence on treating all Catalan theatre – and indeed Catalan culture as a whole – as ‘culture with a small c’. The language was dismissed as a mere dialect, the cultural tradition as a regionalist backwater, and the desire to produce new work in Catalan as an unnecessary and tiresome irritant, supposedly driven by a few fanatics without popular support. It took Catalan theatre a long time to overcome the effects of these prejudices, but the seeds of its revival can be seen in the period studied here. By the late 1960s, independent Catalan theatre was beginning to have an influence far beyond Barcelona and was regularly challenging the dead hand of state censorship. That process will be illuminated in

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the book that emerges from our Theatre Censorship in Spain project.

Notes 1

David George, Theatre in Madrid and Barcelona, 1892–1936: Rivals or Collaborators? (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), pp. 178–9. 2 George, Theatre in Madrid and Barcelona, p. 178. 3 Enric Gallén, El teatre a la ciutat de Barcelona durant el règim franquista (1939–1954) (Barcelona: Institut del Teatre, 1985). 4 In collaboration with Catherine O’Leary and Diego Santos Sánchez. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council from 2008 to 2011. Project website: http://www.dur.ac.uk/mlac/tcs. 5 The contents of many of these files are reproduced in Berta Muñoz Cáliz, Expedientes de la censura teatral franquista, 2 vols (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2006). Accessible online at http:// www.bertamuñoz.es/exedientes/indice.html. 6 The most comprehensive description to date of the Francoist censorship system is provided in Berta Muñoz Cáliz, El teatro crítico español durante el franquismo, visto por sus censores (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2005). For a concise overview in English, see Michael Thompson, ‘The Order of the Visible and the Sayable: Theatre Censorship in ­20th-­Century Spain’, Hispanic Research Journal, 13 (2012), 93–110. 7 Francisco Franco, ‘Declaraciones al enviado especial del periódico brasileño Jornal do Brasil’, January 1938, reproduced in Generalísimo Francisco Franco (2003–2006). Online: http://www.generalisimofranco. com/Discursos/prensa/00018.htm (accessed 15/01/2013). 8 Gobierno de la Nación (Madrid), ‘Ley de 5 de abril de 1938 aboliendo el Estatuto de Cataluña’, Boletín Oficial del Estado no. 534 (08/04/1938), p. 6674. Online: http://www.boe.es/datos/pdfs/BOE/1938/534/A06674– 06674.pdf (accessed 10/01/2013). 9 Servicio Nacional de Propaganda (Barcelona), ‘Actividades del Teatro, Música y Espectáculos’, La Vanguardia Española (Barcelona), 09/02/1939, p. 5. Hereafter, LVE. 10 LVE, 8/3/1939, p. 3. 11 See the appendices in Gallén, El teatre a la ciutat de Barcelona for lists of works premiered, companies and venues. 12 Xavier Fàbregas, Història del teatre català (Barcelona: Millà, 1978), p. 267. 13 Ministerio de la Gobernación (Madrid), Censorship decision on Marín Melià, Un revolcó a temps, 19/12/1939. Expediente 463/39 (Archivo General de la Administración [AGA], Alcalá de Henares).

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14 Francisco Marín Melià, Letter to Servicio Nacional de Propaganda, Ministerio de la Gobernación (Madrid), 24/11/1939. Expediente 463/39 (AGA). 15 Ministerio de la Gobernación (Madrid), Censor’s report by José María García Escudero on Lluch Ferrando, El Negre, August 1941. Expediente 2428/41 (AGA). 16 Fernando Lluch Ferrando, El Negre, typescript marked with cuts imposed by the censorship office (1941). Expediente 2428/41 (AGA). 17 ‘Nuestro reverendo Prelado pasará unos días en Cartagena’, LVE, 28/12/1939, p. 3. 18 Gobierno Civil de Barcelona, ‘Sobre la representación de obras navideñas ­religioso-­teatrales’, LVE, 31/12/1939, p. 3. 19 Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Unpublished interview with Michael Thompson (December 2010). 20 Rosendo Fortunet, Los pastorets musicals del Vendrell, typescript marked with cuts imposed by the censorship office (1966). Expediente 348/66 (AGA). 21 Ministerio de Información y Turismo (Madrid), Notification of authorization of L’Estel de Natzaret, 11/01/1967. Expediente 356/66, Fons 318 (Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya, Sant Cugat del Vallès). 22 Fàbregas, Història del teatre català, pp. 268–9. 23 Enric Gallén, ‘Sobre el teatre professional, amateur i independent a Catalunya durant el règim franquista’, in Josep Massot i Muntaner (ed.), Miscel·lània Joaquim Molas, 6 (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2010) (Estudis de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes, 61), pp. 121–2. 24 Neus Real Mercadal, Dona i literatura a la Catalunya de preguerra (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2006), p. 170. 25 Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, ‘Cine y anarquismo: Listado de películas producidas por los diferentes sindicatos y federaciones de industria del ramo del espectáculo y la cinematografía’ (Madrid: CNT, 2001). Online: http://archivo.cnt.es/Documentos/cineyanarquismo/listado _pelis_prod.htm (accessed 15/02/2013). 26 Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular de FET y de las JONS, Secretaría General del Movimiento (Madrid), Censor’s report by Sr Suárez and Censorship Department’s decision on Mantua and Alonso, A ti vuela mi canción, September 1941. Expediente 2525/41 (AGA). 27 ‘Cartelera: Teatros’, LVE, 18/10/1941, p. 8. 28 Cecilia A. Mantua and Antonio Losada, Letter to Jefe de Censura de Obras Teatrales, Subsecretaría de Educación Popular, 26/11/1941. Expediente 2705/41 (AGA). 29 Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular de FET y de las JONS, Secretaría General del Movimiento (Madrid), Censor’s report on Mantua and Losada, Serenata de Schubert o A ti vuelan mis canciones, December 1941. Expediente 2705/41 (AGA).

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30 Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular de FET y de las JONS, Secretaría General del Movimiento (Madrid), Censor’s report by José María Ortiz and notification of censorship decision on Mantua, La riada, August 1944. Expediente 497/44 (AGA). 31 ‘Gobierno Civil: Regreso del gobernador’, LVE, 30/03/1946, 10. 32 Quoted in Gallén, El teatre a la ciutat de Barcelona, p. 111. 33 Ministerio de Educación Nacional (Madrid), Censor’s report by José María Malagelada on Pitarra, Lo ferrer de tall, 04/06/1946. Expediente 225/46 (AGA). 34 ‘Cartelera: Teatros’, LVE, 08/05/1946, 6. 35 ‘Cartelera: Teatros’, LVE, 14/05/1946, 11. 36 ‘Música, Teatro y Cinematografía’, LVE, 01/05/1946, 7. The Foment Martinenc is a Catholic workers’ educational association (ateneu), which still hosts amateur theatre (see their website: www.fomentmartinenc.org). 37 Enric Ciurans, ‘El teatro catalán: una dramaturgia de la imagen’, in Osvaldo Pelletieri (ed.), Teatro, memoria y ficción (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2005), p. 316). 38 José Soler Carnicer, Valencia pintoresca y tradicional, 2 (Valencia: Carena, 2007), p. 161. 39 Statistics derived from Appendices 7 and 11 in Gallén, El teatre a la ciutat de Barcelona. 40 Ministerio de Educación Nacional (Madrid), Censor’s report by Javier Rubio on Mantua, La Pepa maca, August 1950. Expediente 349/50 (AGA). 41 Reports in El Mundo Deportivo (Barcelona), 04/06/1954, 6 and 23/12/1954, 2. Hereafter, EMD. 42 ‘La Pepa maca y las compañías de teatro de aficionados’, EMD, 22/10/1959, 5. 43 Ministerio de Información y Turismo (Madrid), Censor’s report by Javier de Valdivia on Mantua, La cinglera de la mort, January 1960. Expediente 9/60 (AGA). 44 Ministerio de Información y Turismo (Madrid), Censors’ reports by Pedro Barceló and Juan Emilio Aragonés on Mantua, Princesa de Barcelona, April 1967. Expediente 182/60 (AGA). 45 Cecília A. Màntua, Princesa de Barcelona, typescript retained by Junta de Censura Teatral, Ministerio de Información y Turismo (Madrid). Expediente 182/60 (AGA). 46 Fernando Lience Basil, ‘Estreno del sainete original de Cecilia A. Mantua, Diana a l’oficina’, EMD, 24/07/1961, 6. 47 Cecília A. Màntua, ‘Autocrítica de Història d’un mirall’, EMD, 27/07/1965, 7.

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Bibliography Ciurans, Enric, ‘El teatro catalán: una dramaturgia de la imagen’, in Osvaldo Pelletieri (ed.), Teatro, memoria y ficción (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2005), pp. 315–22. Fàbregas, Xavier, Història del teatre català (Barcelona: Millà, 1978). Gallén, Enric, El teatre a la ciutat de Barcelona durant el règim franquista (1939– 1954) (Barcelona: Institut del Teatre, 1985). —— ‘Sobre el teatre professional, amateur i independent a Catalunya durant el règim franquista’, in Josep Massot i Muntaner (ed.), Miscel. lània Joaquim Molas, 6 (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2010) (Estudis de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes, 61), pp. 109–46. George, David, Theatre in Madrid and Barcelona, 1892–1936: Rivals or Collaborators? (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002). Muñoz Cáliz, Berta, El teatro crítico español durante el franquismo, visto por sus censores (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2005). —— Expedientes de la censura teatral franquista, 2 vols (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2006). Real Mercadal, Neus, Dona i literatura a la Catalunya de preguerra (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2006). Thompson, Michael, ‘The Order of the Visible and the Sayable: Theatre Censorship in 2 ­0th-­ Century Spain’, Hispanic Research Journal, 13 (2012), 93–110.

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Rodolf Sirera’s El verí del teatre (The Audition): Creating Performance, Reality and Politics On Stage JOHN LONDON Queen Mary, University of London

Introduction: A Popular Play First written for Catalan television in 1978 and broadcast in October of the same year (in a production by Mercè Vilaret), El verí del teatre has developed into something of a theatrical phenomenon. Emilio Hernández’s staging of a Spanish version by José María Rodríguez Méndez in 1983 (at Madrid’s Centro Dramático Nacional) was revived in 1985 and went on to tour Spain in 1986. Starring José María Rodero and Manuel Galiana, it was also recorded for television. In addition to several productions in Catalan, another major Spanish production – this time directed by Mario Gas – premiered in 2012 prior to a national and ­ South-­ American tour lasting ­one-­and-­a-­half years. El verí del teatre has reached the status of a set text in schools of C ­ atalan-­speaking regions and the translation of the play into fifteen languages meant that Rodolf Sirera (b. 1948) became the first dramatist writing in Catalan since Àngel Guimerà (1845–1924) to see many significant productions of his work outside Spain. (This was just before a dramatist of a younger generation, Sergi Belbel (b. 1963), established his international

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reputation.) Moreover, the play has achieved such popularity, despite the author’s geographical origin (Valencia, not Barcelona), some dismissive reviews and the belief by admirers of Sirera’s drama that it is far from being his most interesting or original play.1 Rodolf Sirera has argued that El verí del teatre is his most performed text because it is superficially easy to stage and has only two actors.2 However, this does not adequately explain the attractions to both audiences and literary critics of a dialogue usually lasting barely an hour. As well as trying to account for the continuing fascination of this play, the aim of the present study is to trace the wider ramifications of its content. Through the analysis of its structure, its range of references and its political implications, the text can be seen to locate dilemmas of performance and social reality both in the immediate context of the 1970s and in a debate spanning centuries.

Structure: Stages of Deceit and Discovery Much of the impact of El verí del teatre derives from its structure, a pattern of trickery in which information is provided and then subverted. Although the play contains no explicit division into acts or scenes, five main episodes structure the action, which takes place in Paris in 1784:3 1. In the first, the actor Gabriel de Beaumont, invited to the mansion of someone called ‘senyor marquès de …’ (‘Monsieur le Marquis de …’), is waiting impatiently for his host. A Servant – treated with haughty disdain by Gabriel – speaks with the actor about the acting profession and serves him a wine from Cyprus (pp. 91–95; 77–81).4 2. The Servant then reveals that he is in fact the Marquis himself and changes his appearance and delivery to prove it. He goes on to tell Gabriel about his theory of theatre, but Gabriel has fallen asleep and the Marquis gives him a drink from another bottle to keep him awake. The aristocrat then explains why he wanted to meet: he has written a play about the life of Socrates and wants Gabriel to play the part of the philosopher during his dying moments (pp. 95–105; 81–91). 3. Gabriel performs the monologue, but the Marquis is not pleased with it since, as he says, Gabriel’s way of acting ‘no

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arriba a transmetre allò que succeeix al personatge’ (‘doesn’t manage to convey what’s happening to the character’; pp. 106; 92). Gabriel feels dizzy and realizes that he has been poisoned (pp. 105–9; 92–96). 4. The Marquis proposes a pact: Gabriel will act the same piece again and, if the Marquis likes his performance, he will give the actor the antidote. Because Gabriel thinks that his life is at risk, his second performance is much more natural than his first (pp. 110–13; 97–9). 5. After the performance, the Marquis gives Gabriel a glass from which he drinks. However, the last surprise comes when the Marquis reveals that, far from giving Gabriel the antidote, he has just made him drink a lethal poison. Indeed, Gabriel seems to die on stage, although the Marquis announces that the actor will soon recover consciousness. The final words we hear are those of the Marquis: ‘Aquesta nit és una nit d’estrena, i la funció va a començar … ara mateix’ (‘Tonight is the opening night and the performance is about to begin … right now’; pp. 117; 103). The lights slowly go out and darkness covers the stage (pp. 113–17; 100–3). Four major points emerge clearly from the outline of these sections. The first is the way in which the play sets up a situation, only to have it undermined by another fact: it seems there is a Servant (1) who is in fact the Marquis (2); the apparent realization of being poisoned (3) is mollified by the potential for an antidote (4); but the antidote was not necessary and a real poison is administered (5). Second, these reversals are part of a general patterning in which the control swings from Gabriel (1) to the Marquis (2), with possible interruptions while Gabriel performs and attempts to dominate the stage (3, 4), until the Marquis reasserts his authority (5). Third, the revelation of successive truths potentially exercises a power over the audience as well as Gabriel because we, like him (although perhaps one step ahead of him), think we know what is happening until another fact contradicts the ostensible situation. Fourth, it is easy to observe how the pace of the action accelerates: relatively little happens at the beginning, as ideas about acting are discussed (1, 2), after which it is a question of life and death, played out in moments of theatre within theatre (3, 4, 5). The longest episode (2) occurs towards the start, contains the

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greatest amount of exposition and, in effect, establishes the ideological and factual basis of the rest of the play. These structural characteristics may display technical artistry and pinpoint how it works in the theatre, but they will also be important to show how the play embodies the theories exposed within it and manages to extend them.

Modern Precedents and Comparisons If one ignores the ideas in El verí del teatre, its tricksy plotting – stemming from the conflictual pretence of two characters – provokes comparison with less intellectual drama. Critics have been keen to mention Sleuth as a precedent.5 Anthony Shaffer’s play, translated in a somewhat trimmed version as La huella, was produced in Madrid in 1970, months after its premiere in London the same year. While not reaching the fi ­ ve-­year stint of the original English production, La huella was one of the most popular theatrical thrillers in the Franco period. The 1972 film of Sleuth, with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, further increased Spanish awareness of the play and it was this version with which Sirera was familiar before writing El verí del teatre. (Shaffer’s plot was subsequently given a new lease of life on screen when Jude Law joined Michael Caine in a 2007 remake.)6 The similarities between the two plays are obvious. Both are essentially dialogues between two men: the Marquis and Gabriel; and thriller writer Andrew Wyke and the younger Milo Tindle. Sleuth also relies on the sort of suspense and trickery manifest in Sirera’s play. In the first act, Andrew persuades Milo to dress up as a clown and enact a robbery of Andrew’s house, but then seems to turn serious and kill him. In the second act, Inspector Doppler comes to Andrew’s house to investigate Milo’s death, but after a while, Milo reveals himself as Doppler and we learn that the shooting of the first act was with a blank (Milo fainted from fear). In another twist – similar to the desperate turns in the action of El verí del teatre – Milo then claims to have framed Andrew for the murder of Andrew’s girlfriend Teˉa: Andrew has to find all the incriminating clues before the police arrive. But after he has done so, Milo tells him that this has also been a trick and that Teˉa is alive. The deception in Sleuth is patently dependent on acting out imaginary characters

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and convincing lying: compare the Marquis’s Servant to Milo’s Doppler; or Marquis’s misleading use of drinks to Milo’s invention of a murder story. The Marquis seems more successful than Gabriel in his performances just as Milo is a more persuasive fabulist of detective plots than the professional writer Andrew. What ­throw-­away comparisons or claims of Sirera’s indebtedness to Shaffer fail to acknowledge, though, are the fundamental differences of motive and social context in the two plays. Sleuth is set in contemporary Wiltshire and the reasons for the main stages of the action are correspondingly domestic and petty. Andrew engineers the mock murder of Milo in the first act because the younger man is having an affair with his wife. Andrew is also motivated by snobbery and xenophobia; as he says before shooting Milo: I hate you because you are a culling spick. A wop – a not one of me. Come, little man, did you really believe I would give up my wife and jewels to you? That I would make myself that ridiculous?

Likewise, underlying the argument between Shaffer’s characters and their panic is the notion of official justice or, put simply, being found out for crimes committed. This constant fear of the discovery of guilt culminates in the closing moments of the play when Andrew is so angered by Milo’s deception that he murders him for real: the stage directions indicate that a vehicle approaches and ‘a flashy blue police car light shines through the window’. So although Sleuth relies, like El verí del teatre, on deception through acting, it evolves into a parody of the detective story or thriller, rather than a piece of metatheatre. Andrew’s references to Agatha Christie and Nicholas Blake confirm this, as does Milo’s excoriation of the detective story as ‘the normal recreation of snobbish, o ­ut-­ dated, life hating, ignoble minds’. Integral to the thrill of the genre is – in contrast to El verí del teatre – actually showing the final killing taking place on stage (complete with blood).7 The continuing attraction of the formula of two characters in a constant duel of mutual deception can be seen in a film such as Duplicity (2009). However, a precise theatrical precedent to the period cruelty of El verí del teatre is Peter Weiss’s play (of 1964), known in its full title in English as The Persecution and Assassination of ­Jean-­Paul Marat as Performed by the Theatre Company of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. A censored

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Spanish production proved to be innovative and controversial in 1968, and Sirera saw Peter Brook’s film version. The comparisons in this case are historical and aesthetic. Since the cruelty of Sirera’s Marquis de … is an inevitable evocation of Sade (1740–1814), Weiss’s subject is relevant. Both aristocrats end up directing theatre within theatre and take a voyeuristic pleasure in the activity. Despite the huge cast in Weiss’s play, the singing and the dialogue in verse form, it has glimpses of the desires expressed in El verí del teatre. ‘Was wir tun ist nur ein Traumbild / von dem was wir tun wollen’ (‘What we do is only a vision / of what we want to do’) says Weiss’s Sade, imagining the most horrible tortures; while Sirera’s Marquis wants to put on stage ‘allò que no gosem de reconèixer ni d’acceptar en la nostra existència quotidiana’ (‘what we haven’t the courage to admit or accept in everyday life’; pp. 101; 87) and asks Gabriel if he does not envy the murderers he plays.8 Of course, the aestheticization of violence enacted on human beings – where private performances are played out for real – urges comparison with a different genre. It is not surprising that reviewers have seen Sirera’s drama as a theatrical version of the snuff movie. El verí del teatre has also been linked to the vogue for putting violent or humiliating personal video recordings – often made on mobile phones – on the Internet for public consumption. And if we require a sensationalist, ­ twenty-­ first-­ century version in fiction for such activity, Stieg Larsson’s novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is unusually pertinent. Its principal villain, Martin Vanger, has spent years kidnapping, raping and killing women, and delights in watching ­home-­made videos of his previous victims. Vanger even tells the hero of the story about a sense of social revolt in his cruel hobby: ‘You with your bourgeois conventions would never grasp this, but the excitement comes from planning a kidnapping.’ 9 This is not dissimilar to the Marquis’s declaration that the theatre should be ‘per damunt de totes les coses, el plaer de transgredir les normes establertes’ (‘above all, the joy of transgressing established norms’; pp. 100–1; 87).

The Instrinsic Wider Context But while Sleuth is relevant in terms of ludic suspense and Weiss or Larsson provide parallels to the forms of violence, it is not just the

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different social context of El verí del teatre and the absence of any actual violence which set it apart. What contribute to the conceptual richness of Sirera’s play are the range and ramifications of the references cited in the dialogue. The first reviewer of the play – after it was broadcast on television – realized that it was a philosophical confrontation rather than a thriller. After all, the central trick of the action – the Marquis’s cruel manipulation of the poison – can hardly be considered a great surprise at first, given three significant factors: the title of the play (which means, literally, ‘the poison of the theatre’); the possible allusion to the Marquis de Sade; and the choice of Socrates (c.469–399 bc) for the performance of a death speech, since it is well known the philosopher took his own life by drinking hemlock. Even when the title is not rendered accurately, as in the English version (where it is called The Audition), audiences easily pick up on the other two clues so they are initially more informed than Gabriel (at least in sections 1–3) as to what is going on: it is common for the Marquis’s first mention of Socrates to be met by knowing laughter since we have seen Gabriel drink the wine and watch him fall asleep because of it. And this is the other, more profound, level on which El verí del teatre functions: named references (Socrates) – and those alluded to (hemlock) – need to be understood for comprehension of the consequences of the action on stage.10 Socrates, for example, is not merely an appropriate reference for ­liquid-­induced death. His life, free from artifice, is a suitable vehicle for removing the artificial acting techniques the Marquis wants to destroy. If Socrates is the philosophical incarnation of authenticity, then he is an ideal subject for the fulfilment of the vision of theatre expressed by the Marquis: ‘El teatre no ha de ser ficció, ni art, ni tècnica’ (‘Drama should not be fiction, art or technique’; pp. 100; 87). The Marquis also indicates that his play is ‘una adaptació lliure’ (‘a free adaptation’; pp. 102; 89) of Xenophon’s Apology and thus invites a consideration of his source. A game of contradictions is being played out here. In the Apology, often called Socrates’ Defence to the Jury, Xenophon (c. 430–c. 354 bc) gives an admittedly incomplete account of the philosopher at his trial, just as the Marquis selects only one monologue for Gabriel to perform. Xenophon, unlike Plato, does not mention Socrates’ belief in an afterlife, so the desperation of the Marquis’s monologue is, in part, justified: ‘Els homes moren entre dolors, entre convulsions, entre crits … i tenen

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por’ (‘Men die painfully, in convulsions, crying out for mercy … and they’re scared’; pp. 105; 92). But the Marquis’s adaptation is so free that – in another example of his deception – his words directly oppose the whole point of Xenophon’s version. In the structural terms evoked earlier, we can say that a textual situation (the mention of Xenophon as source) is undermined by what follows it (the actual monologue). For what Xenophon emphasizes is that Socrates ‘did not weaken in the presence of death … but was cheerful not only in the expectation of death but in meeting it’. (This expands the ideas in Xenophon’s Memorabilia that Socrates bore his death nobly and consciously avoided the infirmities of old age.) At the beginning of the Marquis’s monologue, in contrast, Socrates asks of his companions, what ‘actitud’ (‘pose’) history requires him to strike at the moment of his death, and then answers, rhetorically: ‘Una actitud heroica, i un rostre ple de serenitat’ (‘A heroic pose, with an expression of eternal rest on my face’; pp. 105; 92). But he goes on to explain how history knows nothing of real death, and that real death is, as we have seen, feared by all. In one sense, as the classical scholar Pau Gilabert argues, Socrates’ refusal to consider an escape from his fate (in Xenophon’s account) implies his opting for a ‘theatrical’ death (in the sense that it is a pose worthy of being contemplated); however, as Gilabert admits, the Marquis – in his treatment of Gabriel – is ultimately concerned with killing the historical fiction that is Socrates along with his worthy death.11 These spurious classical attributions are not developed explicitly in El verí del teatre: Socrates is, as the Marquis says to Gabriel, a ‘pretext’ (pp. 102–3; 89). On the other hand, the majority of names cited in the dialogue are firmly located in its immediate setting and form part of the debate between the Marquis and Gabriel. The latter confirms the characteristics as well as the date of the period when he talks of ‘aquest segle nostre, tan il·lustrat’ (‘a century as enlightened as ours’; pp. 99; 85). And the Marquis views the possibility of penetrating the inner life of dying men as a pleasure ‘en una època de racionalisme i d’ensopiment com és ara la nostra’ (‘in this, our dreary age of rationalism’; pp. 103; 90). In common with many of Sirera’s plays, French culture provides the specific coordinates for defining the issues. Racine (1639–99), for instance, serves – when the Marquis is speaking through his disguise as the Servant – to represent all great dramatists of the past

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who express themselves through verse and ‘d’una forma que … no és natural i amb un vocabulari que, per altra banda, tampoc no és un vocabulari d’ús corrent’ (‘in a way which … is hardly natural and, what’s more, with words which aren’t even in common use’; pp. 94; 80). It is, the Servant implies, difficult to experience the emotions of dramatic characters created by such artificial means. Likewise, Rousseau (1712–78) is made to stand for a set of ideas when the Marquis exclaims ‘Ah, si prenguéssem seriosament les teories del senyor Rousseau, aquest món seria una mena d’infern …!’ (‘Oh, if Monsieur Rousseau’s theories were taken seriously, we’d live in a kind of hell on earth …!’; pp. 99; 85). Since he talks of ‘el bon salvatge’ (‘the noble savage’) in the same speech, it is easy to see this as a disparaging reference to Rousseau’s notion – expressed in his Second Discourse – that man is somehow better in his primitive state and that concepts such as pity are natural, but have become corrupted by reason and society. (It will be possible to see how the Marquis, despite contradicting Rousseau’s idealistic view of nature, in fact agrees with other, supporting interpretations in the same discourse.)12 The name, however, which supplies a pivot to both the action and the discussion in El verí del teatre is Denis Diderot (1713–84), who died in the same year in which the play is set. It is Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien (dating from 1773–7), most usefully rendered as The Paradox of Acting, which constitutes the prime reference and had already been alluded to in the epigraph to a previous play by Sirera.13 To a certain extent, El verí del teatre can be considered a homage to Diderot’s discussion of aesthetics: external similarities confirm this, such as the dialogue form they share, and the fact that Sirera’s subtitle, character description and first speech indicate that Gabriel is a ‘comediant’ (rather than the usual ‘actor’; pp. 85, 89, 91; 73, 76, 77), and therefore an echo of Diderot’s title (comédien). Significantly, in a world in which the aristocracy – as represented by the Marquis – dominates the manipulation of cultural references (Racine, Socrates, Xenophon, Rousseau), Diderot is the only named reference mentioned by both Gabriel and his social superior. Gabriel mocks the Servant’s comments by saying he has turned out to be a philosopher, like Diderot (pp. 94; 80) and that he must be a secret subscriber to the Encyclopédie (edited by Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, 1751–72). Later, the Marquis reveals that he does indeed aspire to argue on Diderot’s

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level and (as if clumsily anticipating Stanislavski’s techniques) prove Diderot wrong: el senyor Diderot parla, de manera absoluta, que el millor actor és aquell que més allunyat roman del seu personatge. El teatre és ficció, i, com a tal ficció, la forma més adient de ­crear-­la en l’espectador és, justament, ­fingir-­la d’una manera cerebral … Jo, pel meu costat, vull defensar les posicions extremes: les millors actuacions són aquelles a les quals l’actor és el personatge, el viu intensament, perd, inclús, la consciència de la seua pròpia individualitat. (p. 100) Monsieur Diderot states, quite categorically, that the best actors are the ones who are most distanced from their characters. Theatre is fiction, and, as such, the best way of creating that fiction in an audience is, precisely, to imitate it, using one’s mind … As far as I’m concerned, I want to argue the opposite: that the best performances are those in which the actor becomes the character, lives his life as intensely as his own, and even loses all awareness of his own individuality. (pp. 86–7)

Perhaps, as a member of the elitist intellectual circles of the period, the Marquis has been allowed access to one of the manuscript copies made of Paradoxe sur le comédien (another ended up with Garrick (1717–79)), since the text had to wait until 1830 for publication. In a couple of sentences, he has summarized the essence of Diderot’s ideas, given prominence by the first and most convincing of the philosopher’s two interlocuteurs: ‘C’est l’extrême sensibilité qui fait les acteurs médiocres; … c’est le manque absolu de sensibilité qui prépare les acteurs sublimes.’ Les larmes du comédien descendent de son cerveau; celles de l’homme sensible montent de son cœur. ‘It’s extreme sensibility that makes mediocre actors; … it’s the total lack of sensibility that prepares sublime actors.’ The tears of an actor flow down from his brain; those of a sensitive man rise from his heart.

The consequences of such a theory of acting are manifold. Creation takes place distant in time from the catastrophe which might have stimulated it. Hence, Diderot is keen to stress the differences between reality and art. The former is disorganized, the latter harmonious. The actor, claims Diderot, does not say anything or do anything in society exactly as he does on stage (‘Le comédien ne dit rien, ne fait rien dans la société précisément comme sur la scène’). The reason is clear: ‘c’est un autre monde’ (‘it’s another world’). As

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the Servant, with apparent ingenuousness, asks Gabriel, does the actor not behave on stage the same as he does ‘en la vida real’ (‘in real life’)? To which Gabriel replies ‘És clar que no’ (‘Of course not’; pp. 93; 79). Diderot is insistent: actors impress audiences, not when they are angry, but when they act out anger. It is a question of the very definition of the acting profession: when we say somebody is a great actor (‘un grand comédien’) we do not mean he feels (‘il sent’), but that he excels at simulating (‘il excelle à simuler’), even though he may feel nothing. The perceptive clarity of Diderot’s interpretation means it is still used to specify how performances work in the theatre and, even, in large part, what it denotes to be human.14

Theatre as a Drug: What is Good Acting? While Diderot’s ideas provide an explicit framework for Sirera’s text, we do not need to wait for the appearance of his name to realize that this is going to be a play concerned with the nature of performance. Sirera had previously written about an imaginary actor – in his ­avant-­garde Plany en la mort d’Enric Ribera (Lament for the Death of Enric Ribera, 1972) – and had coordinated the text about a Belgian theatre company – Memòria general d’activitats (General Report on Activities, 1976) – as a thinly veiled account of the Valencian group of which he was a part. In Homenatge a Florentí Montfort (Homage to Florentí Montfort, 1971), ­co-­written with his brother Josep Lluís (1954–2015), the ‘homage’ of the title is to an atrocious, fictitious Valencian author (of poems and plays), invented in order to be mocked. In a lecture to introduce his works, the audience hears that Montfort was an actor ‘car l’afició al teatre és un verí que hom no pot eludir’ (‘because enthusiasm for the theatre is an unavoidable poison/drug’). The lecturer goes on to say that the ‘verí del teatre’ (‘the drug of theatre’, i.e. a passion for theatre) existed in Montfort. Here, then, is another meaning of El verí del teatre, a set phrase used to signify the irresistible attractions of the stage. (The film director Ventura Pons employed it in his autobiography to describe his passionate involvement with theatre in the 1960s and 1970s.)15 In the opening scene it soon becomes clear that the theatre exercises its compelling charms over both Gabriel and the Servant:

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the first is an actor only too ready to talk of his trade and the second freely admits he is fascinated by ‘tot el que guarda relació amb el teatre’ (‘anything to do with the theatre’; pp. 94; 79). And so, a rivalry of performances develops which tests the theories of acting being discussed. Each character gives four major performances which the audience is left to judge (while simultaneously judging the actor’s performance of the character). Gabriel is firstly the pompous actor kept waiting by a Marquis who has not yet appeared (a); he uses the rhetorical ploy of sarcasm when the Servant eventually starts to speak (pp. 92; 77). He is then the humiliated actor who makes a show of apologizing to his host (b). After Gabriel’s sudden switch to respect, the Marquis comments: ‘Ara mateix, potser sense ­ saber-­ ho, comenceu a actuar vós també’ (‘Right now, perhaps without realizing it, you’re also starting to act’; pp. 98; 85). When he gives his initial reading of Socrates’ monologue (c), Gabriel declaims, as the stage directions indicate, ‘amb una certa afectació’ (‘in a rather affected manner’; pp. 105; 92). For his second reading (d), Gabriel acts ‘contra ell mateix, contra la seua pròpia naturalesa, contra les seues conviccions i la seua experiència artística’ (‘against himself, contrary to his own intuition [or nature], contrary to his convictions and his artistic experience’); he becomes ‘compenetrat amb el seu personatge’ (‘fused with his character’; pp. 112; 99). The Marquis’s performances are, significantly, more integrated into the action and initially imperceptible. Hence, he plays the Servant (a), unsure on his feet, speaking humbly, as the stage directions indicate (pp. 93; 79). Then, having given Gabriel another drink, supposedly to keep him wide awake (pp. 101; 88), he arranges Gabriel’s first reading of the monologue, without revealing that he knows in advance that it will not satisfy him (b). Following this first performance, the Marquis lets Gabriel believe he has been poisoned and that his second performance can win him the antidote (c). Finally, by manipulating the drinks and using his body to hide his actions (pp. 113; 100), he tricks Gabriel into thinking he is drinking the antidote when it is, in fact, a lethal poison (d). Besides the theoretical discussion initiated by the Marquis, issues relating to the success of these performances within the plot arise explicity at two points: when the Marquis explains he has created a character – the Servant – Gabriel has not noticed (pp. 95; 81); and when Gabriel takes offence at the Marquis’s rejection of his first reading, feeling his artistic talent has been questioned and claiming

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that he commands the appreciation of Parisian audiences (pp. 106; 93). Comparison between the acting of Gabriel and the Marquis is thus invited. All eight of the performances outlined involve imitation, but whereas Gabriel accomplishes this through recognizable aesthetics (rhetoric, pleading, acting out Socrates), the Marquis’s performances are all based on elements of deception revealed only when he himself chooses to do so (by saying he is not the Servant, or explaining how he has poisoned Gabriel). Gabriel has his suspicions at the start, because he thinks the Servant’s arguments are too sophisticated: ‘aquestes disquisicions no s’adiuen massa bé amb la teua categoria social!’ (‘these disquisitions hardly suit your social class!’; pp. 94; 80). Nevertheless, the Marquis (an amateur actor) is more successful at acting out the role of a Servant than Gabriel (a professional) is at imitating Socrates (or, one could argue, any man about to die); after all, the Marquis convinces both Gabriel and the audience. The Marquis’s objective success confirms Diderot’s theories and thus disproves the Marquis’s opposition to them: he has simulated a character (the Servant) and been convincing in claiming various qualities for the drugs administered. All this he has achieved through conscious, cerebral methodology: it is quite traditional theatre. As he says to Gabriel while explaining how the professional actor has been deceived by external form: ‘Anava vestit de criat, doncs havia de ser un criat’ (‘I was dressed as a servant, so I had to be a servant’; pp. 96; 82). It can even be argued that the Marquis successfully plays the role of an author who wants to see his text acted out (because his actual intentions are much more sinister).16 The performances are also an illustration – rather than a negation – of Rousseau’s view of humanity in the Second Discourse. Once Gabriel knows there is no servant, he is fawning to the Marquis and changes his form of address from the familiar tu to the respectful vós. In Rousseau’s terms, to gain advantage in developed society (as opposed to nature), man had to appear to be different from what he in fact was (‘autre que ce qu’on étoit en effet’). Gabriel had talked previously about being received, as an actor, by royalty and rich men, but never reaching their level (pp. 95; 81) and here he is again, in the ‘spectacle’ described by Rousseau, embodying the social creature who does all he can to serve great men. But the Marquis is also caught in Rousseau’s definition of society where the dependence on others limits freedom. What is theatre, but the

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conscious participation of people (even if only himself and Gabriel) in the same event? And so he has recourse to what Rousseau called ‘la ruse trompeuse’ (‘deceptive cunning/trickery’) to have his way, fulfilling the philosopher’s notion that man beyond his natural state needs to play with being and appearance. This performative aspect of social corruption is widely shared. In his play Alzire (1736), Voltaire (1694–1778) had defined dissimulation as ‘un art de l’Europe’ as opposed to the sincerity of Peruvian Indians. And in his autobiography, Sartre (1905–80) would continue to view acting as part of the deception in which adults (as opposed to innocent children) engaged.17 The Marquis is methodical in his deception, not simply by his acting. Or, rather, he extends the range of what acting can mean. He uses costume (to be the Servant) and props (to feign the poisoning). Despite denying Gabriel Greek dress for Socrates’ monologue, the Marquis makes him perform in a recess within his drawing room which constitutes a kind of stage; the stage directions indicate that the setting looks like ‘el decorat “teatral” d’una presó de l’edat mitjana’ (‘the “theatrical” scenery for a medieval prison’; pp. 102; 88). The role of set designer can therefore be added to the Marquis’s capacities as performer, stagehand, costume designer and sole member of the audience. In a sense, the nature of his four major performances – especially the last three (b)–(d) – involves his controlling the precise progress of the plot to such an extent that the Marquis is a kind of director avant la lettre, dictating action and reaction so it will be to his liking. The cumulative effect of these roles is to confirm the Servant’s confessed fascination with anything to do with the theatre (pp. 94; 79). In a short commentary printed to accompany some editions and productions of El verí del teatre, Sirera has explained how his father feared the theatre because he thought nobody could resist being seduced by it: ‘El teatro era – es – como una droga, como una especie de veneno contra el cual no hay antídoto’ (‘Theatre was – is – like a drug, like a kind of poison for which there is no antidote’). The Marquis eventually gives Gabriel the only real poison of the play for which, he says, ‘no existeix cap antídot conegut’ (‘there is no known antidote’; pp. 115; 101). But it is the Marquis himself who has been poisoned by the drug of theatre to such an extent that it has made him transgress all moral and legal boundaries. His drinking of the metaphorical poison (verí) has induced him to his

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ultimate plan to kill Gabriel, a lethal form of malevolence (which is another meaning of verí).18 Although there is an obvious logic in assessing the performances in the play according to e­ ighteenth-­century aesthetic and ethical criteria (Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire), such an approach does not accurately represent either the nuances of the discussion between Gabriel and the Marquis or the nature of the performances themselves. The major opposition in English to Diderot’s notions came, in 1888, from William Archer (1856–1924). Drawing on, among others, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), and the evidence of many actors such as Garrick, Kean (1789–1833) and Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917), the Scottish critic and translator contradicted those he called the ‘­anti-­emotionalists’ who denied the role of feeling in acting. Archer introduced the concept of ‘infection’, a phenomenon he defined as occurring when the imitation involved in acting is ‘not absolutely deliberate’. Infection is not imitative because ‘we weep our own tears’ when infected, rather than imitating somebody else crying. Via this route of ‘sympathetic contagion’, the accomplished actor ‘combines artistically controlled sensibility with perfect physical means of expression’.19 Archer’s combination of feeling and technique occurs early on in El verí del teatre: Gabriel explains that, when he is acting, he projects his voice so he can transmit the character’s feelings. But, when pushed by the Servant, he says that these emotions are ‘en certa manera també … els meus’ (‘in a way … mine as well’; pp. 94; 80). It is a point to which the Marquis later returns when defining his opposition to Diderot: he accuses Gabriel of contradicting himself by saying that emotion dominates him, but that the identification with his characters is not total because he still consciously uses techniques to act (pp. 100; 87). What Archer would call ‘infection’ intervenes in Gabriel’s second performance of the monologue. Gabriel has broken into sobbing (his own tears) when he thinks he has been poisoned and has hence been infected with the fear he uses for his acting. He is thereby, as the stage directions indicate, removed from ‘les formulacions retòriques’ (‘the rhetorical formulations’) of his first reading and becomes fused with his character (pp. 112; 99). (The actor playing Gabriel obviously has to decide on his approach to attain such intensity.)

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Theatre and Death: What is Real Life in the Theatre? Gabriel’s second reading is, however, not enough for the Marquis. In the aristocrat’s words: ‘El vostre instint d’actor s’ha mantingut fins al final. Fins al darrer moment heu continuat fingint un personatge’ (‘You’ve kept your acting instinct till the finale. Right up until the end you’ve pretended to be a character’; pp. 116; 103). And, by his insistence on the truth of Gabriel’s unique performance (his actual death), the Marquis redefines the very nature of theatre. The Marquis has already initiated this redefinition before his final, most radical step. As the Servant, he argues that social classes are a convention just like acting techniques (pp. 94; 80). Then, as the Marquis, he states that in real life ‘actuem … tots nosaltres, tothora’ (‘we all act … all the time’) for the survival of the social status quo (pp. 99; 85). These assertions, as well as echoing Rousseau’s views of society, confirm the performative social analyses of sociologists such as Erving Goffman (from the 1950s–60s) according to which everyday contextual or ‘theatrical’ expression follows the tradition of social groups. The individual’s wants or heartfelt feelings are concealed in order to be acceptable within a given situation. As the Marquis says: ‘Cadascú actua amb els altres d’acord amb el que ell creu que són els altres … i d’acord amb el lloc que ell mateix es pensa ocupar – o ocupa realment – dins la societat’ (‘Everybody acts with other people according to their opinion of them … and according to the position they themselves think they have – or really do have – in society’; pp. 98; 84). It is not by chance that Goffman drew evidence from service occupations – such as the work of a waitress – for his analyses or that Sartre employed the way in which a waiter plays his role to define his concept of mauvaise foi or bad faith. Gabriel comments to the Servant that his job involves lying and that being a servant means he has to act or ‘representar el seu paper’ (‘play a [his] role’; pp. 95; 81). The Marquis would no doubt agree with the way in which activities outside theatres became acknowledged forms of performance when the findings of Goffman and others were incorporated into theatre studies, by ­practitioner-­academics such as Richard Schechner.20 Rodolf Sirera had also toyed with the limits of theatre before inflicting the poison of El verí del teatre. He had written plays in which the stage represented the stalls and the actors applauded the

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audience, in which the audience was led on a ­two-­hour walk to nowhere, or in which the audience was absent and in each seat a mirror reflected the actor. The Marquis, on the other hand, puts an end to theatre in a more articulated and more violent fashion. Gabriel outlines this finality when the Marquis says the actor cannot adequately perform what he has not experienced: ‘Si m’hagués estat morint, m’hauria mort, i aleshores no podria fer teatre’ (‘If I’d gone through the agony of real death, I would have died, and then I wouldn’t be able to perform the part’; pp. 107; 93). And when accused of being a murderer, the Marquis denies it, saying: ‘Sóc un científic! L’estética és una ficció, i jo no puc suportar allò que no és de veres!’ (‘I’m a scientist! The realm of aesthetics is artificial [literally “a fiction”], and I can’t bear artificiality [“what isn’t real”])’; pp. 109; 96). Just as Rodolf Sirera has confessed that he initially hated the theatre, the Marquis culminates his show with a killing that reveals how he detests existing plays.21 The Marquis’s insistence on the performance of the real – from a perception of acting in everyday life to the performance of actual death – brings him into the realm of a dominant current of ­twentieth-­century ­avant-­garde theatre initiated most forcefully by the Futurists and influentially theorized by Antonin Artaud (1898– 1948). It is no coincidence that Artaud, like the Marquis, would have recourse to cruelty (his ‘Theatre of Cruelty’) to achieve this reality; or that the lethal harm of the plague – there for all to see and hear – should, for Artaud, be comparable to the theatre. (Five years after the action of El verí del teatre the French Revolution would entail a similar irruption of violence in society.) Also relevant in this context is Artaud’s notion ‘Briser le langage pour toucher la vie, c’est faire ou refaire le théâtre’ (‘Shattering language to touch life is making or remaking theatre’); it would come to fruition in a variety of productions where the theatrical text was ignored or diminished in favour of physical, ­non-­verbal spectacle. All this emphasis on the real would combat the central objection against theatre since the beginning of Western drama: that, in the words of Solon (c. 638–c. 558 bc) directed against Thespis (the first known person to act out a character on stage), it involved telling lies in front of so many people.22 The Marquis rejects this description of theatre, even prior to Gabriel’s first reading, by declaring that the theatre should not be fiction, art or technique (pp. 100; 87). So when death occurs, it

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cannot be a lie. Eduardo De Filippo (1900–84) meant something similar when he stated that the actor, when he died, had to die ‘definitively’. As the Marquis reiterates to Gabriel, seconds before the end of the play, the only way of adequately acting out his own death is precisely ‘quan moriu de veres’ (‘when you actually die’; pp. 116; 102). The relationship of this performance to truth is eloquently anticipated in a poem by Emily Dickinson (1830–86): I like a look of Agony, Because I know it’s true – Men do not sham Convulsion, Nor simulate, a Throe – The Eyes glaze once – and that is Death – Impossible to feign The Beads upon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung.

As well as perhaps preparing us for the ‘gruixudes gotes de suor’ (‘thick beads of sweat’; pp. 112; 99) which appear on the forehead of Gabriel and the Marquis during the second reading, Dickinson’s lines convey the Marquis’s attraction to the reality of death.23 Whilst Artaud’s ideas famously came together in book form in 1938, the intervening forty years before El verí del teatre witnessed several styles of ­avant-­garde performance which dispensed with traditional plays and seemed to fulfil the dream of ‘touching life’ through happenings, or extreme acts which brought reality into the realm of performance or art. Violence and sex were often part of the recipe. In 1962, Julian Beck (1925–85) declared that, on Broadway, the ‘tone of the voice is false, the mannerisms are false, the sex is false’. In contrast, the actors of The Living Theatre (of which he was c­ o-­founder) wanted ‘to be concerned with life and death’ and thus constantly infringed the boundaries of censorship. In 1971, Chris Burden (1946–2015) had himself shot in the arm in a Californian art gallery. In Spain, a version of a­ nti-­commercial and ­anti-­Francoist theatre developed called Teatro Independiente (or TI). Rodolf Sirera – a ­self-­confessed product of the TI – later commented ironically that its opposition to professional companies made it, ‘en altres paraules, contra tota mena de teatre’ (‘in other words, against any kind of theatre’). Catalan groups such as Els Joglars had started in the 1960s, but it was with companies such as Comediants (from 1971) and La Fura dels Baus (from 1979) that promenade shows,

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the use of fire and audience participation brought a certain conception of reality more starkly into performance.24 The notion that theatre is unreal continues in the arguments and acts of contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovi´c (b. 1946) or Franko B (b. 1960) who combat theatrical falsity by, for instance, having their cut skin bleed real blood in their shows. According to a recent classification, performance art (or what is sometimes known simply as performance) encompasses, among other things: involving the artist him/herself; blurring the boundaries between art and life; prioritizing the body; emphasizing the unique, ephemeral nature of the performative act; and promoting transgression and provocation. The category of ‘postdramatic theatre’ – first formulated in 1999 to analyze many contemporary performance practices – also includes among its features, the ‘irruption of the real’.25 It is not hard to see how these practices are comparable to the Marquis’s arguments. But the whole point about El verí del teatre is that it prolongs addiction to the drug of traditional theatre, by not allowing it to be destroyed. The Marquis may want to put an end to theatre, but Sirera keeps it very much alive. He does so, moreover, by techniques which ironically remind us, amidst the genuine suspense of what is happening, that it is all also, simultaneously, artificial. Although this was a text originally written for television where the realistic impression of someone dying is easily arranged, Gabriel’s death (within the plot) is not part of the action. Unlike ­avant-­garde practices negating the imitation of character and the representation of action, this is a consciously represented set of actions in which actors imitate two e­ ighteenth-­century characters (to be recorded for television). Only a careless impression can, as in the case of a recent theatre reviewer, dismiss the play in order to assert the superiority of experimental companies involving audience participation. For Sirera’s conceit is, as we have seen, not to compete on the same territory as such groups, but to stress the very fiction the Marquis wants to annihilate: these ­eighteenth-­century characters act out other roles and there is even a play (about another character, Socrates) within this play. The setting is also a clue: the Marquis’s reception room is in a ‘rococo’ mansion (pp. 91; 77). And what is the popular conception of rococo, if not ‘picturesque fancy’?26 Besides, El verí del teatre is a play text, contrary to n ­ on-­verbal spectacle or performance where the spoken word is diminished.

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The Marquis alludes to this textuality on two occasions: when he describes his own play about Socrates (pp. 100; 86); and when he explains (after Gabriel’s objection that his death on stage would prevent him from acting), that his desire is to create a unique performance just as the books (present on stage) are unique editions, made to his specifications, of his favourite texts (pp. 107; 94). Here it is worth remembering Sirera’s explanation that he himself really fell in love with theatre when he started writing plays.27 For if the Marquis (rather than the audience) does succeed in seeing his unique personal performance, the fact he is still attached to his books – among which, we can assume, there are plays – demonstrates that they are there to be r­e-­read. Likewise, because Gabriel’s death takes place after the end of the text, the play we have seen can be repeated, thereby privileging textual theatre in its representation of reality. This approach also avoids the worst pitfall of having real death – or, indeed, anything real – done in the theatre: on the other side of the coin to Diderot’s argument – and in an implicit critique of ­avant-­garde performance of the real – the paradox of real things being done on stage is that they may not seem real if they are not convincingly enacted. We do not see Gabriel’s actual death so we do not have to be convinced of its verity.

Political Reality On Stage If El verí del teatre proclaims the death of theatre while, at the same time, giving it a new lease of life, it is worth asking, given the power games of the plot, whether it engages in a comparable strategy for politics. Several potential allusions certainly do indicate a tension between a given ­socio-­political system and its possible abolition. A few of the conditions of the action provoke specific analysis. For example, the Marquis murders Gabriel within a locked room. As he tells the actor early on, there is no witness there to prove he is being held against his will (pp. 97; 83). The Marquis is thus behaving – in his fresh killing of Socrates – according to the legal definitions of the ­pre-­ Socratic Antiphon (c. 480–411 bc). For Antiphon, laws function only in the presence of witnesses and man is ‘free from shame and punishment if he escapes the notice of those who agreed on them’.

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In their absence, man reverts to the laws of nature, with the resulting cruelty anticipated by the Marquis’s initial comment, distorting Rousseau, that man, in his natural state, ‘no és precisament bo’ (‘is not exactly ­kind-­hearted’; pp. 99; 85).28 The immediate intrinsic context of the play similarly refers to inevitable destruction, this time justified through critical creativity. It might be progressive, in 1784, to classify social classes as conventions, as the Servant does (pp. 94; 80). And the new kind of performance invented by the Marquis goes against the view of what Gabriel says is the appreciation shown to him by ‘la immensa majoria del públic de París’ (‘the overwhelming majority of Parisian audiences’; pp. 106; 93). But the price for such a new vision of the world and theatre is, as it would be in the French Revolution, life itself. There is a more intricate argument here. For if Freud saw the appreciation and cultivation of the higher mental activities (‘höheren psychischen Tätigkeiten’) as defining civilization, then the Marquis uses his s­ elf-­given status in one of these activities, as a scientist (pp. 109; 96), to promote the destructive, rather than creative, impulse inherent in human beings. This is not specifically sexual sadism, but the cruelty Freud saw as held in check by the cultural ­super-­ego. Freud asked in 1930 whether men could prevent the ‘Kulturentwicklung’ (‘development of civilization’) being disturbed by the human drive for aggression and ­self-­destruction. In 1978, Sirera’s Marquis, working within that civilization after years of destruction in Europe, provided an answer.29 Considering that Sirera, by academic training an historian, is a dramatist with a declared interest, not just in understanding the past, but in envisaging a better future, it is reductionist to affirm that the Marquis’s is the only answer. Assertions that he could be a fascist and that the play is about oppressors and the oppressed are, therefore, as simplistic as productions which have demonstrably politicized settings (1930s Europe in Mario Gas’s 2012 production or 1978 Spain in Sílvia Ayguadé’s 2013 UK production). For, as well as diminishing the rich ­ eighteenth-­ century context, such interpretations assume a political condemnation already out of date in 1978, and a rather lame critique of the Francoism (1939– 75) which preceded it. What the play does during the transition to democracy in Spain is to complicate any analysis of power by discussing it in aesthetic terms. The Marquis may be an aristocrat, but his aesthetic definition of class – it is all an act – and his

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opposition to existing theatre make him the revolutionary, not Gabriel, his social inferior. There is also a comment on control within theatre: a clear danger exists when a show is in the hands of one director or when theatre infrastructure, even in democracy, relies on individuals. The Marquis would doubtless oppose Rousseau’s arguments (in The Social Contract) for the authority of the State against despots. And yet the Marquis’s quest for authenticity retains its seductive quality because it constitutes an attack on the artificiality of a whole approach to theatre and life. In the transition to democracy, is it better to judge and condemn all the protagonists of the old, dictatorial regime? Or should we let their fictional view of the past go unchallenged in favour of the maintenance of a new political construction which, in its own way, is maybe just as artificial?30 As well as inevitably being linked to national politics, El verí del teatre is a drama by a Valencian playwright who, at about the same time, was stating that theatre was ‘una manera d’investigar la realitat’ (‘a way of researching reality’). Having started making ­anti-­ Francoist theatre in Spanish in the 1960s, Sirera had switched to the Valencian variant of Catalan at the end of the decade when his concerns had turned to the ‘realitat’ of the Valencian region, a topic which dominated his plays, in multiple forms, up until 1978. The linguistic choice was also social: in contrast to the situation in Catalonia, members of the Valencian bourgeoisie were mainly ­Spanish-­speaking, tended to ignore the local language and so, as Sirera explained, they used Spanish as a weapon to distinguish themselves from the lower classes who spoke Valencian Catalan. Sirera later reflected that, although opting for Catalan was logical for the creation of a new popular theatre (in search of n ­ on-­ bourgeois audiences), it also involved writing and performing in a language which did not come naturally to him and his colleagues; they had not been brought up or educated in it. What is more, there was, at the time, no standard way of writing Valencian Catalan for the stage in serious theatre. The results, according to Sirera himself, were linguistic hotchpotches of local usage, archaisms, phrases from Catalonia, new coinages and calques from Spanish because of the dramatists’ own deficiency in Catalan.31 It is now easier to understand how the theatrical tactics in El verí del teatre can be seen to have local relevance. Learning how to play a role (be it that of a servant or Socrates) is as necessary, yet as

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artificial, as learning to use a language which should be a natural part of your own culture but from which you are in some ways distant. It is all a question of performance to achieve the desired goal. At the start, Gabriel had said, of the characters he played, that their feelings were theirs but his as well and there was a point at which you cannot distinguish where fiction begins or ends (pp. 94; 80). In imitating a language it becomes yours. And in what looks like a meditation on this process, the text of the play is at once regional and at a distance from common usage. So in the first speech of the play, Gabriel uses the distinctly Valencian form of the Catalan first person singular ‘me’n retire’ (‘I’m leaving’; pp. 92; 77), in contrast to the normative Catalan ‘me’n retiro’. Indeed, Valencian verb forms are employed throughout, as are words in current Valencian Catalan. And yet the language of the play is hardly demotic: the cultural references appeal to an educated audience and the imitation of an e­ighteenth-­ century dialogue taking place in French allows for considerable formality. Most pertinent in this context are the antiquated use of vós (rather than vostè) for the polite form of you and the absence of expletives (even when Gabriel thinks he has been poisoned and after the actual poison is administered). El verí del teatre is thereby a far from simplistic contribution to the debate on the future of Valencian culture. There have been three broad historiographical conceptions of Valencian literature in the modern period, especially in the transition to democracy when the region was achieving an uncertain degree of autonomy: 1) espanyolisme (literature from the Valencian region, in Catalan or Spanish, is a part of Spanish literature); 2) valencianisme (because of Valencian identity even in Spanish or because Valencian Catalan is not the same as standard Catalan, there exists a strictly Valencian literature); 3) catalanisme (literature from the Valencian region is part of Catalan literature and does not include literature in Spanish). Varying cultural political positions develop and expand these categories.32 Given the nature of its language and the p ­ olitical-­ linguistic choice made by its author almost ten years before to write in the Valencian variant of Catalan, El verí del teatre might seem to conform to the second approach. Nevertheless, the play was first broadcast on Catalan television and published in Barcelona with a preface by the Catalan playwright Josep M. Benet i Jornet, perhaps urging

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consideration within the third category. On the other hand, it apes translation – from an imagined French dialogue – hence taking it beyond Spain. But more than that, its language draws attention to its artificiality: Valencian Catalan used for a sophisticated debate, set in the eighteenth century (when there was very little Catalan literary drama), with archaic forms, as if French. Just as El verí del teatre includes the proposition for a new sort of theatre, it suggests that a new form of regional culture has to be invented: its authenticity will – like any fiction – depend on its intrinsic success, rather than its ability to fit comfortably into existing political categories. And its resulting identity is, at once, articifial and true, like the culture of which it is an example.

End and Afterlife Gabriel’s death is both artificial and true since we do not see it on stage: artificial because we have to imagine it and true because it cannot take place within the theatre (unless an actor is to be killed for every performance). The end of the play is therefore not an end. We never see the real performance because, by definition, real life – and death – occur outside the theatre. This is one way in which El verí del teatre evokes the work of Joan Brossa (1919–98), the ­avant-­garde artist and writer to whom the play is dedicated (pp. 87; 75). For in many of Brossa’s short performance pieces the main action is what does not happen: a concert does not take place; a film is not projected; there is silence.33 The ending is also a reflection on the epigraph to El verí del teatre (pp. 87; 74), taken from Racine’s first preface to Britannicus (1669). In the original Racine asks rhetorically: ‘Que ­faudrait-­il faire pour contenter des juges si difficiles? … Il ne faudrait que s’écarter du naturel pour se jeter dans l’extraordinaire’ (‘What should we have to do to satisfy such demanding judges? … Merely distance ourselves from all that is natural and fall prey to the wildest fantasies’). Racine is referring to criticisms against him for his use of the Aristotelian unities, and he goes on to say how ridiculous it would be to fill up a single day with the action (apparently desired by his critics) which would really take a month. Since El verí del teatre follows all three unities of time, space and action without any inkling of compression, this would appear to be an endorsement of Racine’s views. But just

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as relevant is what Sirera’s ellipsis hides. For, in the omitted sentence, Racine states that the matter would be easy, if one were prepared to ‘trahir le bon sens’ (‘betray good sense’). Here the ramifications are subtler: the Marquis has followed his own sense to go beyond the realm of common sense; but since the truly extraordinary world into which he has sunk is not shown, Sirera retains his own ‘bon sens’ on what can take place within a theatre.34 This common sense combines the aesthetic with the moral. Gabriel’s imagined death may prolong the ‘tricks in perspective and illusionism, glorying in being false’, as an art historian describes the decoration of rooms which led to the development of rococo. But it also answers St Augustine’s objections to the theatre. Augustine (354–430) had criticized the contemplation of suffering on stage because we applaud the action and do nothing to alleviate the pain (Confessions, 3.2). Since we are, by the end of El verí del teatre, prompted to remember that real suffering takes place offstage, we are tricked out of excessive s­elf-­ indulgence. The ultimate end is unwritten just as Socrates (and Jesus Christ) wrote nothing for us. Emilio Hernández’s successful 1983 production of the play, which ended with a jokey exchange between the Marquis and Gabriel and no sinister expectancy of the latter’s actual death, obviously prevents such insight.35 Sirera’s aesthetic approach saves the useless expense of audience emotion and the actor playing Gabriel, but it condemns the Marquis. The director Peter Brook once commented: ‘No author, no director, even in a megalomaniac dream, would want a private performance, just for himself.’ 36 The Marquis does, or rather, he wants that reality just for himself. ‘La ficció es retira, vençuda per la realitat!’ (‘Fiction retreats, defeated by reality!’), he exclaims, before Gabriel’s second reading: ‘La veritat per damunt de … totes les convencions socials’ (‘The truth above all … social conventions’; pp. 109–10; 96). That these social conventions hold society together ethically becomes obvious when we see that the Marquis has confused performance with reality to such an extent that he intends to destroy a life in his quest. And the definitive nature of that destruction is underlined by the fact that, as we have seen, Xenophon (in contrast to Plato) does not refer to Socrates’ faith in an afterlife. The confusion of aesthetics and morality resulting from the Marquis’s particular brand of theatrical poison reveals itself in

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visual terms during the closing moments. The stage in the Marquis’s room where Gabriel has just performed is shut off by a grid of bars which descend from the ceiling (pp. 114; 100–1). Gabriel is trapped inside. The theatrical décor for a prison (a locus of aesthetics) has become a real prison (a locus for those who have violated the law), when in fact it is the Marquis who merits punishment. (Of course, the prison is still theatrical, although with added potency, for the audience watching the Marquis and Gabriel.) The poison of theatre has evolved to another meaning of verí, in criminal slang, namely prison. Gabriel called the Marquis a ‘monstre’ (‘inhuman’, a monster) when he thought he had been poisoned (pp. 109; 96), but now he himself is being treated like a dangerous animal. It is in such constructions of power that the Marquis comes closest to Roland Barthes’s interpretation of Sade: a continual passion for the theatre; and the enclosure of the Sadian site which forms the basis of social autarchy (like the Marquis’s locked room and prison).37 The Marquis’s cruelty locates him not just in an implicit acknowledgement of the innovations of Artaud and performance art, but also in a history of modern metatheatre. When Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), through its acting out of a sordid domestic episode, alludes to the aesthetic constraints of putting real characters on stage, it simultaneously manages to convey the repetition of theatre: by the end, the day may have been wasted, but the a­ ctor-­manager will return for tomorrow’s rehearsal and, one assumes, the characters – including those who have died – will continue their search. Gabriel, on the other hand, will be dead, because that is the only way reality can enter the realm of performance. El verí del teatre, though, lives on in multiple international productions, despite Sirera’s own reservations about it. The play made his reputation, especially outside Valencia, but it keeps his reputation linked to it. In Sirera’s Trio (2012), two actors – David and Òscar – want to put on El verí del teatre, although the author refuses to grant anybody the performance rights. David finally meets the author in the street and reports to Òscar that the author has given the pair the rights; the author himself hates the play, but he has told David that ‘som uns actors tan dolents que ens la carregarem definitivament i ja ningú li la tornarà a demanar mai de la vida’ (‘we’re such bad actors we’ll ruin the play once and for all and nobody will ever ask him for it again’). In a twist of fate perhaps

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only the Marquis could foresee, the attraction and repulsion that lie at the heart of the drama – to (and from) written texts, fiction, theatre, identity, power and life itself – have come to incarnate Rodolf Sirera’s attitude to his work. As if to highlight this attitude, when Trio was first published, it was issued in a volume together with a Spanish translation of El verí del teatre.38

Notes 1

2 3

Rodolf Sirera, El veneno del teatro: diálogo entre un aristócrata y un comediante, trans. by José María Rodríguez Méndez, Arte Escénico: Colección teatral de autores españoles, 62 (Madrid: Preyson, 1985) (Spanish translation); Emilio Hernández, ‘El verí del teatre’, and Roser Santolària Domingo, ‘El verí del teatre: anàlisi d’una obra dramàtica’, in Enric Gallén and others, Aproximació al teatre de Rodolf Sirera, La Tarumba Teatre, 5 (Alzira: Bromera, 1999), respectively, pp. 29–31 (Hernández’s reminiscences about his production), pp.  75–83 (approach to teaching the play as school set text); Ferran Carbó, ‘Rodolf Sirera i la renovació del teatre valencià’, Caplletra, 14 (1993), 189–209 (pp. 208–9: list of national and international productions up until 1993); Rafael del Rosario Pérez González, Guia per recórrer Rodolf Sirera, Monografies de Teatre, 35 (Barcelona: Institut del Teatre de la Diputació de Barcelona, 1998), pp. 99–100 (argument as to other play by Sirera from the 1970s being better), 105 (dismissive reviews). El verí del teatre has (as of 2013) been translated into: Bulgarian, Croatian, English, Estonian, French, Galician, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (of Portugal and Brazil), Slovak, Spanish and Turkish. Antoni Prats and Rodolf Sirera, ‘Rodolf Sirera parla de les seues obres dramàtiques’, L’Aiguadolç, 2 (1986), 9–17 (p. 15). This study of the structure of the play is an expansion of the analysis in John London, ‘El verí del teatre (1978)’, Visat, no. 14 (October 2012): http://www.visat.cat­/ traduccions-­l iteratura-­c atalana/cat/ar ticles/97/177/0/0/0/rodolf-­sirera.html (accessed 13 September 2013). Slightly differing suggestions for the separate moments of the action are given in Carbó, ‘Rodolf Sirera’ (pp. 198–99), Santolària Domingo, ‘El verí del teatre’ (pp. 82–3) and in the more detailed analysis by Ramon X. Rosselló, Anàlisi de l’obra teatral: (teoria i pràctica), Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana: Biblioteca Sanchis Guarner, 47, 2nd edn (Valencia: Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana; Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2011), pp. 247–56.

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4

All page references to El verí del teatre, followed by the English translation of it (The Audition), are included in the main text and indicate the following editions: El verí del teatre: diàleg entre un aristòcrata i un comediant, in Rodolf Sirera, L’assassinat del doctor Moraleda. El verí del teatre, El Galliner, 47 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1978), pp. 85–117; Rodolf Sirera, The Audition: A Dialogue between an Aristocrat and an Actor, trans. by John London, in John London and David George (eds), Modern Catalan Plays (London: Methuen, 2000), pp. 73–103. On the problems of translating the play, see John London, ‘Theatrical Poison: Translating for the Stage’, in Peter Fawcett and Owen Heathcote (eds), Translation in Performance: Papers on the Theory and Practice of Translation, Bradford Occasional Papers, 10 (Bradford: Department of Modern Languages, University of Bradford, 1990), pp. 141–67 (pp. 157–61). 5 John Coldstream, ‘Sadist at Work’ (review), Daily Telegraph, 24 February 1988, p. 14; Marcos Ordóñez, ‘La muerte en directo’ (review), El País, 4 January 2013: http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2013/01/03/actualidad/1357229706_683426.html (accessed 10 January 2013); Santolària Domingo, ‘El verí del teatre’, p. 81. 6 Anthony Shaffer, La huella (Sleuth), trans. Vicente Balart, Colección Teatro, 730 (Madrid: Escelicer, 1972); Raquel Merino Álvarez, Traducción, tradición y manipulación: teatro inglés en España 1950–1990 (León: Universidad; Lejona: Universidad del País Vasco, 1994), pp. 69, 71 (on cuts in La huella); Anna Marí Aguilar, ‘La recepció del teatre britànic contemporani a l’Estat espanyol (1956–2004)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Valencia, 2009), p. 245 (popularity of La huella in Spain as thriller); Sleuth, dir. by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (20th Century Fox, 1972); Interview with Rodolf Sirera by John London, Madrid, 31 January 1987 (admits to knowing Sleuth); Sleuth, dir. by Kenneth Branagh (Sony Pictures, 2007). Sirera commented about La huella (in an email to me dated 29 September 2013): ‘Recorde que em va agradar, em va resultar divertida i poca cosa més. Quan vaig escriure El verí, cinc anys després, crec que ni me’n recordava’ (‘I remember I liked it, I thought it entertaining and that was it. When I wrote El verí, five years later, I think I didn’t even remember it’). 7 Anthony Shaffer, Sleuth (London: Marion Boyars, 1985), pp. 48 (‘Agatha Christie’), 50 (‘I hate you’), 90 (‘the normal’), 93 (‘police car’). 8 Duplicity, dir. by Tony Gilroy (Universal Pictures, 2009); Javier Orduña, El teatre alemany contemporani a l’Estat espanyol fins el 1975, Monografies de Teatre, 25 (Barcelona: Institut del Teatre de la Diputació de Barcelona, 1988), pp. 183–90 (Weiss’s play in Spain); Ramon X. Rosselló, ‘De la recepció de models durant la dictadura franquista a Plany en la mort d’Enric Ribera, de Rodolf Sirera’, in Ramon X. Rosselló,

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9

10

11

12

13

John London Josep Lluís Sirera and John London (eds), La recepció del teatre contemporani, Quaderns de Filologia. Estudis literaris, 15 (Valencia: Facultat de Filologia, Traducció i Comunicació, Universitat de València, 2010), pp. 157–78 (p. 168: Sirera’s knowledge of Brook’s film); Marat/Sade, dir. by Peter Brook (United Artists Corporation, 1967); Peter Weiss, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade: Drama in zwei Akten, im Dialog. Neues deutsches Theater, 68 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1964), p. 47. Jane Edwardes, ‘The Audition (The Gate)’ (review), Time Out, 17–24 February 1988, p. 43; Annalena McAfee, ‘The Audition’ (review), Plays & Players, no. 415 (April 1988), 33–4 (p. 34); Ramon X. Rosselló, ‘Propostes de treball i comentaris de text’, in Rodolf Sirera, L’assassinat del doctor Moraleda. El verí del teatre, ed. Ramon X. Rosselló, Educació 62, 41 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2009), pp. 191–200 (p. 200: Internet); Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, trans. Reg Keeland (New York: Random House, 2009), p. 489. Joan F. de Lasa, ‘El verí del teatre en Lletres Catalanes’ (first review), Tele/ eXpres, 21 October 1978, p. 19. I have witnessed the laughter when Socrates is mentioned at several performances, notably those from the 1988 English premiere production, directed by Astrid Hilne. Socrates’ Defence to the Jury, trans. O. J. Todd, in Xenophon, Anabasis, Books IV–VII. Symposium. Apology (London: William Heinemann; Cambridge, MT: Harvard University Press, 1922), pp. 489–509 (pp. 507–9); Memorabilia, in Xenophon, Memorabilia. Oeconomicus, trans. E. C. Marchant (London: William Heinemann; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923), pp. 3–359 (IV, 8: pp. 353, 357); Pau Gilabert, ‘Veneno sin antídoto para el Sócrates histórico y la tragedia barroca en El verí del teatre (El veneno del teatro) de Rodolf Sirera. (Una dosis extrema de sadismo para atajar los excesos de la ficción teatral)’, Estudios Clásicos, 139 (2011), 111–36 (pp. 124–5, 128). Juli Leal, ‘El brunzir cultural francès en l’obra teatral de Rodolf Sirera’, in Claude Benoit, Ferran Carbó, Dolores Jiménez and Vicent Simbor (eds), Les literatures catalana i francesa al llarg del segle XX / Les Littératures catalane et française au xxème siècle: Primer Congrès Internacional de Literatura Comparada: València, 15–18 abril 1997 (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1997), pp. 163–74 (survey of French culture in Sirera’s work); Discours sur l’origine et les fondemens de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, ed. Jean Starobinski, in J­ean-­ Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–95), iii: Du contrat social. Écrits politiques (1964), pp. 111–237 (pp. 155–6). The play in question was devised by the company El Rogle, although Sirera was responsible for the dramaturgy. The epigraph comprises an

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entirely invented quotation from a ­made-­up source: Memòria general d’activitats (1976), El Galliner, 44 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1978), p. 15. 14 Denis Diderot, Paradoxe sur le comédien, ed. Jean M. Goulemot, Le Livre de Poche classique, 16084 (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2001), pp. 9 (copy with Garrick), 81 (‘C’est l’extrême’), 101–2 (creation), 132 (‘Le comédien ne dit rien’), 150 (anger, ‘un grand comédien’). For two interesting twenty-first century applications of Diderot’s ideas, see Alan Read, Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement: The Last Human Venue (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 277–9; Theron Schmidt, ‘Richard Maxwell and the Paradox of Theatre’, Platform, 3.1 (Spring 2008), 8–21 (pp. 15–16). 15 Josep Lluís and Rodolf Sirera, Homenatge a Florentí Montfort, El Galliner, 18, 2nd edn (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1983), p. 37; Ventura Pons, Els meus (i els altres), Perfils, 91 (Barcelona: Proa, 2011), p. 64. 16 The argument about the Marquis playing the role of an author is in Rosselló, Anàlisi, p. 259. 17 Rousseau, Discours, pp. 171 (dependence), 174 (‘autre’, ‘la ruse’), 192 (‘Spectacle’); Alzire, in Théâtre de Voltaire (Paris: Garnier Frères, [1923]), pp. 177–221 (p. 185); ­Jean-­Paul Sartre, Les Mots, in ‘Les Mots’ et autres écrits autobiographiques, ed. by ­Jean-­François Louette, with Gilles Philippe and Juliette Simont (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), pp. 1–139 (pp. 45–6). 18 Rodolf Sirera, ‘Del veneno del teatro y otras drogas’, in Rodolf Sirera, El veneno del teatro, trans. José María Rodríguez Méndez, Debats, 8 (Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2000), pp. 11–12 (p. 11); ‘malvolença’, ‘mala intenció’, definitions of verí in Alcover’s authoritative Diccionari ­català-­valencià-­balear: http://dcvb.iecat.net/ (accessed 13 September 2013). 19 William Archer, Masks or Faces?: A Study in the Psychology of Acting (London: Longmans, Green, 1888), pp. 197 (on infection), 201 (‘sympathetic contagion’), 208 (‘combines’). 20 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) (London: Allen Lane, 1969), pp. 4 (‘theatrical’), 5 (social groups), 9–10, 105–7, 132–4 (service occupations, servants); ­Jean-­Paul Sartre, L’Être et le Néant: essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, 16th edn (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), pp.  98–100; Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 28–51. 21 Rodolf Sirera, Tres variacions sobre el joc del mirall, El Galliner, 36 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1977), pp. 12–13 (stalls), 14–15 (walk), 16 (mirror); Manuel Molins, ‘Introducció: Rodolf Sirera: els territoris misteriosos’, in Rodolf Sirera, Indian Summer, Bromera/Teatre, 2 (Alzira: Bromera, 1989), pp. 7–23 (p. 11: Sirera’s initial hate of theatre).

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22 Antonin Artaud, Le Théâtre et son double, Folio Essais, 14 (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), pp. 19 (‘Briser’), 21–47 (plague), 131–61 (‘Theatre of Cruelty’); Solon, in Plutarch’s Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, 11 vols (London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1914– 26), i (1914), 404–99 (pp. 488–9). Plutarch’s account is cited at the beginning of Barish’s copious compilation of aesthetic and, above all, moral objections to theatre within the Western world: Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 1. 23 Manuel Sito Alba, Análisis de la semiótica teatral (Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 1987), p. 129 (Eduardo); Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1960), p. 110. 24 Julian Beck, The Life of the Theatre: The Relation of the Artist to the Struggle of the People (San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 1972), section 7 (unpaginated); Rodolf Sirera, ‘Algunes notes sobre l’ús de la llengua en els inicis del teatre independent valencià’, in Ramon X. Rosselló (ed.), Aproximació al teatre valencià actual (1968–1998) (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2000), pp. 95–105 (p. 96). The most concise guide to the sort of real performances alluded to is still RoseLee Goldberg, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, rev. edn (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001). For introductions to the Teatro Independiente and Catalan performance groups, see, respectively: Alberto Fernández Torres (ed.), Documentos sobre el Teatro Independiente Español (Madrid: CNNTE del Ministerio de Cultura, 1987); Mercè Saumell, ‘Performance Groups in Catalonia’, in David George and John London (eds), Contemporary Catalan Theatre: An Introduction, Anglo-­ ­ Catalan Society Occasional Publications, 9 (Sheffield: ­Anglo-­Catalan Society, 1996), pp. 103–28. 25 Joseph Danan, Entre théâtre et performance: la question du texte, Actes Sud – Papiers: Apprendre, 35 (Arles: Actes Sud, 2013), pp. 22–3 (recent classification); ­Hans-­Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen ­Jürs-­Munby (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 99–104. 26 Danan, Entre théâtre, p. 59 (on refusal of imitating characters); Lehmann, Postdramatic, p. 105 (against represented actions); Ed Theakston, Review of The Audition, A Younger Theatre, 20 May 2013: http://www.ayoungertheatre.com­/review-­a-­taste-­of-­catalan-­contemporary-­ theatre-­the-­audition-­and-­against-­democracy-­arcola-­theatre/ (accessed 22 May 2013); Terisio Pignatti, The Age of Rococo, trans. Lorna Andrade (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1969), p. 15 (‘picturesque’). 27 Fermín Cabal, Dramaturgia española de hoy (Madrid: Ediciones y Publicaciones Autor, 2009), p. 222. 28 Antiphon the Sophist, The Fragments, ed. and trans. Gerard J. Pendrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 163; Gilabert, ‘Veneno sin antídoto’, p. 118.

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29 Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1930), pp.  54 (‘höheren’), 136 (‘Kulturentwicklung’). 30 Cabal, Dramaturgia española, pp. 226–7 (interest in understanding); Josep M. Benet i Jornet, ‘Pròleg informal’, in Sirera, El verí del teatre (1978), pp. 7–11 (p. 9: fascist, oppressor); Ordóñez, ‘La muerte’ (1930s); Luis Quirantes Santacruz, ‘Il teatro passione letale’, trans. Maria Isabel Lopez Teruel [sic], in Rodolf Sirera, Il veleno del teatro, trans. Maria Isabel Lopez Teruel, Oistros, 3 (Cavallino: Capone, 1994), pp. 89–97 (p. 94: control within theatre). 31 Antoni Bartomeus, Els autors de teatre català: testimoni d’una marginació, La mata de jonc, 6 (Barcelona: Curial, 1976), pp. 106 (‘una manera’), 108 (Spanish as weapon); Prats and Sirera, ‘Rodolf Sirera parla’, p. 9 (‘realitat’); Sirera, ‘Algunes notes’, pp. 100–1 (later reflections). It is worth noting the combative, if not revolutionary, ­ anti-­ bourgeois stance Sirera voiced in the mid-1970s; see the interview in M. A. Medina Vicario, El teatro español en el banquillo (Valencia: Fernando Torres, 1976), pp. 137–9. 32 Lluís Meseguer, Literatura oberta, Biblioteca Serra d’Or, 189 (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1997), pp. 111–55. 33 On Brossa’s ­non-­performances, see John London, Contextos de Joan Brossa: l’acció, la imatge i la paraula (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2010), pp. 86–8. The other resemblance is within the disguise and trickery present in El verí del teatre which are important strands of Brossa’s theatre: for example, in a play such as La jugada (where those deceiving are themselves deceived); or in his series Fregolisme (where one actor plays all the roles). See, respectively Joan Brossa, Poesia escènica, 6 vols (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1973–83), i: 1945–1954 (1973), 425–49, vi: 1966–1978 (1983), 5–199. 34 ‘Première préface’ [to Britannicus], in Racine, Théâtre complet, ed. Jacques Morel and Alain Viala (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1980), pp. 254–7 (p. 256). 35 Michael Levey, Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in ­Eighteenth-­Century Painting (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), p. 22; Rosselló, Anàlisi, pp. 275–6 (on major changes in Hernández’s production). 36 Peter Brook, The Empty Space (1968) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 142. 37 Definitions of verí in Alcover’s Diccionari ­català-­valencià-­balear: http:// dcvb.iecat.net/ (accessed 13 September 2013); Sade, Fourier, Loyola (1971), in Roland Barthes, Œuvres complètes, 3 vols (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1993–5), ii: 1966–73 (1994), 1039–177 (pp. 1052: autarchy; 1170–1: passion for the theatre). Rosselló (Anàlisi, pp. 269–70) cites the author’s prefatory note in which Sirera indicates that the characters are completely imaginary (pp. 89; 76). Rosselló argues that this,

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together with the fact that Sade was not in Paris in 1784, should warn us against a facile association between the Marquis and his infamous partial namesake. However, Sade was transferred to the Bastille (another prison) on 29 February 1784. There is another parallel with Sade’s life which opens up more interpretations: he had a reputation for poisoning, having given some prostitutes excessive amounts of Spanish fly (i.e. Cantharidin). For both facts, see Maurice Lever, Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de Sade ([Paris]: Fayard, 1991), pp. 207–9, 377–8. 38 Rodolf Sirera, Trio, unpublished typescript, Valencia, 2012, p. 68; Rodolf Sirera, El veneno del teatro. Trío, teatroautor, 184 (Madrid: Fundación Autor, 2013). Sirera has publicly voiced his hate of El verí del teatre ; see, for example, Lluís Meseguer and Rodolf Sirera, ‘Entrevista de Lluís Meseguer a Rodolf Sirera’, in Actes de la III Jornada sobre els escriptors valencians actuals: Rodolf Sirera: València 2012, Col·lecció Actes, 13 (Valencia: Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, 2014), pp. 103–19 (p. 111). Pace the author, I am grateful to the many actors, directors and students with whom I have discussed El verí del teatre or the concepts within it over the past thirty years. I was given the opportunity to lecture on the text in Goldsmiths, University of London and the University of Richmond, Virginia. Special thanks are due to Sharon Feldman, Pau Gilabert, David Maskell, Will McMorran, Christopher O’Shaughnessy and Rodolf Sirera himself. I have, for an equal amount of time, had the pleasure of drinking theatrical poison with David George and learning much in the process.

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Saumell, Mercè, ‘Performance Groups in Catalonia’, in David George and John London (eds), Contemporary Catalan Theatre: An Introduction, Anglo-­ ­ Catalan Society Occasional Publications, 9 (Sheffield: ­Anglo-­Catalan Society, 1996), pp. 103–28. Schechner, Richard, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013). Schmidt, Theron, ‘Richard Maxwell and the Paradox of Theatre’, Platform, 3.1 (Spring 2008), 8–21. Shaffer, Anthony, La huella (Sleuth), trans. Vicente Balart, Colección Teatro, 730 (Madrid: Escelicer, 1972). —— Sleuth (London: Marion Boyars, 1985). Sirera, Josep Lluís and Rodolf Sirera, Homenatge a Florentí Montfort, El Galliner, 18, 2nd edn (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1983). Sirera, Rodolf, Tres variacions sobre el joc del mirall, El Galliner, 36 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1977). —— L’assassinat del doctor Moraleda. El verí del teatre, El Galliner, 47 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1978). Sirera, Rodolf / El Rogle, Memòria general d’activitats (1976), El Galliner, 44 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1978). Sirera, Rodolf, El veneno del teatro: diálogo entre un aristócrata y un comediante, trans. José María Rodríguez Méndez, Arte Escénico: Colección teatral de autores españoles, 62 (Madrid: Preyson, 1985). —— ‘Algunes notes sobre l’ús de la llengua en els inicis del teatre independent valencià’, in Ramon X. Rosselló (ed.), Aproximació al teatre valencià actual (1968–1998) (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2000), pp. 95–105. —— ‘Del veneno del teatro y otras drogas’, in Rodolf Sirera, El veneno del teatro, trans. José María Rodríguez Méndez, Debats, 8 (Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2000), pp. 11–12. —— The Audition: A Dialogue between an Aristocrat and an Actor, trans. John London, in John London and David George (eds), Modern Catalan Plays (London: Methuen, 2000), pp. 73–103. —— Trio, unpublished typescript, Valencia, 2012. —— El veneno del teatro. Trío, teatroautor, 184 (Madrid: Fundación Autor, 2013). —— Email to John London, 29 September 2013. Sito Alba, Manuel, Análisis de la semiótica teatral (Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 1987). Theakston, Ed, Review of The Audition, A Younger Theatre, 20 May 2013: http://www.ayoungertheatre.com­/review-­a-­taste-­of-­catalan-­contemporary-­ theatre-­the-­audition-­and-­against-­democracy-­arcola-­theatre/ (accessed 22 May 2013). Voltaire, Alzire, in Théâtre de Voltaire (Paris: Garnier Frères, [1923]), pp. 177–221.

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Weiss, Peter, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade: Drama in zwei Akten, im Dialog. Neues deutsches Theater, 68 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1964). Xenophon, Anabasis, Books IV–VII. Symposium. Apology (London: William Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922). —— Memorabilia. Oeconomicus, trans. E. C. Marchant (London: William Heinemann; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923).

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‘Antes eterna o negra que rota’: ¡Ay, Carmela! and the Mythic Unity of Spain DOMINIC KEOWN Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge

El més semblant a un espanyol de dretes és un espanyol d’esquerres. (The closest thing to a Right-wing Spaniard is a Left-wing Spaniard.) Josep Pla

Appreciation of cinematic production from Spain has flourished over the past decades as, from a hesitant start, the discipline now covers all elements of film study and equals in its breadth the scholarship devoted to more established areas of European cinematography. An abiding problem in this process, however, has been the accommodation within this framework of the constituent national subcultures. The case of Catalonia is paradigmatic in this respect as its contribution has tended to sit uncomfortably within the discrete configuration of ‘Spanish’ and, as a consequence, has tended to suffer from exclusion or else be treated as an adjunct, tagged tangentially onto studies devoted to the mainstream. There is no real censure intended by this comment. For very convincing reasons, critics have wrestled with this problem and either side-stepped it or tried their best to arrive at some other accommodation, though neither avenue has proved totally

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convincing. An unfortunate corollary has been that this hesitancy has missed a good deal of filmic debate precisely on the dialectic between Spain and Catalonia; and it is the intention of this essay to draw attention precisely to this aspect with regard to one of the most important directors of the past half century. Ignorance of the periphery and its experience is, of course, hardly surprising. Spain enjoyed democracy, in any real sense of the word, only for some three decades in the 1900s. For the rest of the time, a recalcitrant centralist impulse strove to homogenize the ethno-cultural mosaic of the country; and the lack of awareness resulting from this policy of enforced uniformity is still felt today. Sadly, the perceived failure of the second Statute of Autonomy of the post-Franco era in 2010 intimated that, even after three decades of devolved government, there is still a residual antipathy to recognizing the distinctive presence of Catalonia within the state; and this tends to preclude appreciation of its significance both at home and abroad. A preoccupation with the experiences of national minorities, of course, has rarely figured large on the agenda of the majority of Spanish film-makers. Quite apart from those in sympathy with the dictatorship, the best known directors from Buñuel to Almodóvar and from Bardem to Amenábar, have never dwelt to any great degree upon this issue despite its crucial importance to the country. The great Aragonese director, Carlos Saura, has shown himself to be more sensitive in this area. His magnificent musical Carmen (1983) exposed the construct of an official personality for the Spanish male and female and censured its coercive values, along with the legitimacy and relevance of these premises statewide. Moreover, Saura has always shown a keen interest in the periphery as is attested by his fascinating essays on flamenco, Lorca and de Falla. And a clear subtext lurks provocatively beneath the narrative of his major success of 1990, ¡Ay Carmela!, which raises the thorny question of national plurality in much more deliberate terms. The compelling attribute of the film, however, is the sentimental and cathartic storyline which unravels in the context of a conflict which rocked the world. A full seven decades after the event, the Spanish Civil War is still as engaging a subject for creative deliberation as when Hemingway first published For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940. Writing in 2004 – and some years prior to a continued glut – David Archibald revealed the cinematic fascination with the period

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in his comment that ‘of the nearly 300 historical films produced in Spain since the 1970s, more than half are set during the Second Republic, the Civil War and under Franco’.1 In other words, over 150 films since the death of the dictator concerned themselves with the causes, experiences and consequences of this traumatic event, a figure which excludes, of course, all the additional interest from abroad. This emotive musical tragicomedy falls squarely into this category and, despite the art-house profile of the director, the production struck a massive public chord. The film was a box-office hit which attracted close to a million viewers and, in grossing over 2 million euros, achieved parity with the successes of Pedro Almodóvar, the cinematic man of the moment. The work had, of course, also broken audience records as a play by the Valencian José Sanchis Sinisterra and, since its premiere in 1987, has become one of the most performed pieces in the history of Spanish theatre. Writing in La Vanguardia, the theatre critic, Santiago Fondevila, was to ascribe the unbridled success not only to the accomplished performance of the actors (Veronica Forqué and José Luis Gómez in the original production) but the poignant relevance of the narrative: the enormity of the war and its experience on simple folk. Indeed, the characters – middle-aged, ineffectual, second-rate music hall artists – are precisely that, ordinary: as intimate and familiar as the vaudeville artists who plied their trade on the home front in Britain throughout the same conflictive period.2 It seems that both director and playwright had their fingers very much on the collective pulse as they attuned themselves to exploiting the current ‘nostalgia orgy’. Furthermore, a concern with the past – especially as regards the scientific recuperation of events whitewashed by half a century of Francoism – is very much a matter of public interest in present-day Spain as evinced by the polemic raised by the Ley de Memoria Histórica of 2007. And it is precisely this combination of popular appeal with immediate ideological relevance that makes the film and play so compelling.3 David Archibald has summed up pertinently the major drift of the narrative and its historical reflection on the Civil War: ¡Ay, Carmela! is no neutral, apolitical comedy and it clearly illustrates the foreign influences on Spain that helped shape the Civil War’s outcome. Thus the conflict is not represented as solely a Spanish affair, but as an area of international battle which preceded the larger conflagration of World War II … The level of international

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involvement becomes crystal clear, however, in the closing theatre sequence where the audience comprises an international collection of German, Italian, Moroccan and Spanish soldiers … On the other side of the divide sit the captured Polish International Brigaders, representative of the forty thousand international volunteers who travelled to Spain to fight Fascism. By representing the Brigaders as Polish, the film also suggests a link with Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, the event that marked the start of World War II.4

The relevance of this interpretation is patent. There is, nonetheless, an additional element which invites further consideration on more specifically domestic grounds in keeping with the lines of our study. Central to the speculation is a revision of the tendentious construct of Spanish identity in the context of the nation’s contemporary history as imagined by centralist ideologues of both progressive and reactionary persuasion. Appropriately, the cinematography underlines the intense artificiality of this ‘official’ personality which is accepted so uncritically. The protagonists are, for example, a troupe of performing artists and, in the representation, there is corresponding emphasis on melodramatic pose, make-up and exaggeration of gesture within the high theatricality of the mise en scène together with a thumping aural superimposition of Spanishness in the diegetic (e.g. ‘Suspiros de Espana’) and extradiegetic soundtrack (‘¡Ay, Carmela!’). It is also worth reflecting, perhaps, on one of the central notions at work behind this creative machinery in order to appreciate the full relevance of the point at issue. In the wake of the ‘tragic’ fate of an empire upon which the sun had finally set in 1898, a generation of intellectuals, for reasons in keeping with their political and literary sensitivities, eschewed socio-economic analysis and the more objective strictures of the discipline of history in order to explain artistically the reason for imperial collapse. At the root of the decadence brought on by internecine conflict, it was alleged, was the fratricidal archetype of Cain and Abel, a concept which was extended lyrically into the myth of the ‘Dos Españas’, one good, one evil. This crude biblical trope would offer a unitarian reading and one-size-fits-all explanation of the complexity of the civil conflict which characterized the contemporary moment. Social unrest in the period concerned, however, was rife and unresolved including – quite apart from labour’s challenge to capitalism, starvation amongst the peasantry and republican antipathy

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to monarchy and church – three Carlist Wars, cantonalism and popular revolution, disequilibrium between agricultural immobilism on the latifundia of central and southern Spain and industrial progress on the periphery, militant opposition to the war in Africa and, last but not least, resurgent nationalism in Euskadi and Catalonia. It was, however, considered appropriate by the creative impulse of centralist art to conflate all these issues into one. Spain’s condition – or, as it was to become known, its ‘problem’ – could be summed up by a simple fratricidal instinct which would recur inevitably: such, it seems, was the country’s destiny. The rigid simplicity of the biblical dyad, of course, ignored the complexity of these social divisions and fractures. The archetype from Genesis offered a straightforward paradigm. From the ‘lepra nacional española’ (Spanish national leprosy) of envy in Unamuno’s Abel Sánchez (1917) to the covetous greed amongst the family in the ‘Tierra de Alvargonzález’ (Land of Alvargonzález) of Machado’s Campos de Castilla (1912) the relevance of this original vice to collective peninsular history is expounded relentlessly, as is crystallized by a bleak, incisive quatrain from the same collection. In this way, the complex plurality of Spain’s conflictive past is papered over by a reductive formula which condenses a multiplicity of antagonisms into a single facile division: Españolito que vienes al mundo te guarde Dios. una de las dos Españas ha de helarte el corazón.5 (Young Spaniard who comes / into this world, may God protect you. / One of the two Spains will freeze your heart.)

The very title of Thomas Deveny’s study of 1993, Cain on Screen: Contemporary Spanish Cinema, indicates the proliferation of this theme with reference to film; and the relevance of this reading is immediately apparent in ¡Ay, Carmela! At the start of proceedings and especially through the eponymous song – a type of ‘Lily Marlene’ from the Civil War – Carmela becomes identified with the Second Republic as, wrapped in the tricolour like her Gallic counterpart Marianne, she is depicted as the familiar icon of progressive values. What is more, as an individual she is good-natured, warm and caring. The fratricidal dénouement reveals this same figure on stage, swathed in republican colours and engaged in a desperate,

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maternal defence of prisoners of war from the International Brigades. As she vociferously objects to their being forced to watch the spectacle prior to their execution, she is shot in the head by a Francoist officer whose sadistic, Cain-like gesture anticipates the re-imposition of the traditional authoritarian values of the so-called España negra. As such, the piece provides us with an ostensive reiteration of the mythic explanation of civil antagonism in that country. The familiar equation is summed up by M. T. Stanley in the following manner with reference to the reaction of the characters to the imminence of the firing squad which awaits the prisoners in the schoolroom: Paulino, que piensa en la supervivencia y siempre hace lo necesario para sobrevivir, grita ‘No somos rojos; somos buenos españoles’. Si bien miramos este parlamento, Paulino establece una jerarquía de oposiciones binarias. O sea ‘no ser rojo/comunista/socialista/anarquista’ equivale a ser ‘buen español’; mientras que ser ‘comunista/ socialista/anarquista’ equivaldría a ser ‘mal español’.6 (Paulino, who thinks only of survival and always does what is necessary to survive, shouts ‘We’re not reds; we’re good Spaniards’. If we read this speech correctly, Paulino is establishing a hierarchy of binary opposites. That is to say ‘not being a red/communist/socialist/anarchist’ is the equal to being a ‘good spaniard’; whereas being a ‘communist/socialist/anarchist’ would be equal to being a ‘bad Spaniard’.)

For Marvin D’Lugo, it is precisely the facility of this construct – one of the ‘symptomatic discursive practices that form and sustain a notion of Spanishness’ – that Saura will attempt to call into question as he leads ‘his audience to consider the ideological architecture within which the very foundational myth of the Spanish cultural identity is situated’. The comments are made with reference to El Dorado but are precisely relevant to our case: Even the notion of individuality has become confused with the idea of the nation, as each Spaniard unconsciously speaks, thinks and sees himself in the world through a mediation of that cultural identity. He conveniently ignores the historical fact that the Spanish nation as he knows it is merely a political fiction that conflates Catholicism with the Spanish state. The nation he calls Spain, once a plural society of different peoples, has only recently been hammered into the ‘straitjacket of unity by Castilians’ (Carr and Fusi 1981, 11). Saura views the extravagant adventure of these Spaniards in search of El Dorado as part of the

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discursive formation of Spanishness, of a way of seeing oneself in the world, that is still with Spaniards four centuries later.7 (Emphasis added)

When faced with this fictionalization of the collective personality, Saura responds with the precision of geopolitical history. In a radical departure from the chronometric vagueness of the stage version, where the action is evoked retrospectively by a haunting series of flashbacks, the film-narrative is set precisely in the trenches of Aragon, whose ancient crown – which extended outwards to include Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearics – constituted a secular rival to the hegemony and expansionist aspirations of the Castilian empire. And, as the lyrics of the theme tune proclaim, the war being waged against the Fascists was precisely a campaign to protect the democratic rights and heritage of a pluralist Spain against the unitarian imperialism espoused by Franco’s Nationalists, the ideological heirs to the imperial authoritarianism of the throne of Castile.8 In this context, the specific details are perhaps even more important as we learn by subtitle that the action takes place on the Aragonese front in March, 1938. The information is important since Carmela and Paulino could equally well have wandered into Nationalist territory, for example, in a flight away from Madrid after the manner of the Republican government in October, 1936. As Saura well knows, the area concerned is redolent with notions of autonomy and rebellion in the face of centralist imposition. The unification of Spain under the Catholic Monarchs was no simple process and resistance to the homogeneity imposed by Philip II onwards had been continuous. The Revolt of the Catalans during the War of Thirty Years offers a prime example of this dissidence, underscored half a century later by the Crown of Aragon’s preference for the Hapsburg candidate in the War of Spanish Succession. Defeat at Almansa and, finally, at the siege of Barcelona in 1714 gave rise to the elimination of this kingdom and the accession of the centralist Bourbon monarch, Philip V. Local sentiment would not be silenced, however, and was to raise its head uncomfortably in the following century both in the Carlist Wars and, more significantly, the rise of Catalan nationalism which was to reach its apex with the establishment of the Mancomunitat in 1914 and the re-inauguration of the Generalitat during the Second Republic with the Statute of Autonomy of 1932.

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More specifically, the locus in question acted as a microcosm for the struggle for control of the loyalist war effort as a whole. It was in the wake of the counter-revolution in Barcelona of May, 1937, for example, that the independent militias on the front were brought under a central command whose failings were to be severely examined first by George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia (1938) and then by Ken Loach to great critical acclaim in his 1995 film, Land and Freedom. What is more, a concomitant curtailment of autonomy was experienced, pari passu, at the level of government. The transference of the Republican government from Valencia to Barcelona in December, 1937 impinged significantly for the rest of the war on a hegemony enjoyed by the Generalitat since the outbreak of hostilities in July 1936.9 To summarize, then, the contextual atmosphere is charged with antagonism between the periphery and the centre. This begins firstly in the trenches with the conduct of the war and extends to the wider question of the governance of the Republic. Finally, of course, the action is located right at the very division between two ancient and distinct geopolitical systems whose bitter confrontation may be seen to be the heritage of centuries. Accordingly, it is in this arena that the question of identity and affiliation becomes of paramount importance, as is evinced by the desperate attempts by protagonists to negotiate survival across borders by adopting shifting postures within the context of radically opposed ideological configurations. The mist and fog which cause the troupe to lose their way are thus also emblematic of the ignorance and confusion which, as we have seen, historically cloud the simple question ‘What is Spain?’ The fact that the couple are variety artists in this context is, of course, fundamental. Acting and performance inevitably challenge established notions of essence and nature. What is more, the location of this belligerence in the no-man’s land of the front lines is entirely apposite given the related issues of liminality and topography, so peculiarly evocative in the construct of collective as well as individual identity. What is being put severely to the test, of course, is the fragility of the notion of Spanishness – as exemplified by subscription to the Cain and Abel myth – which is shared somewhat disturbingly by both factions. MacDonald exposes pertinently the ‘falsity of this homogeneity’ which is denounced throughout. It is precisely this specious unity in national perception which is foregrounded

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critically and exposed in the two music hall sequences. Despite the divergence in tenor and mood between Republican and Francoist performances – the former relaxed and inclusive, the latter martial and hierarchical – the same unitarian notion of patriotism is adopted by both, as MacDonald describes elegantly, along the gendered lines of the respective eliciting of sentiment for the mother country on the one hand and the fatherland on the other.10 Morgan-Tamosunas broaches the same issue from the perspective of the songs on the programme which indicate once again the essential unity of ‘national’ sentiment: ¡Ay, Carmela! is similarly self-reflective, addressing both the manipulative and the resistant potential of the canción española. Carmela’s rendition of the archetypical ‘Suspiros de España,’ comments ironically on easy adoption of its nostalgic patriotism by both fascists and Republicans and the film focuses on ‘la ancestral dependencia de los actores, de los cómicos, del poder’ (Fernán Gómez in Guarner, 24 March 1990). This is emphasized by the film’s structural framework, as José Luis Guarner points out, ‘Dos largas escenas de espectáculo – a la vez frívolo, folklórico y patriótico – la enmarcan simétricamente, en las que Antonio Machado es sustituido por Federico de Urrutia, una misma coletilla cambia su letra para glorificar el poder, y una bandera, la republicana en este caso, es usada sucesivamente como objeto de exaltación y de execración – un contraste que sirve a los cineastas para mostrar los mecanismos de manipulación usuales en la propaganda política’ (24 March 1990). (Two long scenes of the spectacle – frivolous, folklorical and, at the same time, patriotic – frame it symmetrically, in which Antonio Machado is substituted by Federico de Urrutia, the lyrics of the verse are adduced to glorify power, a flag – the Republican in this case – is used successively as object of exaltation and demonization – a contrast which allows the production to expose those mechanisms of propaganda which are usual in political propaganda.)11

More ironic still for this icon of the Republic is, of course, the fact that ‘Suspiros de España’ – whose patriotic emotion is so intense as to give the protagonist goose pimples – was first performed by Estrellita Castro in the eponymous film produced in Nazi Germany in 1939 and directed by the Francoist sympathiser Benito Parejo. The ideological affiliation is further confused by the essential disjunction between what Carmela represents and what she really is. As Stanley has argued, the protagonist may well be equated with

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the Republic and, by extension, with its progressive ideals especially in the area of gender which witnessed female suffrage and the legalization of divorce. However, throughout the drama we see repeatedly how her ideological ignorance and natural inclination – particularly towards the orthodoxy of marriage and motherhood – concur paradoxically with the gendered values of recalcitrant Francoism, especially in the centralist view of the nation. En cada film el personaje femenino se mueve precariamente entre el bando republicano y el nacional. La guerra en el territorio español se refleja en la anatomía de Carmen (El espinazo) y Carmela, cuyos nombres mismos conllevan la herencia española. La cosmovisión de cada una es maternal; la fuerza psíquica que las impulsa es su empeño en fomentar el bienestar de su prole putativa. Ninguna de las dos es madre, en el sentido biológico, pero las dos se responsabilizan de huérfanos desamparados y traumatizados por los horrores que presenciaron. Por eso precisamente, por su ética materna y las decisiones que toman cuando encaran las dos facciones, Carmen y Carmela emblematizan la madre patria. (In each film the female character moves precariously between the Republican and Nationalist forces. The war in Spanish territory is reflected in the anatomy of Carmen (El espinazo) and Carmela, whose very names convey the heritage of Spain. The Weltanschauung of each is maternal; the psychic force which drives them is the welfare of their putative offspring. Neither is a mother, in the biological sense, but both take on responsibility for orphans who are unprotected and traumatized by the horrors they have experienced. It is precisely for this, for their maternal ethics and the decisions they take when face to face with the warring factions that Carmen and Carmela personify the motherland.)12

Indeed, the dichotomy is broached most poignantly in her relationship with the militia of the International Brigades. On her part, for example, there is no sense of informed and committed solidarity as was typified by alternative female figures of the Republic: we refer, of course, to women like La Pasionaria or the anarchist minister for food, Federica Montseny. Quite the contrary. The suffering and execution of the foreign volunteers elicit a maternal, not ethical, response in the protagonist which she is unable to suppress. In this way, it is through sheer sentiment that she attempts on stage to denounce their brutal treatment at the hands of the Nationalists and intercede protectively on their behalf, only to be murdered for

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her ‘caring’ reaction, an indulgent involvement which is misconstrued by the fascist soldiers as that of another standard female stereotype, the whore. To this effect the focus not only isolates the simplistic dyad of the triumph of Franco’s Spain over its Republican counterpart as the mythical victory of Cain over Abel: la España negra over la España eterna (or in this case, roja); it is also a critique of the incapacity of the protagonists to dissociate themselves from the facility of this paradigm. With their incapacity to question the validity of this construct, they are unable to think outside the box of received wisdom and, by implication, recognise the historical reality of the country outside this binary. It is precisely to counter such exclusiveness and assess critically the legitimacy of the singular patriotic imago that the author peppers his text with references to an alternative peninsular culture which, appropriately in this context, has passed virtually unnoticed. The canonicity of Paulino’s poetry recital to both sides of the conflict has been elucidated; but a key feature of the performance has not invited comment. The audience may receive appropriately, for example, the ode to the fallen heroes of the Republic in all its Machadian orthodoxy; yet the sobriety of the representation becomes severely questioned by the rip-roaring scatology of the endpiece as those assembled – Anarchists, Republicans and Catalanists – oblige the actor by acclamation to perform his party trick as a pétomane. After the sanctity of the elegiac poem, the music-hall vulgarity of the fartiste offers what might be described in Bakhtinian terms as the dialectic of the canonical version compromised by the indecorum of the lower body. In this way, the seriousness of the official message of patriotism – with all its ideological baggage which has been so carefully exposed throughout – is lampooned mercilessly by the irreverence of the juxtaposition with scatology and the appreciation of this by an audience of progressive dissidents. It is significant in this respect that Paulino’s recourse to such a diversionary tactic in the play’s finale has no impact on the martial gravity of the reactionary Francoist hierarchy which remains completely unmoved – and decidedly unamused. What is more, in this context we need to bear in mind the provenance of such a display. Quite apart from the hard-headed entrepreneurial practicality of their sober racial characteristic

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(seny), the Catalans are also renowned for their madcap rejection of such behavioural decorum (rauxa) which habitually fixates on the bathos of nether culture. The traditional Christmas caganers epitomise this sacrilegious element as does Bigas Luna’s marvellous repatriation to Catalonia of the pétomane, Joseph Pujol, in his Teta i la lluna of 1996. Further comical speculation on this theme is evident in the long tradition of scatological verse which is still such a provocatively vital part of that nation’s lyrical tradition.13 The Catalan dimension, however, becomes most apparent with regard to nomenclature. The soldiers Carmela ‘adopts’ maternally are, significantly, Polish. Archibald rightly comments that their presence immediately evokes the international context linking the Civil War with the conflict against Hitler; though we might ask ourselves just why there is the need here to be so specific and exclusive? The international dimension of the conflict could, for example, have been achieved also by reference to a whole series of nationals – from Austrians, Czechs, Slovakians, French, British, Americans, Irish, not forgetting Russians, Italians and Germans and a whole lot more! – who were also to answer the call to arms to fight Fascism in Spain. In this case the playwright reiterates his message through a carefully chosen terminological ambiguity which complements the director’s precision in terms of location. In Spanish slang, of course, polacos (Poles) is also the derogatory term for Catalans who, paradoxically, rejoice precisely in this distinction of being seen as ‘foreigners’ – as is evinced by their popular satirical television show on TV3, Polònia and its sporting equivalent centred around FC Barcelona, Cracòvia. In this way, quite apart from the international reference to the war, the relationship between Carmela and the soldiers of the International Brigades also comes to relate more particularly to the conflictive association between progressive Spain and her ‘non-native’ offspring, Catalonia. As we have seen, Carmela’s reaction to the condition of the Poles is based entirely on emotion rather than awareness and understanding. In a particularly revealing image, she stands by their officer, framed in front of a geophysical map of Europe, and attempts to impart a course in elementary Castilian. The fact that the characters are unable to speak the same language – in literal as well as metaphoric terms – alludes to the problematic history of mutual incomprehension which has been a feature of peninsular

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life over the centuries. It is significant, for example, that – in accordance with the official policy enshrined in the present Constitution – it is the Poles/Catalans who, even in their own constituency, must acknowledge the subalternity of their language vis-à-vis that of the state.14 It is also ironic in the extreme that, in the setting of a schoolhouse turned prison, it is the uninformed Carmela who endeavours to impart a lesson to an anti-fascist fighter whose presence in the conflict suggests a deeper awareness of Spanish affairs than the protagonist’s. Poignantly, the Pole/Catalan has greatest difficulty in pronouncing the ‘ñ’ in España. This letter, and its particular relevance to the Castilian alphabet, has come to symbolise the unitarian concept of Spain both at home and abroad. It is precisely this glyph which, together with its familiar diacritic, achieves exclusive prominence in the logotype of the Instituto Cervantes, the body responsible for the international promotion of all Spanish cultures, though its emblem and nomenclature allude merely to one of the four languages of the state. Such foregrounding constitutes a powerful statement of the secular homogenising impulse as defended by both progressive and reactionary centralist instincts. In this way, the maternal indulgence alleged post mortem in the final speech of the play between heroine and ‘foreign’ offspring has a chilling edge of ignorance and condescension in its highly appropriate rehearsal of the geopolitical tension. carmela: … A ver, tú, polaco: di Belchite … Sí, eso es, Belchite …¿Y Aragón, sabéis decirlo? … Aragón … No: A-ra-gón … Así: Aragón … España sí que lo decís bien, ¿verdad? … No … (Risueña.) Así, no … Así: ña … España … ña … Si es muy fácil … España … España …15 (Come on, you Polish lad: say Belchite … That’s it, Belchite … And Aragon, can you all say that? … Aragon … No: Aragon … That’s it … España, you can say that properly, can’t you? No … (Laughing) Not like that: like this, ña … España … ña. It’s really easy … España … España …)

As such, the narrative exposes a perceived deficiency among liberal (and, of course, right-wing) Spanish ideologues from the end of the nineteenth century onwards to come to terms with and understand the dynamics of the modern state. The exasperated reaction to this ignorance and insensitivity, current among Catalan thinkers, is summed up succinctly by the dictum of Josep Pla,

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posited as device for this essay: ‘El més semblant a un espanyol de dretes és un espanyol d’esquerres.’ (The closest thing to a rightwing Spaniard is a left-wing Spaniard.) And Carmela is presented as sharing that self-same chronic incapacity to address rationally the fact of difference, even within the progressive context of political cohabitation within the Republican war effort. Rather than informed and considered, the indulgent sentiment of this icon of the Republic tends to be exclusively visceral, patronising and entirely devoid of comprehension. There is, of course, every reason why this deficiency should be exposed from the Catalan perspective. As has been mentioned, the film is an adaptation of the highly successful play of 1987 written by the Valencian dramatist José Sanchis Sinisterra, who had lived in Barcelona for the previous thirty-five years where his work was fundamental to the contemporary theatrical project of Catalonia.16 Appropriately in this context, the stage version underlines Carmela’s rational deficiency in assimilating national difference by way of contrast with her two Catalan friends (appropriately named Montse and Montse). Unlike the emotional intuition of the protagonist, the latters’ confidence in their national identity and assessment of the war is based on hard-headed political analysis and militant commitment, one being an anarchist and the other a member of the PSUC. The description of their relationship – not apparent, of course, in the screen version – underlines our basic thrust: carmela: La una es anarquista y la otra comunista, ea paulino: Toma castaña … carmela: … se han hecho la mar de amigas … Discuten mucho, eso sí, y se llaman de todo, y en catalán, ahí es nada … Pero sin llegar a las manos.17 (carmela: One is an anarchist and the other is a communist, so there paulino: Flaming hell … carmela: … they’ve become firm friends. They argue a lot though, it must be said, and call each other names, in Catalan, it’s not important there. But they never come to blows.)

Here, despite the healthy vigour of the dialectic, the amicable resolution of the ideological rivalry between these women suggests a rational, dialogic form of cohabitation within the framework of national understanding which is, of course, something entirely

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beyond the capacity of the protagonist and the attitude she represents. The ignorance which Carmela embodies has, of course, been heavily censured by Catalan apologists over the past century. The questionable position of Unamuno in this context has been well documented and his correspondent’s, the poet Joan Maragall’s, exasperated outburst of 1909, ‘El pensament espanyol ha mort!’ (Thought is dead in Spain!), is indicative of the incapacity of his Spanish contemporaries to approach the Catalan question in any reasoned or reasonable fashion.18 However, for the purpose of illustration, a most poignant example of the unholy preponderance of this dismissive mentality, shared by Spaniards on both sides of the political divide, was afforded by the notorious attempt to suppress the fortnightly broadcasts in Catalan on the BBC World Service between 1947 and 1957. Quite simply, with its pursuit of such proscription the centralist instinct in both its progressive and reactionary guises demonstrated the inflexibility of its obsession and sacrosanct vision of national uniformity as underpinned by the hegemony of the language of state. The memoirs of the Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Oxford University, Josep Trueta, reveal the inexplicable offence caused by this bi-weekly slot to fascists at the Spanish Embassy, representatives of the Republican government in exile and, last but not least, Trueta’s fellow Oxonian and ‘liberal neighbour’ – and first holder of the Alfonso XIII Chair of Spanish – Salvador de Madariaga. Es va produir una mena d’‘unitat de la llengua castellana’, els secretaris de Negrín, a Londres i els falangistes de l’ambaixada, els uns darrers els altres, van desfilar pel Foreign Office ‘irats per l’insult que es feia al castellà’ una petita atenció a un dels idiomes de la Península.’19 (A type of ‘United Front for the protection of Castilian Spanish’ was formed with Negrín’s secretariat in London and the Falangists from the Embassy. They trooped into the Foreign Office, one after the other, ‘outraged by the insult to Castilian Spanish’ which this minor attention to one of the Peninsula’s other languages supposed.)

In broader terms, there may be no doubting the sincerity of the collective sentiment in Spain; but the absence of tolerance towards, and awareness of, the plurinational nature of the state constitutes a chronic failing at the level of politics and governance which has had disastrous effect over the past century. Sadly, the timeworn

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reactions associated with this attitude still predominate and might be exemplified by the visceral rejection, amongst both progressive and also conservative circles, of the revision of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy in 2005. More harrowing in terms of democratic cohabitation in this case was the fact that intransigent centralism, in the form of the Partido Popular, was able to impugn successfully the major elements of this project with an appeal to the Tribunal Constitucional, upheld in 2010, despite the fact that the new Statute had been ratified by the parliament in Barcelona, the Cortes and Senate in Madrid and by a referendum in Catalonia.20 In this respect, with their ignorance of peripheral concerns, unitarian politicians and ideologues seem not to have learned the lessons of history and the disasters caused by blind prejudice. The growth of the Independentist movement and the Constitutional crisis of 2017 was yet another catastrophe waiting to happen. The brutality of the repression of the referendum on 1 October, the criminalisation of civil dissent, the imprisonment and exile of regional government (and the shameful non-intervention of the EU) should, through negotiation, remain consigned to the 1930s, having no part in the European Union of the twenty-first century. It is interesting, in this respect, that the anachronistic narrative timescale created by Sanchis Sinisterra – replete with flashbacks of the deceased, drunken stupors, mis-remembered occurrences and wild imaginings – tends to capture this secular insensitivity. It seems the ghost of centralist intransigence – in all its emotive and visceral reaction – will just not stay buried and returns inescapably from the grave, even in this era of consolidated democracy. As such, it is a tribute to both playwright and director that they were able to reproduce on stage and screen such a compelling and cathartic exposition of a problem, not only of wartime concern, but one which remains current at the heart of the contemporary bodypolitic in Spain. And, as both works of art suggest, it is of fundamental importance for all concerned that the myth and fabrication of blinkered patriotism are exposed and the question of the plurinational nature of the state, in all its complexity, is brought clearly and objectively out into the open for considered and rational debate.

Notes 1

David Archibald, ‘Re-framing the Past: Representations of the Spanish Civil War in Popular Spanish Cinema’, in Antonio Lázaro Reboll and

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2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18

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Andrew Willis (eds), Spanish Popular Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 76–91. Review of the play in La Vanguardia, 08/11/87, p. 63. Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas cites this famous epithet coined by Fred Davis in ‘Nostalgia and the Contemporary Spanish Musical Film’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 20/1 (1995), 151–66. Archibald, ‘Re-framing the Past …’, p. 83. Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla (Madrid: Cátedra, 1974), p. 152. Maureen Tobin Stanley, ‘El cuerpo femenino como emblema nacional en los filmes ¡Ay, Carmela! y El espinazo del diablo’, Letras Hispánicas, 3/1 (2006), 70–84 (p. 74); also available online at http://letrashispanicas. unlv.edu/vol3iss1/aycarmela.htm. (All URLs were accessed on 29 August 2012. No pagination was supplied on those related to the mass media.) Marvin D’Lugo, The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 4–5. These issues are isolated, with particular reference to the Kingdom of Valencia, by Joan Fuster in his indispensable survey, Nosaltres, els valencians (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1962) especially pp. 25–61. These issues are dealt with in Paul Preston’s authoritative account, A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (London: Fontana, 1996). ‘Performing Gender and Nation in ¡Ay Carmela!’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 4/1 (1998), 47–59, (p. 52). ‘Spanish Musical Film …’, 164–5. ‘El cuerpo femenino …’, p. 70. For more information about this secular strain, see Empar Pérez-Cors, Versos bruts: pomell de poesies escatològiques (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1989). As confirmed by the Tribunal Constitucional on 28 June 2010 with its decision to annul important issues of the revised Catalan Statute, especially those relating to nationhood and language. José Sanchis Sinesterra, ¡Ay, Carmela! / El lector por horas (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2000), p. 170. From 1971 Sanchis lectured in the Institut de Teatre and subsquently at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona before founding the Teatro Fronterizo and the Sala Beckett of which he was director from 1988 to 1997. See, Eduardo Pérez Rasilla, ‘Introducción’, in José Sanchis Sinesterra, ¡Ay, Carmela! / El lector por horas (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2000), pp. 9–95, (pp. 12–13). Sanchis Sinesterra, ¡Ay, Carmela! / El lector por horas, p. 167. For an overview of Maragall’s frustration in this area, see N. Bilbeny, Política noucentista de Maragall a D’Ors (Catarroja: Eds Afers, 1999). Joan Fuster’s belligerent series of essays Contra Unamuno y los demás (Barcelona: Península, 1975) is also revealing of the exasperation felt by peripheral nationalists in the face of centralist insensitivity. As cited by Martí Garcia-Ripoll Duran and Cinto Niqui Espinosa in La ràdio en català a l’estranger (Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2007), p. 88.

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20 The trenchant utterings by the Partido Popular on the threat to ‘national unity’ constituted by the Catalans and their demands need no illustration. What is isolated in both play and film, however, is the persistence of this same paranoia amongst ‘progressive’ elements as exemplified by Alfonso Guerra’s triumphant delight at the project’s failure, reported in El Mundo, 30 May 2006: ‘Nos hemos cepillado l’Estatut!’ (We’ve dumped the Statute of Autonomy!): (http://estaticos. elmundo.es/documentos/2006/05/30/discurso_erc.pdf). Catalanophobia was also apparent in contemporaneous comments by PSOE barons. Defence minister José Bono’s preference for a new leader ‘al que no le dé vergüenza gritar “Viva España”’ (who is not ashamed to shout Viva España!), as reported on Canal Cuatro news, reflects the same subcutaneous prejudice(www.cuatro.com/noticias/espana/José_Bono-PSC-PSOEsocialistas_catalanes_3_1513078681.html). However, as reported in El Mundo 19 September 2006, PSOE president of Extremadura, Rodríguez Ibarra, took first prize for knee-jerking with his reaction to the new financial pact proposed by Catalonia: ‘Que se metan los cuartos donde les quepan’ (They can stick their dosh wherever it fits them best) (http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2006/09/19/espana/11586 66428.html). No pagination is provided at these URLs.

Bibliography Archibald, D., ‘Re-framing the Past: Representations of the Spanish Civil War in Popular Spanish Cinema’, in Antonio Lázaro Reboll and Andrew Willis (eds), Spanish Popular Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 76–91. Bilbeny, N., Política noucentista de Maragall a D’Ors (Catarroja: Eds Afers, 1999). D’Lugo, M., The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). Fondevila, S., ‘Ay, Carmela’, in La Vanguardia, 08/11/87, 63. Fuster, J., Nosaltres, els valencians (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1962). MacDonald, A., ‘Performing Gender and Nation in ¡Ay, Carmela!’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 4/1 (1998), 47–59. Morgan-Tamosunas, R., ‘Nostalgia and the Contemporary Spanish Musical Film’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 19/1 (1995), 151–66. Pérez-Cors, E., Versos bruts: pomell de poesies escatològiques (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1989). Preston, P., A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (London: Fontana, 1996). Sanchis Sinesterra, José, ¡Ay, Carmela! / El lector por horas (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2000). Saura, Carlos, ¡Ay, Carmela! (Prestige Films: 1990).

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Stanley, M. T., ‘El cuerpo femenino como emblema nacional en los filmes ¡Ay, Carmela! y El espinazo del diablo’, Letras Hispánicas, 3/1 (2006), 70–84.

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‘… And the Great Bird of War Flew Past with Its Wings Outstretched’: The Aesthetic Recreation of Trauma in Jordi Coca’s Sota la pols (2001) JORDI ­CORNELLÀ-­DETRELL University of Glasgow

Although trauma is a word frequently invoked when talking about the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, so far this notion has only played a supporting role in literary and cultural criticism. With notable exceptions such as Carmen M ­ oreno-­Nuño’s Las huellas de la Guerra Civil: mito y trauma en la narrativa de la España democrática (2006) and Irene Mizrahi’s El trauma del franquismo y su testimonio crítico en Nada de Carmen Laforet (2010),1 scholars have not frequently gone beyond the generic meaning of this concept, which often crops up when the unquestionable yet ultimately soulless exposition of factual data makes it necessary to add some gravitas to the line of argument. However, if one explores the meaning of the term and the role it has played in the study of literary works inspired by the Holocaust, the Vietnam or the first and second world wars,2 it becomes clear that a more systematic examination of the Spanish conflict through the lens of trauma theory could provide

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unsuspected insights into the effects of the fratricidal struggle and the ways in which it has been portrayed. This present article, which focuses on Jordi Coca’s Sota la pols (Under the Dust in Richard Thomson’s 2006 translation), is intended to make a contribution to an area of research which in the field of Catalan studies has been particularly neglected. The novel was published in 2001, at a time when the s­o-­called memory boom, devoted to ­ re-­ examining the country’s troubled past, was just starting to take shape. Sota la pols does not adhere to the conventions of plot structure: the unnamed narrator recalls in great detail several episodes of his grim childhood in mid-1940s Barcelona, but neither beginning, middle nor end can be clearly identified. Adding to this incertitude, the age of the narrator or the circumstances which prompted his remembering – or perhaps writing – process are equally nebulous. The protagonist lives in a bleak house with his irascible father and submissive mother, although he spends most of his time wandering the rundown streets of Barcelona with his friends. During their explorations of the decaying city, they establish contact with the local branch of the paramilitary fascist youth organization Frente de Juventudes and, more importantly, make acquaintance with an odd family of outcasts who try to remain faithful to their Republican ideals despite the tide of political, cultural and religious intolerance that has swept the country. Further to this, the narrator r­ e-­experiences through dreams a traumatic event buried in his psyche which seems to have shattered the foundations of his life: the bombings of Barcelona by the Italian air force in late 1937 and 1938. As will become apparent, these aerial attacks altered his understanding of the world, and it is my intention to explore how this devastating experience has been aesthetically recreated in the text by drawing on trauma studies and Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History. Before we embark on this analysis, it is worth pointing out that popular – and sometimes not so popular – cultural artefacts inspired by the events resulting from the 1936 military revolt often apply the concepts of war and ­post-­war in unsystematic and even contradictory ways. As a result, the former often covers ground that extends well beyond the date in which the Republican government surrendered, and the latter is even more vague, since sometimes it seems to encompass Franco’s rule in its entirety. According to Fox, what makes it difficult to differentiate between war and p ­ ost-­war time is

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‘the absence of factors that contribute to such a distinction (formal ­cease-­fire, peace treaty, intervention by international pacemakers)’.3 The point to make, of course, is not that both terms should have immutable boundaries; rather the opposite, because the impossibility of drawing ­clear-­cut conceptual limits appears as a clear indication that, as Richards points out, the Civil War and its consequences ‘have not yet been effectively absorbed and understood as a collective experience’.4 The novelist Antonio Ferres, in his memoirs, describes the ­post-­war years as ‘unos tiempos vacíos y sin historia, en los cuales parecían no transcurir los días’ (‘empty times without history during which days didn’t seem to end’).5 Mainer, in a clever effort to avoid problematic chronological divisions, argues that ‘entiendo posguerra como un ámbito moral’ (‘I understand the p ­ ost-­war as a moral domain’) and, in a further remark which concurs with the overarching idea behind this article, he points out that ‘casi toda la nomenclatura que se refiere a la guerra civil tiene algo de patológico’ (‘almost all the terminology which refers to the Civil War acquires a somewhat pathological dimension’).6 In 1971, Joaquim Molas confessed in a poignant autobiographical note that ‘La meva generació nasqué amb un mal record i, des d’aquell instant, es debat entre un passat que pesa com una llosa i un futur incert que condiciona els gestos, les paraules. Tots sabem quan comença la guerra però ningú sap quan acabarà.’ (‘My generation was born with a burden and, since then, struggles between a past which weighs us down and an uncertain future which determines our actions and words. We all know when the war started, but we don’t know when will it finish.’).7 Both the content and the style of this revealing statement indicate a refusal to leave the past behind: at the risk of disrupting syntactic structure, the verb comença, which refers to a war that allegedly finished in 1939, is in the present, pushing to the limit the common usage of tenses. But, in any case, what does the conceptual vagueness of Ferres’s, Mainer’s and Molas’s statements have to do with Sota la pols and the use of trauma theory as a theoretical instrument for cultural analysis? The answer is that the difficulties in isolating, assimilating and integrating a given historical event into a coherent narrative are precisely an indication of trauma. In general terms, psychological traumas are caused by extreme, often ­life-­threatening sensory experiences the impact of which can

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produce, in a minority of victims, p ­ ost-­traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).8 When this shock event goes beyond the tolerance threshold and cannot be processed, rationalized and merged into the individual’s existing mental frameworks, the person is bound to be assaulted, after a period of latency, by uncontrollable phenomena which cause great disturbance in his or her life. The traumatized subject, unable to establish ­cause-­effect connections between the overwhelming experience and the rest of his or her memories, may start experiencing different types of anxieties, avoid any reminders of the trauma or relive it in the form of involuntary hallucinations, nightmares or flashbacks. Despite the frequent claim that since the turn of the century Spanish cinemas and bookshops have been inundated with war narratives, in reality very few of the texts or films commonly included in this trend are set between 1936 and 1939. Trauma studies can help us to understand why the ­post-­war seems to be as – or even more – attractive to writers and ­film-­makers as the war: from a psychological point of view, the traumatic event itself is much less important than its ­post-­traumatic manifestations, the reason being that the subject can only be diagnosed when he or she starts developing certain psychosomatic disorders. Although the origin of the conflicts portrayed in works such as La voz dormida, Pa negre, Los girasoles ciegos, El laberinto del fauno or Sota la pols, is certainly located in the war, their wider scope reflects the fact that the belated effects of the conflict lingered on for years or decades. Critics of the ‘memory boom’, by misleadingly accusing the film or the publishing industry of paying excessive attention to the ‘guerra civil’, are undermining their own arguments, since by failing to distinguish between war and ­post-­war they inadvertently acknowledge that the consequences of the struggle, like the symptoms of traumatic experiences, did not necessarily manifest themselves immediately, but after a more or less prolonged period in which these experiences had to be forgotten so they could be confronted again. While in Spain no clinical tests were ever conducted to assess the psychological impact of combat exposure on soldiers, this does not mean that combatants were spared the array of psychosomatic ailments that plagued the life of war veterans in other t­wentieth-­ century conflicts. If no such studies exist, we can hypothesize, it is because the strict Catholic world view and the militaristic values upheld by the victors were at odds with the exploration of the

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psyche and ­ war-­ related disorders, which could be regarded as unmanly. Although it is too late to carry out empirical research on this front, the narratives left by both war veterans and civilians provide ample evidence to suggest that, further to the hunger and economic depression of the 1940s and 1950s, a significant part of the population had to struggle with the effects of ­post-­traumatic stress disorder. This leads us to an important question: should the notion of trauma narrative be circumscribed to the texts of those who had ­first-­hand experience of the conflict, or can it also be applied to its contemporary representations? In part, this depends on whether we believe that trauma is a purely individual experience or whether we consider that the sum of shared traumatic memories, perhaps even handed down from one generation to another, configures a societal trauma that transcends the individual. This is a complex issue which I do not intend to discuss in any detail: while elsewhere I have analysed under the lens of trauma theory Incerta glòria,9 a novel written by a war veteran, this article concerns Sota la pols by Jordi Coca, who was born in 1947 and therefore did not witness the incidents which haunt the protagonist of his work. I am aware of the potential pitfalls of stretching too thin the notion of trauma narrative, notably the ‘dubious pathologization of historical processes’.10 Nevertheless, as the following analysis sets out to demonstrate, this approach can open a new chapter in the understanding of certain aspects of contemporary Catalan writing. The first point to note is that the narrator of Sota la pols does not seem to be aware of the many silences and omissions that punctuate his recollection of memories. He never tries to understand, for example, why his grandfather was executed in Montjuïc despite the fact that his death clearly hounds him: ‘Jo no gosava preguntar què havia fet l’avi, ni perquè l’havien afusellat’ (61 [‘I didn’t dare ask what my grandfather had done, nor why they’d shot him’, 48]), ‘Mai no vaig arribar a saber què podia haver fet aquell home durant la guerra’ (106 [‘I’d never managed to find out what that man could possibly have done during the war’, 90]). Nor does he attempt to establish the causes of uncle Sebastià’s fatal car accident, which also torments him. The reader is equally left in the dark regarding the fate of the narrator’s father and the reasons why in the end the protagonist distances himself from the family of outcasts. The discontinuities which emerge in his remembrances, however, are

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not caused by a conscious effort to forget or by the coercive mechanisms of Franco’s regime, but by much more insidious forms of repression. In a nutshell, the protagonist’s lack of engagement with some aspects of the story he tells is one of the strategies by which the not yet assimilated trauma is conveyed. The bombings of Barcelona, for instance, are only referred to indirectly, in a dream sequence and through the long list of symptoms suffered by the protagonist, which include: misguided remorse for his brother’s death (‘I jo, sense deixar de m ­ irar-­la, demanava si també em podia morir com el meu germà’, 47–8 [‘And I, looking at her, wondered to myself why couldn’t I just die like my brother’, 34]); apprehension, lack of confidence and concentration (‘unes sabates que queien a terra em feien estremir, el grinyol de la porta m’engoixava’, 134 [‘Then shoes falling to the floor would make me shudder, the creak of a wardrobe door caused me anguish’, 116]); anxiety, alienation and passivity (‘podia p ­assar-­ me hores sense fer res, dedicat a contemplar el que m’envoltava’, 34 [‘I could spend hours doing nothing, just contemplating what was around me’, 22]); lack of emotion, detachment and insulation from the outside (‘Tot allò lliscava davant meu sense a­ fectar-­me’, 62 [‘All this slid straight past me without affecting me’, 48]); emotional numbness, fatigue and depressed mood (‘Sempre arribava a casa cansat, sense ganes de fer els deures’, 38 [‘I always got home tired, not wanting to do my homework’, 26]); ‘Als matins, quan em despertava, estava cansat i tenia la sensació d ­ ’haver-­me quedat completament sol al món’, 159 [‘In the mornings, when I woke up, I felt tired and had the sensation I’d been left totally alone in the world’, 140]); feelings of hopelessness and guilt and his suicidal tendencies ­(‘matar-­se, fer un gest exemplar que els deixés a tots bocabadats’, 106 [‘kill yourself, carry out an exemplary act that would leave everyone ­open-­mouthed’, 90]). The narrator is trapped in his unsettled past, and this is why there does not seem to exist an underpinning intent behind the facts presented, but an accumulation of episodes which he cannot fully structure in a sequentially coherent c­ause-­effect schema. As in Mercè Rodoreda’s La plaça del Diamant, reality is depicted as a response to an array of external stimuli: sounds, smells, visual flashes and feelings alternately stall or move forward a plot which, by its very nature, cannot offer a clear sense of progression. According to McNally, this vivid perception of the past is typical of

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PTSD sufferers, who experience against their will ‘flashbacks [which] are sudden, unbidden, emotionally intense sensory experiences (such as visual images or smells) that seemingly reinstate the sensory impressions that occurred during the trauma’.11 It is implied in both the style and structure of the novel, then, that the narrator’s voice is reviving the physical, emotional and sensory impact of the traumatic shock. Seen under this prism, Solà Isern’s contention that Coca ‘pren una nova perspectiva a l’hora de mirar cap al passat, sense ­judicar-­lo’ (‘takes a new perspective when looking toward the past, without judging it’)12 and Pagès’s criticism that ‘No hi ha detalls per acariciar, sinó una prosa grisa i explícita, un punt de vista reiteratiu i una sintaxi dèbil. Sota la pols sembla més un procés de capbussament interior que no pas una obra per seduir el lector’ (‘There are no details to appreciate, only a dull and explicit prose, a repetitive point of view and poor syntax. Under the dust appears to be an exercise in introspection rather than a novel to seduce readers’)13 acquire new significance. To put it simply, judging events or using language to seduce the reader is beyond the narrator’s intention and capabilities. He does not seem to be aware of his condition nor is he trying to understand or articulate it, and this explains why the reader is never told the purpose or the circumstances surrounding his remembrance. As a consequence, throughout the text there is a puzzling disjunction between description and understanding, a gap between the communicative process and its aim, and this general uncertainty suggests that we are facing an unresolved trauma, witnessing the recollections of an individual who is not making any conscious attempts at recomposing his fractured psyche. The whole process of remembering, of course, could be seen as having a therapeutic function,14 but the reader never knows for sure whether in Sota la pols the act of looking back is a coping method which will eventually lead to the narrator’s exorcism of the past. Caruth points out that it is ‘the specific point at which knowing and not knowing intersect that the language of literature and the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic experience precisely meet’.15 It could be argued that the fundamental elusiveness that characterizes literary expression resembles the relationship between the traumatized subject and his or her language, because in both cases something unknowable escapes the individual’s sense of control, be

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it over the text or his or her experience. In a way, this chasm between meaning, interpretation and purpose offers a response to one of the main paradoxes of trauma studies: the debate about whether traumatic experiences are communicable, whether they can be represented or not.16 This question stems from the evidence that trauma is caused by a mismatch between the past existence of an event and the impossibility to articulate it in the guise of a logically structured verbal construct. In Sota la pols the answer to this conundrum seems to be ­ double-­ edged: on the one hand, the narrator lacks a sense of direction and many of the enigmas posed are left unresolved; on the other, these gaps in understanding precisely convey the ‘logic’ of trauma to the reader, suggesting that it is somehow obliquely representable. A salient feature of the novel is the narrator’s dissociation from most of the events described and his passive attitude, as if he were an uninterested spectator of his life. His ability to describe the world around him has been so severely distorted that even those characters with whom he sympathises, such as Cèsar, are portrayed in a dispassionate, withdrawn manner. The reader senses, however, that his seemingly removed attitude is a protective façade which hardly conceals the unassimilated scraps of experience which, quite soon but in a very subtle way, begin to rise to the surface. The most clear example is the first dream sequence in the text, the importance of which could easily pass unnoticed in a first reading: Després queia damunt l’escola una boira freda que esborrava els maons, les portes i les finestres, i passava el gran ocell de la guerra amb les ales esteses. L’ocell tenia els ulls vermells i em mirava de reüll, agitava les ales i creixia del sol un vent huracanat, un oratge ardent que s’enfilava vertiginós cap al cel com una columna daurada … De sobte, era en un carrer d’edificis destruïts per les bombes, amb poques façades encara dretes que eren plenes d’esvorancs i de ferides dels trets que havien esberlat la pedra, amb el terra ple de pols … Estava núvol, gris. Al fons del carrer hi havia un incendi estrany, que semblava dibuixat, ja que les flames eren únicament de color roig i tan intenses com la sang … Després res, un son profund, una rendició. (37 [‘Then a cold fog fell over the school, obliterating the bricks, doors and windows, and the great bird of war flew past with its wings outstretched. The bird had red eyes and it gave me a sideways look, flapped its wings, and a hurricane wind grew out of the earth, a blazing storm which spiralled up to the sky like a golden column … Because suddenly I was in a street of b ­ omb-­shattered buildings, with few

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The Aesthetic Recreation of Trauma in Jordi Coca’s Sota la pols125 façades still standing, full of gashes and pockmarked by bullets where the stone had been splintered, the ground covered in dust … cloudy, grey. At the end of the street was a strange fire, which seemed painted, because the flames were only red, as deep as blood … Then nothing, a deep sleep, surrender.’, 24–5])

In order to highlight the significance of this dream, I propose to interpret it in the light of Walter Benjamin’s eleventh Thesis on the Concept of History. This famous allegory of the Angel of History, inspired by a 1920 painting by Paul Klee, bears a striking resemblance with Coca’s passage: A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.17

Nods to Benjamin’s text seem to start in the title of the first part of the novel, ‘Like an Angel’, which refers to the narrator’s dead brother. They are both, like the Angel of History, witnesses and victims of the tragedy, but only the narrator pulls through, albeit not unscathed. As Caruth observes, the anguish of survivors who have escaped a catastrophe is not simply the result of the traumatic occurrence itself, but also of the enigma of their own fate in the face of the surrounding destruction.18 The guilt of survival is particularly acute in children who, as a consequence of their egocentric perception of the world, often find an explanation for life events in what they have done or thought,19 which leads them to believe that they are directly responsible for what happened.20 Benjamin’s Theses are remarkably open to interpretation because, as Löwy points out, they consist of ‘a fusion unique within its genre of Theology and Marxism, Messianism and class struggle, religion and social utopia’.21 Löwy considers that Benjamin’s Angel represents the oppressed, for whom, as in the case of Sota la pols’s protagonist, ‘the past is nothing but an interminable series of

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catastrophic defeats’.22 The character’s and the Angel’s refusal – or impossibility – to turn towards the present or the future signals the existence of an unsettled conflict that cannot be put to rest, and this is why in both passages the rubble keeps piling up: they are caught in an infinite storm of destruction. In a similar way to the Angel of History, the narrator dreams of awakening the dead – his brother – and when staring at the past he only sees a cataclysm, the bombings of Barcelona. He, also like Benjamin’s angel, is propelled to the future against his will and, trapped by his recurring and involuntary traumatic memories, can only look towards the past. Interestingly, in Coca’s narrative the Angel of History is transformed into a bird of prey, an exterminating angel who, in the form of a war plane, destroys the city with incendiary shells. The d ­ ream-­ like nature of the passage explains why he sees a bird and not a plane, but this predatory bird also evokes the ‘aguilucho’, the fascist eagle of the Nationalist flag. Thus, in the novel, Benjamin’s celestial spiritual being is transfigured into a destructive mechanical device; in this interpretation of the allegory, the Angel is not trying to prevent the disaster, but takes an active part in it. This is not a distortion of Benjamin’s text, because as Werckmeister reveals, earlier descriptions of Klee’s Angelus Novus presented this being as a satanic angel of annihilation with claws and wings that resembled knives.23 According to Pensky, Benjamin develops in the Theses ‘a sustained, reasoned rejection of a conception of historical progress’.24 More specifically, the German philosopher discredits an idea of history which refuses to acknowledge the errors of the past (the e­ ver-­ growing detritus of the allegory) in the belief that they are an unavoidable step towards a definitive stage of social development. Even though, as Lucero points out, ‘the modern victors see the past as the price of history we have to pay and leave it behind’,25 for Benjamin, who sides with the dispossessed, progress does not determine the course of history, nor does it justify condemning its victims to oblivion. This is why, in his reformulation of progress, the angel ignores the future and fixes his gaze on the historical catastrophe in an attempt to pay tribute to its innocent, unjustifiable casualties. As Young adduces, in Benjamin’s view past events are still unresolved in the present: Contrary to the chronological view, Benjamin’s cairology considers history as a structure of plural ­non-­synchronic temporalities, which

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The Aesthetic Recreation of Trauma in Jordi Coca’s Sota la pols127 means that the present has no priority over the past or viceversa. In other words, the present is not a product of automatic progress from the past but a pile of ­non-­synchronized moments of now so the present is nothing but the multiple and discontinuous existence of heterogeneous temporalities.26

The several characteristics of the Angel of History discussed so far indicate that this being shares many features with the traumatized subject, such as the violence that is exerted on him, the fixation for the past, the overlapping of temporal planes and his difficulties in establishing logical sequences of events. In spite of these similarities, the Angel’s plight has seldom been considered as an expression of the deep psychic wounds inflicted by the outbreaks of violence that devastated Europe in the early half of the twentieth century. In fact, if the powerful imagery displayed in Benjamin’s allegory suited Coca’s intentions, it is precisely because it can be easily related to the bombing raids that ravaged Barcelona in 1937–8 and several European countries in the 1940s. It is not clear whether Benjamin took inspiration from aerial warfare in his Theses on the Philosophy of History, but when they were written, in 1940, the bombings of Guernica and Barcelona had already shown their destructive potential, and the Battle of Britain had just started. Sota la pols contains two additional references to the sky; the first, when the protagonist contemplates the military exercises carried out by the local branch of the Frente de Juventudes: ‘Durant uns minuts vam estar pendents d’ells i d’aquelles ordres clares que ressonaven sota el cel blau’ (22 [‘For a few minutes we were captivated by them and the clear orders that rang out under the blue sky’, 9]). Since he is staring at a group of young camisas azules, the sky could have only been blue. The importance of this sentence lies in the fact that, as we will see, this is the only occasion in the whole novel in which the weather is not a burden to the characters. The second allusion, also linked to the group of w ­ ould-­be falangists, is even more revealing: ‘Espanya’, deia, tot repetint el que li havien ensenyat, ‘és una unidad de destino, i ha de recuperar la grandesa de quan els Reis Catòlics ens van salvar dels moros. És per això que cal s­ervir-­la i triar sempre el camí que passa per les estrelles.’ ‘Que passa per on?’, li havia demanat un dia el Perico. (115 [‘Spain,’ he said, repeating everything he’d been taught, ‘is an Indivisible Unity, and must recover the greatness of when the Catholic

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Kings saved us from the Moors. It’s to achieve this that we must serve her and always take the path that leads through the stars.’ / ‘That leads where?’ Perico asked him one day.’, 99])

Jaume is parroting the platitudes, triumphalist tone, archaising language and grandiloquent rhetoric typical of the Falange. Leaving aside fascist lyricism, for the narrator the aerial attacks against Barcelona show that the only path that leads through the stars is death – which, as could be expected in this context, comes from above. Not surprisingly, the traumatizing memories of the bombings were repressed by the victors, who did not allow writers to refer to them too explicitly and quickly buried and erased from historical records their most visible traces in the urban tissue, the bomb shelters. In the 1969 version of Incerta glòria, for example, Joan Sales was forced to excise a long passage which concerns the graphic descriptions of the raids against the civilian population.27 The author stresses the randomness of these devastating attacks, which in principle targeted military objectives but also served the purpose of demoralizing civilians. State repression was undoubtedly effective, as proven by the fact that there were no historical studies devoted to this subject until the 1980s.28 While in historical discourse the air raids could only be investigated after the dictatorship’s demise, veiled references to these suppressed but not forgotten attacks were not uncommon in ­post-­war narrative and poetry,29 no doubt because they left an indelible mark on those who were directly affected by them or witnessed their effects. Marià Manent’s diary of the war period, El vel de Maia, not published until 1975, is a particularly good source to understand the extreme anguish provoked by the shellings among the general population.30 One of the first allusions after the conflict is to be found in Carmen Laforet’s Nada (1945), where the character Gloria gives birth in ‘una noche de bombardeos terrible’.31 Her child, conditioned by the circumstances of birth, suffers from chronic bad health and is constantly crying. Montserrat Roig recounts a strikingly similar episode in El temps de les cireres (1977): Mundeta almost has a miscarriage ‘quan es va pensar que el seu home havia quedat colgat en aquell famós bombardeig del Coliseum’ (‘when she thought that her husband had been buried by rubble in the infamous bombing of the Coliseum’).32 As a consequence of the shock, Mundeta’s daughter, born five months after a bombing, is affected by odd tics and everybody thinks that ‘li

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ha quedat la por al cos’ (‘fear has taken over her life’).33 Roig is the Catalan writer who has explored in more detail the physical and psychological effects of aerial warfare on the community. In Ramona, adéu (1972), the collapse of the Coliseum cinema is, once more, the event that sets the plot in motion. This novel tells the story of three generations of women from the same family, and the passages which open and close the narrative concern the desperate search of Ramona, who thinks that her husband has been killed by an explosion. The intense panic caused by the enemy planes is underscored on numerous occasions: ‘Una dona va dir que ella no vivia, d’esgarrifada, i que ens moriríem tots amb tanta angúnia, tanta por i tants maldecaps.’ (‘A woman said that she couldn’t sleep out of fear, and that we would all die as a result of so much anguish, fear and distress.’)34 Her anxiety is no poetic licence: the information we have regarding other conflicts supports the view that the civilian population in war zones is prone to develop mental disorders. Children, of course, are particularly vulnerable: Joan Reventós explains in his autobiography that, on hearing the air raid sirens, many of his friends used to burst into tears.35 As the previous examples show, many p ­ ost-­war novels and memoirs seem to indicate that large segments of the population were affected by p ­ost-­ traumatic stress disorder. The narrator of Nada, for instance, explains that ‘mis hermanos te diría que después de la Guerra han quedado un poco mal de los nervios …’, and she also points out, referring to her grandmother, that ‘con lo que sufrimos de la guerra, que aparentemente soportaba tan bien, ha enloquecido’.36 The character is surprised at the fact that her grandmother and brothers did not fall ill during, but after the war; in reality, we have already seen that this delayed reaction is perfectly normal although, of course, it perplexed the survivors. Returning to Coca’s novel, one of the main stylistic techniques to portray the worldview of the traumatized individual is repetition, exemplified by the frequent descriptions of decaying settings, the incessant references to death and the emphasis on weather conditions, which always convey a sense of hardship, hostility and unpleasantness (the wind, the dust, the rain, the floods, the leakages, the blazing sun …). The novel is structured into four different chapters which seem to take place during the four different seasons. The passing of time, however, does not change in any way the protagonist’s outlook: in summer the city becomes a

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scorching inferno which forces him and his mother to travel long distances to bring water home and, without noticeable transition, ice and wind fulfil the same role in winter: ‘Als hiverns, anar a buscar aigua vora la font era més feixuc, però en canvi als estius en gastavem més quantitat i calia fer més viatges’ (73 [‘In winter, going to get water from the fountain was harder work, but then in summer you used more and had to make more trips’, 57]). In Sota la pols the reader is also confronted with another trauma, that of the protagonist’s father, which comes to the surface in the form of domestic violence. According to Solà Isern, ‘la figura del pare representa una metàfora de la dictadura’ (‘the father is a metaphor for the dictatorship’).37 While this is a perfectly valid way to understand the character’s mood swings and outbursts of irrational violence, it is worth taking into account that these are also typical symptoms of PTSD, a pathology which allows us to approach the character from a new perspective. There are no indications in the text regarding his whereabouts between 1936 and 1939 although, given that the narrator was born in 1936, it is more than likely that he fought in the war, and his state of prostration indicates that he was on the Republican side. It could also be argued, of course, that his deep resentment, misogyny and abusive behaviour capture the character’s intimate struggle to redraw the lines of his androcentric prerogatives, severely undermined by a regime which redefined social relations and the concept of authority. In short, the father’s powerlessness outside the domestic space does not allow him to fulfil the requirements of his masculinity, which would demand a more active role in the public arena. This mismatch between expectations and reality seems to lead to domestic violence and his ‘feminization’: for example, he frequently feigns illnesses (48 [35]). Overall, the intersection and overlapping of the different angles of the character’s demeanour results in a complex portrayal of p ­ ost-­war power dynamics which avoids simplistic generalizations. The dual trauma reflected in the narrative is articulated in terms of space: the shock produced by the bombings of Barcelona unfolds outside, in the same streets that the protagonist wanders. His description of the appalling aspect of several areas of Barcelona, such as the shanty town of Somorrostro or the hospital’s morgue, the squalor in which Cèsar lives, the warehouse where his father works and the almost derelict building they inhabit, undoubtedly reflect the appearance of the city after the war, but they are also

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instrumental in the evocation of his state of mind. His father’s disorder, on the contrary, unravels in the private sphere, within the ­paint-­flaked walls of the family’s home or the warehouse. This division leaves no safe spaces to the narrator, and the only episode where his father is seen in good spirits takes place in a neutral domain, a bar. Violence, on the other hand, is presented in a similar spatial dichotomy: outside, it is sanctioned by the state and becomes the domain of the powerful Frente de Juventudes, which clearly captivates the character, tempted to join its ranks despite his family’s strong advice against it. This fascination is a consequence of the Falange’s central role in establishing the moral and political ethos of Franco’s Spain, particularly in the 1940s, when it was the only organization that could provide s­elf-­ esteem and a sense of empowerment to the youth. In the private sphere, violence, equally blind and unpredictable, seems to be a response to the suppression of freedom in all areas of public activity, which impels the father to vent his frustration against his family. The protagonist’s dysfunctional household serves the purpose of subverting the Francoist ideology of the family, which according to the 1945 Fuero de los Españoles, was to be the foundation of Spanish moral values and the whole social structure. The novel includes three different family units, which embody three different stances regarding the dictatorship: first, that of the defeated, who simply bow to the regime’s impositions; second, that of those who refuse to capitulate (the family of outcasts); and, finally, that of the victors, represented by uncle Esteve, who control the means of production, are protected by the political system and enjoy considerable wealth and status. The narrator is torn between the three models: his own home is a cauldron of frustration and misery; Gaspar, Rosalia and Cèsar’s home is equally in ruins: despite refusing to integrate into society, they are trapped in the memories of the Republican period. Esteve, on the other hand, owns a factory and a car, but his economic resources are clearly out of reach. Neither model seems to satisfy the protagonist, not even the second, which at least promises some freedom: he distances himself from Cèsar and his parents, arguably because he is too young to identify with the Republic and therefore finds the longing for the past a sterile exercise which cannot provide useful tools to face the future. In many novels, films or memoirs set in the p ­ ost-­ war years, salvation is often found in a group of friends who support each

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other or, not surprisingly given the autobiographical content of many of these texts, the act of writing. In Sota la pols, however, nothing seems to be able to replace a social cohesion which has fallen apart: the group of friends gradually disbands and, after showing a keen interest in Robinson Crusoe, which for a while appears to indicate that the narrator will turn to fiction to escape from reality, he quickly loses interest in books and breaks his ties with Gaspar, Rosalia and Cèsar. It is somehow hinted to the reader that, at some point, the narrator will resume his interest in literature, but in such a subtle way that it does not offer a sense of conclusion to his predicament. Clearly, it is not the aim of the narrative to disclose the causes of his traumatic experience so he can reach a point of respite from the past which could be seen as a proper ending. Rather, the audience is only presented with the internal (in the case of the narrator) or external (in the case of his father) signs of the psychic wound. Sota la pols, therefore, does not attempt to make the traumatic experience comprehensible, but only to represent it at a discursive level. As a result, Coca avoids the simplification of applying the structure of the detective story to the trauma narrative, which results in the sudden resolution of the conflict once the event that prompted it has been unveiled.38 The abrupt, unforgiving finale, like the rest of the text, manages to bring trauma narrative into view, but without idealization or distortion in the guise of a quest for uncovering a hidden truth which will ultimately lead to healing. Jordi Coca does not even succumb to the temptation of transforming trauma into an ­art-­inspiring disorder that can be overcome through the redemptive act of writing. However, the author’s multifaceted portrayal of repression manages, as Radstone expects of trauma theorists, ‘to sustain rather than retreat from an awareness of both ambiguity, and of the inevitability of ethical impurity’.39 By not indulging in Manicheanism, common places, sentimentality, sensationalism or nostalgia, the writer succeeds in offering a complex portrait of violence and oppression during the Franco regime and, at the same time, avoids the ‘problems of tact and judgement’ which, in LaCapra’s view, taint many imaginative accounts of traumatic experiences.40 Like Benjamin’s Angel of History, the narrator of Sota la pols is left suspended in ­mid-­air with no conclusion in view, staring at a storm which, despite the long time elapsed since it broke, does not appear to have decreased in intensity.

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Notes 1

Irene Mizrahi, El trauma del franquismo y su testimonio crítico en Nada de Carmen Laforet (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2010); Carmen ­Moreno-­Nuño, Las huellas de la Guerra Civil: mito y trauma en la narrativa de la España democrática (Madrid: Libertarias, 2006). 2 See Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Deborah Parsons, ‘Trauma and War Memory’, in Laura Marcus and Peter Nicholls (eds), The Cambridge History of ­ Twentieth-­ Century English Literature, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 3 Soledad Fox, ‘Franco’s Mass Graves and the History of Forgetting. Violence and Silence: The Repressed History of the Franco Regime’, in Carlos J­erez-­Farrán and Samuel Amago (eds), Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p. 38. 4 Michael Richards, ‘Grand Narratives, Collective Memory, and Social History: Public Uses of the Past in Postwar Spain’, in Carlos ­Jerez-­Farrán and Samuel Amago, Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p. 121. 5 Antonio Ferres, Memorias de un hombre perdido (Madrid: Debate, 2002), p. 35. 6 ­José-­Carlos Mainer, De postguerra: 1951–1990 (Barcelona: Crítica, 1994), p. 22. 7 Joaquim Molas, Una cultura en crisi (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1971), p. 48. 8 Richard J. McNally, Remembering Trauma (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 96. 9 Jordi ­Cornellà-­Detrell, Literature as a Response to Cultural and Political Repression in Franco’s Catalonia (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2011). 10 LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz, p. 180. 11 McNally, Remembering Trauma, p. 113. 12 J. M. Solà Isern, ‘Síntesi d’estètiques a Sota la pols de Jordi Coca’, Crítica Hispánica, 27 (2005), 157. 13 Vicenç Pagès, ‘Sota la pols’, El Periódico, 16 March 2001, available at http://www.xtec.cat/~jducros/Jordi%20Coca.html (accessed 17 September 2015). 14 David Spiegel and Etzel Cardeña, ‘The Resilience Hypothesis and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder’, in Marion E. Wolf and Aron D. Mosnaim (eds), Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Etiology, Phenomenology, and Treatment (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1990), p. 30. 15 Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 3.

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16 Susannah Radstone, ‘Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics’, Paragraph, 30/1 (2007), 22. 17 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana Press, 1992), p. 249. 18 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, p. 58. 19 Salli Saari, A Bolt from the Blue: Coping with Disasters and Acute Traumas, trans. Annira Silver (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005), p. 199. 20 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, p. 65. 21 Michaël Löwy, ‘Religion, Utopia and ­Counter-­Modernity: The Allegory of the Angel of History in Walter Benjamin’, Social Compass, 36 (1989), 96. 22 Löwy, ‘Religion, Utopia and C ­ ounter-­Modernity’, 98. 23 O. K. Werckmeister, ‘Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, or the Transfiguration of the Revolutionary into the Historian’, Critical Inquiry, 22/2 (1996), 246 and 261. 24 Max Pensky, ‘Contributions toward a Theory of Storms: Historical Knowing and Historical Progress in Kant and Benjamin’, The Philosophical Forum, 41/1–2 (2010), 149. 25 Alfredo ­Lucero-­Montaño, ‘Benjamin’s Political Philosophy of History’, Astrolabio: Revista Internacional de Filosofía, 4 (2007), 5–6. Available at http://www.raco.cat/index.php/Astrolabio/article/viewFile/197604/ 264796http://www.philosophos.com/philosophy_article_69.html (accessed 17 September 2015). 26 Jun Young Lee, History and Utopian Disillusion: The Dialectical Politics in the Novels of John Dos Passos (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), p. 78. 27 Joan Sales, Incerta glòria (Barcelona: Club Editor, 1971), pp. 389–93. 28 See Joan Villaroya i Font, Els bombardeigs de Barcelona durant la Guerra Civil, 1936–1939 (Barcelona: PAM, 1981); Josep M. Solé i Sabaté and Joan Villarroya i Font, Catalunya sota les bombes: 1936–1939 (Barcelona: PAM, 1986). It is worth pointing out that, unsurprisingly, literature devoted to this topic has rapidly increased during the memory boom (see, for instance, Xavier Domènech Sampere and Laura Zenobi, Quan plovien bombes: els bombardeigs i la ciutat de Barcelona durant la Guerra Civil (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2007); Francesc Poblet i Feijoo, Els bombardeigs a Barcelona durant la Guerra Civil (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2005); Judit Pujadó i Puigdomènech, Contra l’oblit: els refugis antiaeris poble a poble (Barcelona: PAM, 2006)). 29 Maria Campillo, Quan plovien bombes: textos literaris catalans sobre els bombardeigs de Barcelona (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 2008). 30 Manent, Albert, El vel de Maia (Barcelona: Destino, 1975). 31 Carmen Laforet, Nada (Barcelona: Destino, 2004), p. 3.

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32 Montserrat Roig, El temps de les cireres (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2008), p. 93. 33 Roig, El temps de les cireres, p. 50. 34 Montserrat Roig, Ramona, adéu (Barcelona: 1995), p. 16. 35 Joan Reventós, Tal i com ho vaig viure: 1927–1958 (Barcelona: Fundació Rafael Campalans, 2009), p. 109. 36 Laforet, Nada, pp. 25 and 101. 37 Solà Isern, ‘Síntesi d’estètiques a Sota la pols de Jordi Coca’, p. 160. 38 The identification of the traumatic event is a necessary step towards recovery, but it is not sufficient, since it is also important to defuse ‘the thoughts and feelings associated with it’ (Saari, A Bolt from the Blue, p. 65). 39 Radstone, ‘Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics’, p. 26. 40 LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz, p. 181.

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Löwy, Michaël, ‘Religion, Utopia and ­Counter-­Modernity: The Allegory of the Angel of History in Walter Benjamin’, Social Compass, 36 (1989), 95–104. Lucero-­Montaño, Alfredo, ‘Benjamin’s Political Philosophy of History’, Astrolabio: Revista Internacional de Filosofía, 4 (2007), 1–17. Available at http://www.raco.cat/index.php/Astrolabio/article/viewFile/197604/ 264796 (accessed 17 September 2015). Mainer, ­José-­Carlos, De postguerra: 1951–1990 (Barcelona: Crítica, 1994). Manent, Albert, El vel de Maia (Barcelona: Destino, 1975). McNally, Richard J., Remembering Trauma (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Mizrahi, Irene, El trauma del franquismo y su testimonio crítico en Nada de Carmen Laforet (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2010). Molas, Joaquim, Una cultura en crisi (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1971). Moreno-­Nuño, Carmen, Las huellas de la Guerra Civil: mito y trauma en la narrativa de la España democrática (Madrid: Libertarias, 2006). Pagès, Vicenç, ‘Sota la pols’, El Periódico, 16 March 2001, available at http:// www.xtec.cat/~jducros/Jordi%20Coca.html (accessed 17 September 2015). Parsons, Deborah, ‘Trauma and War Memory’, in Laura Marcus and Peter Nicholls (eds), The Cambridge History of T ­wentieth-­ Century English Literature, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Pensky, Max, ‘Contributions toward a Theory of Storms: Historical Knowing and Historical Progress in Kant and Benjamin’, The Philosophical Forum, 41/1–2 (2010), 149–74. Poblet i Feijoo, Francesc, Els bombardeigs a Barcelona durant la Guerra Civil (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2005). Pujadó i Puigdomènech, Judit, Contra l’oblit: els refugis antiaeris poble a poble (Barcelona: PAM, 2006). Radstone, Susannah, ‘Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics’, Paragraph, 30/1 (2007), 9–29. Reventós, Joan, Tal i com ho vaig viure: 1927–1958 (Barcelona: Fundació Rafael Campalans, 2009). Richards, Michael, ‘Grand Narratives, Collective Memory, and Social History: Public Uses of the Past in Postwar Spain’, in Carlos ­Jerez-­Farrán and Samuel Amago, Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 121–45. Roig, Montserrat, Ramona, adéu (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1995). —— El temps de les cireres (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2008). Saari, Salli, A Bolt from the Blue: Coping with Disasters and Acute Traumas, trans. Annira Silver (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005). Sales, Joan, Incerta glòria (Barcelona: Club Editor, 1971).

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Solà Isern, J. M., ‘Síntesi d’estètiques a Sota la pols de Jordi Coca’, Crítica Hispánica, 27 (2005), 153–70. Solé i Sabaté, Josep M. and Joan Villarroya i Font, Catalunya sota les bombes: 1936–1939 (Barcelona: PAM, 1986). Spiegel, David and Etzel Cardeña, ‘The Resilience Hypothesis and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder’, in Marion E. Wolf and Aron D. Mosnaim (eds), Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Etiology, Phenomenology, and Treatment (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1990), 36–45. Villaroya i Font, Joan, Els bombardeigs de Barcelona durant la Guerra Civil, 1936–1939 (Barcelona: PAM, 1981). Werckmeister, O. K., ‘Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, or the Transfiguration of the Revolutionary into the Historian’, Critical Inquiry, 22/2 (1996), 239–67. Young Lee, Jun, History and Utopian Disillusion: The Dialectical Politics in the Novels of John Dos Passos (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).

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Unmasking the Mask: Controversia del Toro y el Torero (Els Joglars, 2006) and the Craft of Theatremaking LOURDES OROZCO Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds

Controversia and Its Time Paco, a ­middle-­aged bullfighter at the end of his career, bleeds to death in the bullring’s surgery. Delirious, he reminisces about his fall. The red and ochre ring, where the bull gored him, is haunted by Miguel el Pirao (Miguel the Madman) his old sparring (partner) at the bullfighting school. This is the setting of Controversia del Toro y el Torero: a dialogue, at times argumentative and at others nostalgic, between Paco and Miguel about the nature of the fiesta nacional, its present and its future. Paco, a fervent defender of tradition, is confronted by Miguel, whose many years of close contact with bulls have produced his physical and psychological identification with the animals. H ­ alf-­way between the real and the imagined – for we are invited to believe that the dialogue takes place in Paco’s imagination at the point of death – Controversia is structured as a delirious exploration of Spain’s national sport and its sustainability in the ­twenty-­first century, presenting two opposing and irreconcilable views which can be recognised within the debates taking place in Catalonia at the time of the production. In addition to this,

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Controversia is presented as an exchange of personal views – this is a dialogue between two individuals who do not have any affiliations (national or otherwise) – and aims to invoke a personal reflection on this historical practice. By focusing on the personal, the production avoids the pitfalls to which any national debate is prone in a country such as Spain, defined by its multilingualism and its varied cultural traditions. In spite of the clear links with the social and political context in which the production was written and later performed – for instance, it could be seen as a direct response to debates about the banning of bullfighting in Catalonia that took place in 2011–12 (the banning was implemented in 2012) – Controversia aspires to go beyond the rights and wrongs of the dispute and contains an incisive, shrewd and, at times, angry exploration of a country whose obsession with puritanism in relation to art and society in general is, in fact, theatrical.1 In this way, the production turns out to be a metaphysical study about the nature of the real against the simulated, where bullfighting represents a practice from an era in which the human subject faced death openly, without smoke screens, disguises or masks. This chapter investigates Controversia’s reflections on bullfighting and its focus on contemporary society’s obsession with theatricality (disguise and mask) in order to demonstrate that the production’s interests go beyond bullfighting itself. Given its setting – a bullfighting ring – and this setting’s associations with theatricality and spectacle, elements that also inhabit other aspects of contemporary Spanish life (Reality TV, politics, etc.); and given its form – its language and its staging – I believe Controversia to be a defence of a theatre of essence, a theatre in which minimalist aesthetics achieve greater impact. This is, in fact, the theatre practice that Albert Boadella and his troupe have been defending for over forty years and that achieves in this production its most complete form.2

Reflecting on Bullfighting and Beyond Controversia del Toro y el Torero opened in Madrid’s Casa de América in December 2006 and, given Boadella’s open participation in the debates around bullfighting that dominated public opinion in Spain, and Catalonia in particular, from 2005, the production is

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one of Els Joglars’s most personal productions to date. This is a two-­ ­ man show – Ramón Fontserè (Paco) and Xavier Boada (Miguel/Imperioso) – with minimal and austere set and costume design, which points at Boadella’s intention to stay away from spectacle. In Controversia, Els Joglars have abandoned their ­well-­known use of media projections, music, and their regular m ­ ulti-­actor cast in order to foreground words and ideas, and, above all, to open up a space for the debate’s clear presentation. This intention is apparent from the production’s inception. The text, written by Boadella and developed in rehearsal with the company, is based on the director’s XXIV Pregón Taurino, a commissioned speech that he read at the Teatro de la Real Maestranza de Sevilla to open the bullfighting season. The speech, which already contains the main ideas developed later by the production, takes a dialogical form – following the ­ eighteenth-­ century literary genre known as Controversia (polemic) – in order to explore the status of the fiesta in contemporary Spain. The text presents a fictional conversation between Boadella and ‘un ardiente antitaurino que, sin embargo, representa un caso singular entre dicho colectivo. Es educado, no insulta y expone consideraciones razonables’ (‘a fervent activist against bullfighting who is an exception amongst this group. He is polite, inoffensive and has reasonable ideas’).3 In spite of the fact that Boadella wants his opponent to remain anonymous, the implicit references to the Spanish philosopher and animal rights activist Jesús Moratín are evident. Moratín’s thoughts on the rights of animals, contained in his works, Animales y ciudadanos (Animals and Citizens, 1995), Los derechos de los animales (Animal Rights, 1995) and Vivan los animales (Long Live Animals, 2003) and his participation in parliamentary debates on the banning of bullfighting in Catalonia act as Boadella’s ­counter-­arguments to defend the artistic practice that he most admires. Moratín’s and Boadella’s views could not be farther apart. And given the context in which these were presented, the Catalan Parliament in the case of the former, and the birthplace of bullfighting in the case of the latter, their expression in art takes on a more radical tone. Boadella’s speech, like the production, goes beyond bullfighting and serves as a reflection on the nature of Catalanism and his own experience as a Catalan. Being Catalan is what, in his view, provides him with a sense of rationality and logic lacking in other national cultures within Spain. He admits that his approach to the issues at

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stake is made ‘bajo el sentido práctico que el tópico nos atribuye a los catalanes’ (‘with the clichéd pragmatism attributed to the Catalan people’).4 His rationalism is, arguably, a virtue, which sets him apart from the heated views of those who condemn bullfighting and attack followers and practitioners alike outside Catalonia’s rings. The speech’s structure, which will later become that of the production, is based on a restrained exchange of opinions – as each individual takes polite turns to present his ideas – far from the heated discussions that regularly take place between opponents and defenders of the fiesta. It is also a p ­ re-­emptive text of the parliamentary debates that took place in the Parlament de Catalunya (Catalan Parliament) in 2008 and that resulted in a successful vote for the total banning of this practice within Catalonia in July 2010 (implemented in 2012). Once again, Boadella’s theatre is located at the crossroads of fiction and reality, firmly placed in the ­socio-­political context in which it is generated and received. After two years considering the popular proposal for the banning (initiated by the n ­on-­ governmental platform Prou! (Enough!) that was supported by 180,000 signatures), the Parlament passed a banning law in 2010 that was to be implemented from January 2012.5 However, Catalonia’s animosity towards bullfighting (the second autonomous community, following the Canary Islands, to pass a law of this kind) has its roots in history, and in Catalonia’s own sense of national identity, and precedes Prou!’s popular proposal to the Parlament. The fights between animal rights activists and bullfighting supporters had become a longstanding part of the ritual of attending a bullfight in la Monumental, Barcelona’s only active ring since 1977. To attend a corrida in this city was to take sides and to identify oneself with a certain political and cultural ideology. In sum, to participate in either side of the debate was a public performance of identity. In Catalonia, bullfighting was not only perceived to be a cruel sport, an outdated practice that had no place in the ­twenty-­first century, but also a cultural export from Spain that had no significance for Catalans as it was not understood to be part of the region’s cultural heritage. In this way, the banning of the sport was not only demanded on the grounds of animal protection and to put a stop to the glorification of death as a spectacle, but was also a public display of a­ nti-­Spanishness. This is proven by the fact that the Catalan nationalist parties, who voted for

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the ban, had to clarify immediately their position in relation to another vote regarding the limits on devolution that the Tribunal Constitucional (Spain’s Supreme Court) was to impose on Catalonia’s newly approved constitution (the Estatut). As Lourdes López stated in La Vanguardia the p ­ ro-­against debate: ha trascendido estos días el mundo de los ruedos y se ha trasladado a la arena  política al vincular la prohibición con el clima de desencuentro entre Catalunya y España tras la sentencia del Tribunal Constitucional sobre el Estatut. (It transcended bullfighting circles and has been transported to the political arena, linking the bullfighting ban with the unfriendly atmosphere that can be felt between Catalonia and Spain after Spain’s Supreme Court sentence denying support to Catalonia’s new constitution).6

In Catalonia, therefore, the bullfighting debate goes beyond animal rights concerns and reaches out to the construction and public performance of national and personal identities. Consequently, Paco embodies not only the defence of the ritual but also españolismo (Spanishness), whereas Miguel is a liberal European, surrounded by an aura of westernized oriental philosophy. This can be seen in the way the characters are perceived by each other and the way they present themselves: miguel: ¡Pero qué vas a saber! Si los ancestros machistas de la España casposa han dominado cada paso de tu vida. miguel: Soy vegetariano y además seguidor de la filosofía oriental. (miguel: What do you know! The ancestral machoism of the old Spain has dominated every step of your life. miguel: I am a vegetarian and a follower of oriental philosophy).7

This is the context in which the production was born and received, undoubtedly conditioned by a very specific ­socio-­political moment – and a historical one – in Catalonia and Spain. However, this national and cultural specificity features alongside the production’s commentary on and engagement with the West’s increasing media exposure of and rising concern with the status of animals in contemporary society as well as with theatre and performance’s growing interest in the exploration of human– animal relations on stage. Thus, beyond the specific Catalan

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context, the production has to be read within the wider critical framework of Animal Studies in which it undoubtedly participates. This interdisciplinary field of enquiry, which encompasses disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences, is concerned with reassessing the ways in which humans and n ­ on-­human animals relate to one another and how they feature in each others’ communities.8 Firmly established in the US and UK contexts – both in academic and ­non-­academic institutions – the field of Animal Studies is a growing area of research which, as James Gorman suggests, has left the laboratories to enter all aspects of human life.9 The increasing media attention given to the food industry (demonstrated by the work of journalists and writers such as Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Ruth L. Ozeki among others); the evident impact that animals have proven to have on the global economy (demonstrated by recent world epidemics such as the avian flu (A1A1), swine flu (H1D1) and HFMD (Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease) amongst others and their effect on national and global economies); the ongoing research around the proximity between human and n ­ on-­human animals, which is at the base of many scientific developments that aim to improve and prolong the lives of human beings; and, finally, the perpetual preoccupation with environmental impact and with the effects of h ­ uman-­led development on other species are only a few examples of the human–animal interactions that concern scholars, artists and activists working within the field of Animal Studies.10 In this context, Controversia del Toro y el Torero has to be understood as a questioning of these relations in a country which is constantly reconsidering its own cultural traditions. Animal Studies and its reassessment of the human–animal divide have also entered Theatre and Performance Studies as well as the work of theatre practitioners. In the last forty years there has been an increasing presence of animals on stage – live or represented. From Joseph Beuys’s I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), in which the artist shares the gallery space with a live coyote, to Edward Albee’s metaphorical investigation of tragedy in The Goat or Who is Sylvia? (2002), animals in performance have been used as a way of exploring what it means to be human but also, and perhaps most importantly, to challenge performance’s means of representation. In contemporary theatre practice, animals have been part of the work of established practitioners such as Alain Platel/Les Ballets C

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de la B, Jan Fabre/Troubleyn, Wim Vandekeybus/Ultima Vez, Quarantine Theatre Company, Ivo van Hove/Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Societas Rafaello Sanzio and Bartabas/Zingaro, amongst others. Furthermore, animals have been at the centre of many commercial hits in London’s West End and beyond: War Horse (NT), Betty Blue Eyes (Novello), Legally Blonde (Savoy). Within Spanish theatre, examples of animal performance can be found in La Cuadra de Sevilla’s Carmen (2005), in which a trained horse enters the stage as part of the bullfighting scene, and the regular coexistence of live animals – rabbits, gerbils, chickens and goldfish – and actors in Rodrigo García’s works.11 In fact, Accidens (2006), the controversial performance in which an actor killed, cooked and ate a live lobster on stage, has been the only theatre work banned by an animal protection law in Catalonia in recent years. Controversies caused by the live presence of animals in artistic contexts – such as Guillermo Vargas ‘Habacuc’’s Exposición No 1 (in which a stray dog was left to die in an art gallery), Marco Evaristti’s Helena (in which spectators were invited to consider pushing the start button in a series of liquidisers containing goldfish), or Damien Hirst’s famous A Thousand Years (featuring a cow’s head and dozens of flies and maggots) – take a different dimension in the context of Spain, a country with many cultural traditions and festivities that include animal abuse usually ending in the animal’s death. However, one might wonder how the banning of García’s Accidens can be justified in a nation which regularly holds bullfights. How is the death of a lobster more problematic than those of the hundreds of bulls killed in the fiesta? Boadella’s play participates, willingly or unwillingly, in these conversations. But it does so subtly. The bullfighting debate at the core of Controversia does not feature bloody images, shocking statistics, or violent scenes. The play does not make use of melodramatic structures nor does it fall into the trap of pitying the animal in order to appeal to the feelings of the spectator. It does not contain live animals and there is no mistreatment. The production tackles human–animal relations using theatre as a medium, building on the craft of the actor and appealing to the audience’s imaginative response. Unlike other directors and theatre companies who have been keen to explore human–animal relations with the direct presence of animals on stage, Boadella defends a theatricality based on the

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craft of the actor – the erratic transformations enacted by Xavier Boada between Miguel and the bull Imperioso – and the trust in the suggestive power of words. In this case, the debate around the bull’s torture runs parallel with an investigation of theatre’s ability to embody that debate, through the actors’ bodies and words. The dialogue precedes the image, which was to be a shocking one in this case, and there is, in Boadella’s Controversia, a challenge to theatre’s ability to convey meaning through straightforward, albeit not simplistic, techniques. In this way, Controversia addresses its debate without falling into the trap of creating a sensationalist spectacle, and manages to bypass the ethical questions that the participation of live animals in performance brings about. miguel: Porque según tú, el arte, por lo que parece, está al margen de cualquier límite ético. paco: En absoluto, todo lo contrario. El arte es moralizador. Sólo cuando el artista miente y no refleja la verdad infringe los límites de la ética. (miguel: So it seems that, in your view, art should not concern itself with ethics. paco: Absolutely not, quite the opposite. Art is moralizing. Art only overrides ethical concerns when the artist lies and does not reflect the truth in his work.)12

Boadella’s play is faithful to this premise by avoiding any explicit representation of bullfighting and letting the dialogue explore the ethical consequences of this ancient Spanish tradition. In fact, it is on representation that much of Miguel and Paco’s dialogue is focused as they consider the e­ver-­ shifting borders between theatricality and the real, and the consequences of these oscillations. When twelve dogs appear on the stage of Alain Platel’s Wolf (2004), the director’s intention is to surprise his audience, to break their expectations of what might be seen on stage and to keep them on their toes as to how the animals, whose behaviour is reasonably unpredictable in that context, will react to being in the theatre. The dogs bring the real to the performance alongside the otherwise fictional material consisting of actors, script, set, etc. However, the dogs’ presence on stage brings about ethical questions surrounding their agency – their willingness to participate in the theatre – their participation in the theatrical economy, and their treatment before,

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during and after the performance.13 Who has made the decision to put the dogs on stage? Might it be possible that the dogs do not want to be there? In sum, the dogs’ presence on stage is another example of the anthropomorphism that is dominant in contemporary societies. Their participation in the theatre exposes at once an understanding of human–animal relations marked by an inherent hierarchy that assumes the human to be in possession of the animal in the arts and other societal contexts. However, in the ­twenty-­first century, human domination of the natural world is constantly challenged by environmental disasters and an increasing preoccupation surrounding human interaction with other species. These challenges reveal the vulnerability that surrounds human life and its necessity to reconsider its relationship with its environments.14 Avoiding animal presence in Controversia, Boadella has created an invitation to reflect on human–animal relations that takes ethics into consideration and avoids animal exploitation and objectification. The production, therefore, provokes spectators into thinking about their immediate context at different levels: the very specific moment in time in which the performance takes place (the debate around the bullfighting ban), the larger historical and cultural context in which the ban is presented and implemented (Spain and its cultural traditions), and, perhaps more importantly, the larger societal contexts in which human–animal relations can be considered embodied in the character of Miguel (Europe, the world). When Paco wonders whether animals can feel, he is entering into one of Animal Studies’ eternal quandaries, reaching from the bull into other species and questioning what makes us human and animal: ‘no existe hasta el momento ninguna posibilidad de homologar en un mismo plano lo que puede sentir el animal en correlación a la persona’ (there is no way in which what animals and humans feel can be equated).15 It is true that Controversia’s set is immediately recognisable, a bullfighting ring. Its characters are also unmistakable, a bullfighter, his sparring and a bull. However, the production’s concerns go beyond these immediate questions, does the bull suffer?, to deeper explorations around human–animal relations. Boadella transports his play to a more complex set of issues that call for the spectators’ reconsideration of their positioning towards these relationships. The conversation between Paco and Miguel tackles, as does the one sustained between

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Boadella and the ­anti-­bullfighting activist in the original speech, most of the concerns at the centre of the Animal Studies discipline: What makes us human/animal? Speech? Consciousness? Sentience? How can suffering be measured? To what extent are animal rights based on the rights of the human? Can we escape humanism? Is it possible for animals to participate in the arts – in the theatre – without arousing ethical concerns? Where does utilitarianism sit in relation to a country’s cultural traditions? Boadella’s production clearly attempts to explore these questions, and, as a result of this, the director creates a debate between tradition and progress; conservatism and development. In Controversia these points of view are embodied by the two characters (Paco and Miguel) who represent specific ideas. Paco, the wounded bullfighter, embodies conservative Spain, worried about what challenges to its traditions will bring, and the disappearance of these traditions in the name of modernity. He rejects a society that has traded purity for puritanism, art for spectacle, and a society that produces a melodramatic relationship with animals. ‘Los bichos no son nuestros hermanos y mucho menos un toro’ (‘Animals are not our brothers, and least of all bulls’), he states in view of Miguel’s transformation into Imperioso.16 ‘El imbécil de Walt Disney hizo mucho daño a la humanidad dando voz a una serie de patos y ratas histéricas. Desde entonces cualquier necio se cree que los animales reflexionan’ (‘That idiot of Walt Disney did a lot of damage to humanity when he gave voice to a series of ducks and hysterical mice. Since then, any simpleton believes that animals can think’), states Paco continuing to defend that rationality and sentience are at the core of what separates humans from other animals.17 His stance becomes more radical when he reflects on what he perceives to be the loss of one of Spain’s cultural traditions; a loss in the name of fashion, development and modernity. Amongst other factors Paco blames globalization, a transformational force that has produced the merging of Western and Eastern values, generating hybrid cultures (like that embodied in Miguel, a vegetarian sparring who believes in Eastern philosophies) and destroying ‘pure’ and ‘elemental’ traditions. Miguel, instead, is presented to the audience as a chalao (madman). With his double identity – man and bull – the character represents a challenge to static traditions and stable subjectivities and argues for the need to look for different angles, to seek alternative perspectives. In Controversia, the m ­ an-­bull asks for

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an engagement with different viewpoints in order to arrive at the best solution for all involved. Miguel does not assume that animals are subordinate to human beings; he instead explores the possibilities of challenging this assumption. In the play, Miguel embodies the belief that, like humans, animals can feel, think, and take decisions. Purity, in his view, does not exist. Traditions evolve organically adapting to the necessities of each era; art cannot be aloof to these changes and needs to commit to its ethical responsibilities. In sum, while to Paco Miguel embodies the loss of tradition brought about by the increasing institutionalization of culture – ‘Un mundo, que hoy pretende situar el arte en la oficina aséptica de un puto Ministerio’ (‘A world that pretends to locate art in a fucking sterile Ministerial office’)18 – to Miguel, Paco is a fascist convinced that progress is regression: ‘En el fondo la corrida atrae a una pandilla de retrógrados que se sienten refractarios ante cualquier evolución’ (‘At the end of the day corridas attract a bunch of reactionaries who reject any kind of development’).19 Controversia becomes a reflection on being human, as the debate around bullfighting opens up a conversation around human experience in relation to its present, past and future. Bullfighting is only the starting point to assess current cultural practices in a changing global world whose homogenizing tendencies are understood as welcome reconsiderations, on the one hand, and as direct challenges to national, local and personal identities, on the other. The production, however, does not offer any answers. Instead, Paco and Miguel’s obstinate opinions become a statement in support of dialogue with minimal mediation in a highly mediatized world.

Trickery and the Real in Controversia’s Defence of Theatre As I have already established, Controversia’s concerns go beyond bullfighting into more complex issues regarding human–animal relations. However, the production’s central investigation is in fact around theatre, theatricality and performance in everyday life. If, as Boadella explains, his motivation to make theatre is to compensate for the dissatisfaction produced by the previous work, Controversia is an opportunity to address Els Joglars’s previous venture and continue their ongoing journey in search of the

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essence of theatre and a theatre of essence. When asked what motivates him to begin work on a new piece, Boadella states: In the first place, the most important thing is the fact that you’re always unhappy with what you’ve done. Probably if you were enthused by the results you wouldn’t have much reason to explore that situation any longer. There is always an element of frustration, but that frustration isn’t negative, it’s stimulating. There’s a gap between desire, the yearning and the eagerness on the one hand, and the cold and hard truth of the art of theatre on the other. These are the elements that provoke dissatisfaction but they also stimulate a sense of wanting to continue, of thinking you’ll take part in bettering the world, beginning with yourself. The artist is seen and judged by what he does.20

In this way, the Controversia is not only an example of Els Joglars’s theatricality in terms of form, but it also encloses an implicit reflection on the company’s artistic vision. It is not surprising, therefore, that given the kinship between bullfighting and theatre – the fiesta is after all a prime example of popular performance – Controversia is intrinsically preoccupied, through its form and content, by theatricality. Formally, the production is a defence of austerity. Boadella’s interest in Peter Brook’s theatre provides him with an ‘empty space’ in which to place his actors.21 The set design provides minimal information to locate the action, as the director is interested in foregrounding the work of the actor. In spite of the fact that Paco is in the ring’s surgery, where he is being treated for his wounds, his meeting with Miguel/Imperioso takes place in the actual ring, where he finds himself still surrounded by the audience on the afternoon of the accident. The bullring becomes an oneiric space, a metonymic location that symbolizes the f­ ace-­to-­face meeting with the ‘other’ (the animal, the opponent); the bodily confrontation that, in this case, is translated into dialogue. The small bullring that Boadella has chosen for Controversia’s set, the only lit space in an otherwise dark stage, represents the enclosure in which Paco – as well as the production and Spanish society – is trapped: a circular debate around tradition, identity, the real and the simulated. The space is also a metaphor of Paco’s own mind, the closed area that cannot be permeated or left – his own life experience. This space will be gradually invaded by Miguel/Imperioso, who begins the performance by staying on the limits of the circle and is firmly

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positioned in its centre at the production’s end. This is Boadella’s return to the minimalist scenography characteristic of Els Joglars’s beginnings. As in La Torna (1977) – and later in La Torna de La Torna (2005) – a set design made of a simple wooden structure fulfilled multiple functions: the ring in Controversia is an invitation to imagine, to fill the otherwise empty space with meaning and signification.22 Controversia’s austerity allows for the use of characters as ideas supported also by its absolute foregrounding of the actor’s craft above any other theatrical element. In Mercè Saumell’s view this is, in fact, a key aspect of Els Joglars’s trademark whose style is centred on highly detailed acting work and technological perfection: ‘Boadella demands of his actors a total domination of their bodies, so as to produce the most diverse kinds of human, animal and robotic behaviour’.23 As his own training with Jaques Lecqoq has demonstrated, Boadella’s work believes in the craft of the actor, whose body is central to ­meaning-­making processes on stage. In the case of Controversia, the production’s scant scenography and concise costume design (Boada dressed fully in black and Fontserè in traditional traje de luces (the traditional matador kit)) force the spectator to focus on the bodies on stage and to engage with the significations that their gestures and movements produce. Boada’s transformations into Imperioso, the bullfighting figures drawn by Fontserè’s body and the choreographies sketched on the fake albero (the traditional yellow sand used in bullrings) construct a dialogue that runs parallel with that of the characters’ speech. It is through these aesthetic choices that Controversia proves to be a defence of naked theatre: actor and audience positioned as its most fundamental elements. The production’s formal structure and aesthetic choices demonstrate a commitment to engage critically with an exploration of the nature of theatre and theatremaking. Its reflections on bullfighting – an art form or a sport that clearly participates in forms of representation akin to theatre – are an opportunity to expose the production’s aim to investigate what theatre is. In fact, the tensions between the real and the simulated are at the centre of the production’s running time and constitute its most climactic scenes. When Miguel accuses the fiesta of being ‘el teatro de la barbarie’ (‘a theatre of barbarity’), the dialogue initiates an incisive analysis of the intrinsic relationships between theatre, the real and

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emotions. To Paco, the real in bullfighting can be found in the real death of the animal, or the human, and it is infinitely more powerful than any simulated death that the theatre might enact: paco: Las artes escénicas tienen como esencia la simulación. En la lidia no hay teatro porque nada es simulado […] No tienen ni comparación las emociones que pueda provocar el mejor Hamlet con sólo dos buenos pases de Manolete. La lidia es algo más que teatro, es un rito de vida. (The performing arts have simulation at their core. In bullfighting there is no theatre, because there is no simulation. There is no comparison between the emotions produced by the best production of Hamlet and a performance by Manolete. Bullfighting is more than theatre, it is a life ritual.)24

To Miguel, simulation is as real as reality and, therefore, produces the same results. miguel: Precisamente, desde que hay civilización la simulación del arte origina mayor veracidad. Una muerte en el escenario acojona mucho más que en la vida real. (Precisely, since the beginning of civilization the art of simulation generates truthfulness. A death on stage is much scarier than one in real life.)25

Instead, Paco believes that the fiesta is the only ‘arte auténtico y sin trampa que queda en el mundo’ (the only authentic and honest art form left in the world’) and is, thus, far from being related to theatre, trickery, and spectacle.26 Unlike the theatre, for Paco, bullfighting is real. Miguel, however, has been reading Jean Baudrillard and presents a stance influenced by the philosopher’s views on simulation. Given the impossibility of establishing what is real and what reality is, Miguel argues that, in today’s mediated hyper reality, everything is simulated.27 As the critic José Antonio Sánchez has observed, this n ­ on-­ determination is a feature of Boadella’s concerns regarding theatre and might in fact be the product of an era in Spain and Spanish theatre: ‘los espectáculos de Els Joglars suelen jugar con una cierta ambigüedad, que no sólo se da a nivel formal, como consecuencia de la representación dentro de la representación, sinó también a nivel ideológico (Els Joglars’s productions play with ambiguity present not only in their form, as a consequence of their interest in metatheatricality, but also in their ideology).28

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For Sánchez, this curiosity is sintomática de una época en la que la transitoriedad entre lo real y lo ficticio, lo auténtico y lo fingido, se ha hecho tan sutil que resulta muy difícil, incluso vano, lograr una definición clara de los límites’ (symptomatic of a period in which transitions between the real and the simulated, the authentic and fiction, have become so subtle that it is very difficult, even pointless, to define their limits).29

Thus, the conflict between the real and the fictional enters a different dimension when it takes place on stage. Within the proscenium arch, everything is simulated, as it partakes in the matrix of significations and ­meaning-­making processes that are at the heart of performance. Discussing bullfighting within a theatrical context adds complexity to the debate by producing associations between what is real and what is not, and thus destabilizing the binary that in Paco’s view is settled. If nothing is real, what is theatre?

Conclusion Controversia’s metatheatricality is a defence of theatre as theatre: a practice that acknowledges its falsity in order to provoke, incite, and encourage the spectator’s imagination, and its capacity to reflect critically. For Boadella, theatre is not just a spectacle. In his career of over forty years running a theatre company, the director has chosen, once more, to stick to a theatre of suggestion that he compares to poetry: ‘after all, poetry is no more than this: minimal elements producing maximum artistic efficiency’.30 In its austerity and efficacy, Controversia is a solid defence of theatre’s primary materials. In this way, the production goes beyond the participation in an historical debate, and constitutes another example of Els Joglars’s capacity for creating a type of ­self-­aware political theatre that, while rooted in the popular, is also able to reflect on its own metacritical nature.

Notes 1

See Roger Maiol, Carles Geli and Miquel Noguer, ‘Cataluña prohíbe los toros’, El País, 28 Julio 2010, http://elpais.com/elpais/2010/07/28/ actualidad/1280305017_850215.html (accessed 10 October 2012).

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6

7 8

9

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It should be noted that Albert Boadella retired as a director of Els Joglars in 2012, when actor Ramon Fontserè – who had been with the company since 1983 – took over this role. Albert Boadella, ‘XXIV Pregón Taurino’, Unpublished document, 2006. ‘XXIV Pregón Taurino’, Unpublished document, 2006. See Redacción, ‘El Parlament de Catalunya aprueba gracias al voto de CiU prohibir las corridas de toros a partir de 2010’, La Vanguardia, http://www.lavanguardia.es/politica/noticias/20100728/53973561269­/ el-­p arlament-­d e-­c atalunya-­a prueba-­p rohibir-­l as-­c orridas-­d e-­t oros-­a -­ partir-­de-2012.html (accessed 28 September 2012); and Redacción, ‘Montilla vota en contra de la prohibición de las corridas porque “cree en la libertad”’, La Vanguardia, http://www.lavanguardia.es/politica/ noticias/20100728/53973582239­/ montilla-­v ota-­e n-­c ontra-­d e-­l a-­ prohibicion-­de-­las-­corridas-­porque-­cree-­en-­la-­libertad.html (accessed 28 September 2012). See Redacción, ‘El Parlament de Catalunya aprueba gracias al voto de CiU prohibir las corridas de toros a partir de 2010’, La Vanguardia, http://www.lavanguardia.es/politica/noticias/20100728/53973561269­/ el-­p arlament-­d e-­c atalunya-­a prueba-­p rohibir-­l as-­c orridas-­d e-­t oros-­a -­ partir-­de-2012.html (accessed 28 September 2012). Albert Boadella, Controversia del Toro y el Torero, Unpublished text, 2006, pp. 11 and 39. For a description of the field, see Matthew Calarco, Zoographies. The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). James Gorman, ‘Animal Studies Cross Campus to Lecture Halls’, New York Times, 2 January 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science­/ animal-­studies-­move-­from-­the-­lab-­to-­the-­lecture-­hall.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1& pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1350907460-HuJnqU1QOOBTXfZ3OmxmhA (accessed 21 September 2012). See Jeremy Taylor, Not a Chimp: The hunt to find the genes that make us human (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). See Lourdes Orozco, ‘Rodrigo García and La Carnicería Teatro – Une façon d’aborder l’idée de méfiance (One Way to Approach the Idea of Mistrust) (2006) – Approaching Mistrust’, in Jen Harvie and Andy Lavender, Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). Controversia del Toro y el Torero, Unpublished text, 2006, pp. 16–17. For more about these questions see Nicholas Ridout, ‘Animal Labour in the Theatrical Economy’, Theatre Research International, 29/1 (2004), 57–65; and Lourdes Orozco, Theatre & Animals (Basingstoke/Chicago: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013).

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14 See Paul Ehrlich, The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment, Washington, DC/London: Island Press, 2008); and Robert Garner, Animal Ethics (Cambridge: Polity, 2005). 15 Controversia del Toro y el Torero, Unpublished text, 2006, p. 23. 16 Controversia del Toro y el Torero, p. 9. 17 Controversia del Toro y el Torero, p. 14. 18 Controversia del Toro y el Torero, p. 36. 19 Controversia del Toro y el Torero, p. 37. 20 Albert Boadella, ‘Theatre as Alchemy: On Politics, Culture and Running a Theatre Company for over 40 Years’, in María M. Delgado, David George and Lourdes Orozco (eds), ‘Catalan Theatre 1975– 2006: Politics, Identity and Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 17/3 (2007), 301–10 (p. 306). 21 See Peter Brook, The Empty Space (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). 22 For an investigation of Els Joglars’s set designs through history, see Joan Abellan, Els Joglars. Espais, Barcelona: Institut del Teatre de la Diputació de Barcelona, 2002. 23 Mercè Saumell, ‘Performance Groups in Contemporary Spanish Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 7/4 (1998), 1–30 (p. 15). 24 Controversia del Toro y el Torero, Unpublished text, 2006, p. 31. 25 Controversia del Toro y el Torero, p. 31. 26 Controversia del Toro y el Torero, p. 7. 27 See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 1994). 28 José Antonio Sánchez, Dramaturgias de la Imagen (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, 2002), p. 175. 29 Sánchez, Dramaturgias de la Imagen, p. 176. 30 Albert Boadella, ‘Theatre as Alchemy: On Politics, Culture and Running a Theatre Company for over 40 Years’, in Maria M. Delgado, David George and Lourdes Orozco (eds), ‘Catalan Theatre 1975– 2006: Politics, Identity and Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 17/3 (2007), 301–10 (p. 308).

Bibliography Abellan, J., Els Joglars. Espais (Barcelona: Institut del Teatre de la Diputació de Barcelona, 2002). Baudrillard, J., Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 1994). Boadella, A., ‘Theatre as Alchemy: On Politics, Culture and Running a Theatre Company for over 40 Years’, in Maria M. Delgado, David George and Lourdes Orozco (eds), ‘Catalan Theatre 1975–2006:

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Politics, Identity and Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 17/3 (2007), 301–10. —— ‘XXIV Pregón Taurino’ (Unpublished document, 2006). Brook, P., The Empty Space (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). Calarco, M., Zoographies. The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). Controversia del Toro y el Torero (Unpublished text, 2006). Ehrlich, P., The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment (Washington, DC/London: Island Press, 2008). Garner, R., Animal Ethics (Cambridge: Polity, 2005). Gorman, J., ‘Animal Studies Cross Campus to Lecture Halls’, New York Times, 2 January 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science­/ animal-­studies-­move-­from-­the-­lab-­to-­the-­lecture-­hall.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1& pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1350907460-HuJnqU1QOOBTXfZ3OmxmhA (accessed 21 September 2012). Maiol, R., Carles Geli and Miquel Noguer, ‘Cataluña prohíbe los toros’, El País, 28 Julio 2010, http://elpais.com/elpais/2010/07/28/actualidad/1280305017_850215.html (accessed 10 October 2012). Orozco, L., Theatre & Animals (Basingstoke/Chicago: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013). Redacción, ‘El Parlament de Catalunya aprueba gracias al voto de CiU prohibir las corridas de toros a partir de 2010’, La Vanguardia, http:// www.lavanguardia.es/politica/noticias/20100728/53973561269­/ el-­p arlament-­d e-­c atalunya-­a prueba-­p rohibir-­l as-­c orridas-­d e-­t oros-­a -­ partir-­de-2012.html (accessed 28 September 2012). Redacción, ‘Montilla vota en contra de la prohibición de las corridas porque “cree en la libertad”’, La Vanguardia, http://www.lavanguardia. es/politica/noticias/20100728/53973582239­/montilla-­vota-­en-­contra-­de-­ la-­prohibicion-­de-­las-­corridas-­porque-­cree-­en-­la-­libertad.html (accessed 28 September 2012). Ridout, N., ‘Animal Labour in the Theatrical Economy’, Theatre Research International, 29/1 (2004), 57–65. Sánchez, J. A., Dramaturgias de la Imagen (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, 2002). Saumell, M., ‘Performance Groups in Contemporary Spanish Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 7/4 (1998), 1–30. Taylor, J. B., Not a Chimp: The hunt to find the genes that make us human (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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On Influence, Tradition and Other Anxieties: Some Dilemmas of the Contemporary Catalan Stage1 SHARON G. FELDMAN University of Richmond

I would like to touch upon an issue that is, perhaps, somewhat taboo or slightly outside the limits of what may be considered acceptable: that is, the notion of influence (or influences). Those who are concerned with the worlds of art, literature or the performing arts already know that the idea of influence constitutes a subject that is regarded as being rather noxious; an idea that often provokes a certain feeling of discomfort, to be avoided at all costs. The word ‘influence’, for many artists, carries the connotation of a curse or even a plague, because it implies a lack of originality, artistic autonomy or authenticity. It is not surprising, therefore, that etymologically the term has the same Latin origin as the word ‘influenza’, which, according to its pathological meaning, is a synonym for the flu, a virus capable of propagating itself and causing a contagion. In Latin, the word influentia refers to the influence of the stars, and it was once believed that the dissemination of the virus was indeed caused by the effects of such celestial bodies.2 Curiously, the ‘infuenzas’ (or, influenze) in medicine, as well as ‘influences’ in the art world, are both considered illnesses that need to be eradicated; hence, the power of the planets, the moon and the stars, at least in this case, appears to have lost its force.

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The truth of the matter is that influences can be a nightmare for any artist, any playwright, or any director. On the other hand, as North American critic Harold Bloom makes clear – both in his seminal work on The Anxiety of Influence (1973), as well as in his more recent volume devoted to The Anatomy of Influence (2011) – the notion of influence contains certain intrinsic contradictions.3 Centring his analysis on the realm of poetry, Bloom has reflected on the effects of the phenomenon that he terms ‘creative misreading’, in referring to the incorrect readings – tacit, unconscious or evident – of literary precursors that contribute to literary derivations and ‘intrapoetic’ relationships.4 These are relationships that, for the ‘great’ poets, have the capacity of being translated into varied expressions of creativity. At the same time, Bloom reminds us that, in some passages of the work of Oscar Wilde, influence is portrayed as a transferral of personality, which produces a sense of loss or melancholy. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, for example, the character of Henry Wooton declares all types of influence to be immoral, since to influence a person is ‘to give him one’s own soul’.5 These transferrals, or transmissions, nevertheless, can also be perceived as manifestations of what we understand as tradition, a concept that implies not only a vision of the past but also of the future. Among other writers who have reflected on the issue of influence is Émile Zola, who, in 1866, published a volume of essays on art, originality and beauty under the title Mon salon. In a section of the volume devoted to the painting of Édouard Manet, the French writer expresses a strong rejection of the notion of influence: ‘Heureux ceux que les maîtres ne reconnaissent pas pour leurs enfants!’ (‘Blessed are those whom the teachers do not recognize as their children!’),6 he exclaims, ‘ils sont d’une race à part, ils apportent chacun leur mot dans la grande phrase que l’humanité écrit et qui ne sera jamais complète’7 (‘they are of a different race, each contributes his own word within the great sentence that humanity is writing and which will never be complete’). Zola is thus preoccupied with the problems of originality and repetition, as well as the difficulty of establishing one’s own artistic voice in the quest for aesthetic innovation. In fact, in the same volume, he takes on accusations on the part of some of his contemporaries, who accused Manet of somehow ‘plagiarizing’ Spanish precursors Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya. (Art historians have often perceived a series of influences in the tradition of feminine nudes

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represented by Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus [c. 1647–51], Goya’s Majas [c. 1800–03] and Manet’s Olympia [1863].8) More recently, in a brief journalistic piece titled ‘El escritor aislado’ (‘The Isolated Writer’), Spanish writer Javier Marías has reflected on the notion of influence within the context of a related issue to which I have alluded above: that of tradition. In the article by Marías, which was a reprint of the acceptance speech that the Madrid novelist pronounced in July 2011 in Salzburg, on the occasion of the ceremony in which he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, Marías describes the inevitable Oedipal dream that often emerges among young authors: their frequent contempt for those who belong to previous generations, especially for those who were born in the same country or who speak the same language as the younger authors. The rejection of tradition, which is converted into a feeling of complicity among members of the relatively young generation, is usually short lived. As Marías explains: ‘Cuando un escritor deja de mirar a su alrededor, deja de preocuparse por el “estado” o el “futuro de la literatura” en su país o en su lengua – descubre que eso es lo que menos le importa y que además no es responsabilidad suya – y se dedica a lo que le toca dedicarse, es decir, a escribir su obra como si no hubiera ninguna otra en el mundo’ (‘When a writer stops looking over his shoulder, and stops worrying about the “state” or the “future of literature” in his country or in his language – he discovers that this is what matters least and that, moreover, it is not his responsibility – and he can devote himself to what is necessary, that is, to writing his work as though there were no other in the world’).9 For Marías, being part of a tradition, carrying the label of a specific tendency or being boxed into a particular cultural category or historical frame is of minimal significance. He affirms: ‘El escritor sabe que el país en que nació y la lengua en que se expresa son importantes, pero secundarios, algo hasta cierto punto accidental, azaroso y reversible’ (‘The writer knows that the country in which he was born and the language in which he expresses himself are important, but secondary, something that to a certain degree is accidental, happenchance and reversible’). The writer to whom he alludes and who very well may be Marías, himself, aspires to exist in an isolated manner, without the baggage of roots, tradition and belongings. With a rather different tone, contrary to that of Marías, Catalan dramatist Josep M. Benet i Jornet

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has addressed the very same question of tradition in his recent memoir. In the chapter devoted to the theatre and the theatrical life of Barcelona, Benet, unlike Marías, expresses a certain anxiety with regard to the solitude and isolation that, at times, characterizes the Catalan writer. He explains his preoccupations in the following way: Salvar-­te sol, ¿quin sentit té? Sobreviure solitari en una illa eternament deserta no en té cap i, diuen, condueix a la bogeria. Així doncs … provenir d’una tradició determinada, ­identificar-­t’hi, ­enfrontar-­t’hi … ­ Sentir-­ te part d’aquest flux, entendre que amb la teva feina t’uneixes a un passat que no has viscut i a un futur que no viuràs, un passat sense el qual no existiries o existiries d’una manera ben diferent, saber que amb aquesta mateixa feina, per intranscendent que sigui, incideixes en un futur que no pots ni imaginar però en el qual, d’alguna manera, la teva suor continuarà present … Saber o creure, doncs, que la teva salvació … no serà res si només es individual, que forma part mínima però concreta de la salvació històricament momentània d’una cultura determinada, d’un art determinat dintre d’una cultura determinada …10 (To save oneself alone, what sense does that make? To survive alone on an eternally deserted island does not make any sense and, they say, leads to insanity. So then … to come from a specific tradition, identify oneself, confront it … To feel that you are part of the flow, understand that with your labours you connect yourself to a past that you have not lived and to a future that you will not live, a past without which you would not exist or you would exist in a very different way, to know that, with this very same work, as inconsequential as it may be, you are taking part in a future that you could not even imagine but in which, in a way, your sweat will continue to be present … To know or to believe, then, that your salvation … will not be anything if it is only individual, that it is a minimal but concrete part of the historically momentary salvation of a specific culture, of a specific art within a specific culture … )

Throughout his career, Benet has frequently expressed a desire to affirm his role in an unending chain of renovation and innovation, a longing to be able to validate with certainty that his efforts as a writer will have some sort of continuity or repercussion in relation to the past and, more importantly, the future. For Benet, then, literary or theatrical creation represents a way through which to satisfy this very human yearning for continuity. Nevertheless, the idea of transcendence and also that of tradition, situated within the

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situation that Benet proposes, would also have ramifications with regard to the salvation of an entire culture; more precisely, the Catalan culture. In this sense, his concerns have profound ties to his Catalanness and to his Catalanism, to a consciousness of the precarious position that his cultural identity and his language occupy within the Spanish state and within a global milieu. If we consider just the example of Benet i Jornet, we can see how the case of the contemporary Catalan writer – and, here, I am interested obviously and above all in the figure of the playwright – appears to be much more complex, more filled with twists and turns, than the situation evoked by Marías, who speaks from his position as a Madrid novelist and from the perspective of a writer who belongs (in spite of his rejection) to a Castilian Spanish literary culture that has acquired a certain weightiness within the global sphere. Much to the contrary is the case of the dramatist writing in Catalan and who, by virtue of the condition of belonging to a stateless nation, is practically obliged to embrace, in the process of literary creation, a series of specific paradoxes, dilemmas and even anxieties. In the pages that remain, I would like to consider some of these anxieties within the framework of contemporary Catalan theatre and then examine a few cases of specific playwrights in order to explain how they have evolved within an environment that we might refer to as the ‘field of influences’.11 Perhaps, within this context, the notion of influence may not seem as offensive as it may appear to be at first glance. The positioning of cultures within the global sphere, along with their relationship to questions of power, is an issue that has animated the philosophical thought of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who, in their study of the work of Franz Kafka, describe what they have characterized as ‘littérature mineure’ (‘minor literature’, which is not to be mistaken for literature of ‘minorities’).12 They refer here to a literature marked by a high degree of ‘deterritorialization’: that is, a situation of ­ in-­ betweenness that frustrates the way the limits of identity are conceived and how cultures are portrayed or described. Therefore, as can be seen in the example of Kafka – a Czech Jew, living in Prague and employing in his writing his own version of the German language – verbal language is converted into a fluid space of invention and a place to which all that once seemed impossible is displaced. The drive toward deterritorialization, in the words of Deleuze and Guatarri,

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makes language ‘vibrer avec intensité’ (‘vibrate with intensity’).13 Everything becomes intensified. Each verbal expression is converted into a political gesture. Moreover, the declarations of an individual acquire immediate implications with regard to their collective value. It is not my intention to suggest that Catalan literature represents a type of ‘minor literature’ in the strictest Deleuzian sense. I would suggest, nevertheless, that, within the context of minor literatures, as within the context of Catalan literature, there can hardly exist ‘isolated’ writers, to use the adjective posed by Marías. Catalan dramatists can and do often express, implicitly or explicitly, a desire for authenticity, for artistic autonomy or originality, through their quest for innovation. At the same time, however, by virtue of the fact that they find themselves in a deterritorialized position ­vis-­à-­vis the state, it would be difficult for them to avoid a situation whereby each expression or utterance resonates with a certain intensity. Their position of ambiguity, of distance and at the same time proximity, with regard to the ‘majority’ community or cultural identity (that which is Castilian) accentuates in a paradoxical way their desire for belonging. It makes the baggage of the past – the connections to a collective history, which are difficult to evade – ‘vibrate with intensity’, because, when all is said and done, as Benet i Jornet explains, it is all about the question of survival. The desire to belong to, ascribe to or take part in a tradition and, therefore, survive is expressed in this case through an interest in those influences that emanate from places situated beyond Catalan (and Spanish) borders. Frequently, Catalan theatre professionals have their eyes on cities such as Paris, Berlin, London, New York or Buenos Aires in their search for new creative ties and forms of artistic expression. Far from exhibiting the provincialism that is habitually attributed to ­so-­called minority or peripheral cultures, Catalan theatre has often exhibited, since the nineteenth century, a cosmopolitan and transnational impulse, establishing an artistic dialogue with the traditions and influences of international dramaturgies from the past, as well as the present, forging its identity through its intercultural associations. In a contemporary landscape of fluctuating political, cultural and physical borders, tradition is constructed in those moments in which theatre professionals extend their gaze outward and allow themselves to be inspired by international influences.14

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The concept of influence as a solution to the lack of belonging and to deterritorialization appears to coincide with that envisioned by British art historian Michael Baxandall, when he suggests the possibility of abandoning the idea of understanding influence merely as a process involving passive receptivity. Baxandall, instead, proposes that we attribute to the receptors of influence a certain degree of agency, whereby they unreservedly employ a series of strategies that include adaptation, appropriation, assimilation, opposition, distortion, inspiration, parody, reconstruction, reduction, reflection, subversion and transformation, to cite just a few possibilities. For Baxandall, then, influence functions in such a way that can be likened to the movement of the balls on a billiard table: a single ball provokes a chain reaction of shifting positions. It is, in effect, the same mechanism of causality that comes into play when Pablo Picasso appropriates the techniques of Paul Cézanne (his colour palette, the use of geometric shapes and forms) and then transforms them into his g ­round-­ breaking painting Les demoiselles d’Avignon (‘The Young Ladies of Avignon’, 1907), a work that is reminiscent of his experience in Barcelona. As Baxandall underscores, Picasso, in this way, rewrites art history, attributing to Cézanne a new, even more prominent, role than that which he held previously. The creation of an artistic or theatrical tradition consists, therefore, of a series of reciprocal reactions, of relationships through which the history of art or that of the theatre is written and rewritten. Within the broad field of influences, the role of precursors and their bearing on history is altered according to their reception, the interpretations that they incite or the filters through which they are contemplated.15 Thus, when we say that several Catalan playwrights have intervened in the field of influences, we are, in effect, speaking about the way in which they have altered the course of theatre history. It has been through their participation in the sphere of international influences that they have been able to satisfy a necessity to belong to a tradition and to establish their own signs of identity. To cite one example, I return to the theatre of Benet i Jornet, a Catalan playwright of whom one could say that the influence of Harold Pinter has been a definitive factor in his artistic formation, especially with regard to the creation of a series of plays written by Benet during the 1970s and 1980s: La fageda (‘The Beachwood Forest’, 1977), Descripció d’un paisatge (‘Description of a

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Landscape’, 1978) and Desig (‘Desire’, 1989).16 I would dare say that the title Descripció d’un paisatge could, indeed, be understood as an echo or allusion to Pinter’s play Landscape (1967). According to Enric Gallén, Benet made a fundamental rediscovery of Pinter’s literary production around the year 1976, when a new collection of plays by the British dramatist was published in the Spanish series ‘Cuadernos para el Diálogo’. The volume contained Pinter’s Landscape, as well as The Room (1957), A Sight Ache (1958), A Night Out (1959), The Dwarfs (1960), The Caretaker (1959), Silence (1968) and Night School (1960).17 La fageda, a brief text, which served as a kind of embryonic version of Desig, consists of a conversation between two nameless masculine characters following the experience of a disquieting incident that has occurred during a drive along a mysterious road. With a modest dialogue, Benet creates an atmosphere of mystery in which the visible physical space is constructed as a projection or extension of an interior psychic landscape. Referring to La fageda, which enjoyed a belated premiere at the Sala Becket in 1990 under the direction of Sergi Belbel (a kind of w ­ arm-­up exercise prior to the staging of Desig), Benet summarizes the situation when he comments, ‘Es tractava precisament, de no explicar cap història. Que n’hi hagués una, però que no hi accedíssim …’ 18 (‘It was precisely about not telling any story. That there would be one, but we wouldn’t be able to access it …’). The premiere of Desig in 1991, under Belbel’s direction at the emblematic Teatre Romea in Barcelona, represents a key moment that opened new inroads in the history of the Catalan stage. With five parts of rigorous structure and symmetry, Benet constructs a series of minimalist spaces. They are mysterious and phantasmagorical places of darkness and shadows, of silences and pauses, dominated by the omnipresence of desire and, paradoxically, the presence of all that is not present. The absences, which recall Pinter’s work, are filled with meaning. A recently purchased country house, an empty motorway and a roadside cafeteria all serve as spaces of nothingness in which a curious love triangle emerges. There are productions, such as that of Desig at the Romea in 1991, that become part of the collective theatrical consciousness; their memory remains as an inscribed, indelible image within the field of influences. Thus when, in 2009, Carles Alfaro brought to the Sala Fabià Puigserver of the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona his

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production of Pinter’s Traïció (Betrayal), adapted into Catalan by Esteve Miralles, it is possible that the mise en scène may have inspired in some spectators recollections of Benet’s text and of its mise en scène by Belbel.19 Pinter’s text describes a love triangle that is developed across a series of fragmented scenes that move backward in time. Alfaro transported Pinter’s text to a nearly empty scenic space, which consisted of a series of black square hollows or pits that were interspersed and terraced throughout the stage. Within the play of reciprocal relationships that defines the large field of influences, the production of Pinter’s Betrayal in Barcelona took on new resonances as a consequence of the prior production of Desig. Within the framework of the Catalan cultural sphere, Pinter’s play was thus able to find a new place in theatre history; its role was transformed. And Benet’s play, correspondingly, was repositioned within the history of the Catalan stage when contemplated from a new perspective following the premiere of Betrayal at the Lliure. More recently, to cite another example, the premiere in 2010 of Marburg, by Catalan dramatist Guillem Clua at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, under the direction of Rafel Duran, immediately invited a series of comparisons with Angels in America (1990), by North American dramatist Tony Kushner.20 Some spectators perhaps even recalled the polemical production of Kushner’s play by Josep Maria Flotats, translated into Catalan by Josep Costa, which premiered in Barcelona in November 1996 in the t­ hen-­provisional theatre space that later would be converted into the Sala Tallers of the Teatre Nacional.21 The comparisons between the two plays, Marburg and Angels in America, are easy to underline on an anecdotic level given certain thematic similarities: both plays offer reflections with regard to the effects of a virus, or plague, which serves as an Artaudian metaphor for a brutal, levelling and even cataclysmic force, a profound rupture that renders evident the open wounds caused by the injustices of history. Following the New York premiere of Angels in America in 1993, New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich underscored the simultaneously ‘intimate and epic’ dimensions of the play.22 Kushner himself has proposed a culinary metaphor, that of an Italian lasagne, as a way of understanding the construction of his theatrical texts. Referring to his dramaturgy of excess, to the heterogeneous richness of the organization of its content, he calls his work: ‘garrulous, excessively, even suspiciously, generous,

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promiscuous, flirtatious, insistent, persistent, overwhelmingly exhaustive and exhausting’.23 It is, perhaps, on the level of construction – ambitiously exhaustive and exhausting – and not necessarily on a thematic level that one can detect a series of parallels or points of contact between Kushner’s text and that of Clua. In Marburg, Clua introduces four different spaces situated on four different continents at four distinct moments. All the places share the name ‘Marburg’, and all share the effects of an illness, in the form of a blood disorder, which constitutes the central axis of the plot. What appears to be an echo of Kushner’s play, in a structural sense, is the way in which the spatial and temporal lines are diffused, creating a type of continuum between what is real and what is imaginary, between the living and the dead.24 Like Kushner, Clua uses strategies of simultaneity (specifically, a fractured stage, divided into four spaces) to link together the various spatiotemporal planes. The effect is especially Kushnerian in the scene in which an African missionary appears to traverse these planes and makes a supernatural appearance in the home of the elderly North American woman, Claire. The scene vaguely recalls the spatiotemporal convergence established in Angels in America between the characters of Prior (a victim of the AIDS virus) and Harper (who is addicted to valium). The former is able to traverse the boundaries of space and time through his dreams, and the latter is able to do so through her hallucinatory visions. Equally Kushnerian is the effect of simultaneity of the final scene of Marburg, in which the four spaces are united by twelve church bells at the stroke of midnight. Within the field of influences, then, if we examine Clua’s text through the filter of Angels in America, we find ourselves confronted with a situation that may motivate us to reconsider Kushner’s play and to see it in a new light. And vice versa. Coincidentally, Angels underwent a type of revival in New York during the 2010–11 theatre season with an ­off-­Broadway production by the Signature Theatre Company, under the direction of Michael Greif. The new production marked the twentieth anniversary of the play, and it encouraged a revaluation of its impact in a retrospective way. North American playwright Sarah Ruhl, for example, observed on this occasion how Kushner had helped her to be less fearful of employing in her own works an epic sort of language on a grand scale.25 In a similar manner, Marburg, with its simultaneously

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intimate and epic dimensions, can help us to reconfigure the place that Angels in America occupies within contemporary theatre history. Twenty years ago, Angels appeared to offer an accusatory gaze with regard to the errors and problems of a specific moment in time and a specific place (the United States during the years of the Reagan presidency [1981–89]), as well as a candid portrayal of the repercussions of the AIDS virus before the arrival of the s­ o-­called ‘cocktail’ remedy (the blend of medications that has prolonged the lives of many victims of the disease throughout the developed world). Contemplated through the lens of Marburg, Kushner’s text is converted into a work that is, perhaps, much less anchored in a precise place. Moreover, it is elevated to a more atemporal plane, acquiring a series of meanings that reach beyond the arrival of the new millennium. Written nearly two decades after Kushner’s play, Marburg, therefore, implicitly underscores the timelessness of Angels in America and the extent to which the play portrays a collapse, or failure, of the grand narratives of history (just as the subtitle of the second part, Perestroika, would suggest in its reference to the demise of the cold war narrative).26 Through an intertextual dialogue of one theatrical work with another, and of one theatre production with another, the perception of the precursor text is altered, and the more recent text is inserted into an international theatre tradition. I have offered a European example, followed by a North American example. As a final example, I shall look at a Latin American – specifically, Argentinian – case. Throughout the past two decades, a succession of playwrights, directors and theatre artists from Argentina has left its imprint on the contemporary Catalan theatrical landscape. The contributions of these theatre professionals are visible in stagings, coproductions and workshops, in addition to certain thematic or aesthetic inclinations. It would seem that the impact of the Argentinian stage in Catalunya is, in part, a direct consequence of the theatrical bridges established between the cities of Barcelona and Buenos Aires, of the creation of what journalist Belén Guinart, employing the rhetoric of commercial airlines, has called ‘producciones de ida y vuelta’ ­(‘round-­trip productions’).27 In June of 2002, when Gore, a play by Argentinian director and playwright Javier Daulte, had its premiere within the framework of the Sitges Teatre Internacional festival, some 35 kilometres south of

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Barcelona, the success of the production was so definitive that Daulte and his company immediately went about searching for a locale in Barcelona in which to present the play, a curious mixture of science fiction and melodrama, to a wider audience.28 Since it was the end of the theatre season, their best available option was an old abandoned cinema situated in the Sant Pere neighbourhood. There they remained, occupying the building, presenting their show during nearly one week, free of charge, to an audience that waited in long queues on the street, their words of praise circulating by word of mouth via mobile telephone or via the Internet.29 If, prior to Gore, Daulte’s presence in Barcelona had already been fairly consistent, since then, it has been even more persistent and assiduous, with various productions (in Spanish and Catalan), workshops and prizes. Between 2006 and 2009, furthermore, Daulte served as artistic director of the prominent Barcelona theatre La Villarroel. Daulte is known for his propensity to intermingle theatrical genres in the creation of hybrid forms. Melodrama, realism, science fiction, the macabre, horror, satire and comedy c­ riss-­cross on the stage in surprising and sometimes incongruent ways. Jorge Dubatti describes this tendency in l­ iterary-­critical terms as a desire to create ‘un “juego” metadramático e intertextual, con las convenciones hipercodificadas del cine o las series de televisión’30 (‘a metadramatic and intertextual play, with the hypercodified conventions of cinema and television series’). In this penchant for traversing and superimposing dramatic genres (from cinema, theatre and television), and in creating indefinable and unique results, are the traces of possible reciprocal relationships of mutual influence with Catalan playwrights Sergi Belbel, Jordi Casanovas and Pau Miró. We might situate within this field of influences, for example, plays by Belbel such as Morir (‘To Die’, 1993), which incorporates dashes of the cinematic in its reflexions on the arbitrary distinction separating life and death, or even El temps de Planck (‘Planck Time’, 1999), a musical theatre piece, created in collaboration with composer Òscar Roig, in which melodrama crosses paths with quantum physics.31 More recently, Casanovas, with his trilogy entitled ‘Hardcore videogames’ – composed of Wolfenstein (2006), Tetris (2006) and City/Simcity (2008) – or with his texts La ruïna (‘The Ruin’, 2008) or La revolució (‘The Revolution’, 2009), appears to operate within the same field of influences, mixing reality with

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fantasy, creating parallel, virtual or cybernetic worlds that sometimes resemble those associated with videogames.32 In contrast, Miró, in his plays situated in the Raval quarter of Barcelona (Plou a Barcelona [‘It’s Raining in Barcelona’, 2004], Búfals [‘Buffalos’, 2008], Lleons [‘Lions’, 2009] and Girafes [‘Giraffes’, 2009]), has demonstrated a penchant for revealing brief instances of unexpected magic emerging in surprising or extraordinary ways within the most mundane quotidian spaces.33 (Miró, in fact, studied playwriting with Daulte at la Sala Beckett in Barcelona.34) As Dubatti observes, Daulte’s play Ets aquí? (‘Are you there?’, 2002), which premiered in 2005 at the Teatre Romea in Barcelona, after being staged in both London and Buenos Aires, begins as a television comedy and quickly transforms itself into an example of what is known as ‘el teatro de los muertos’ (‘the theatre of death’), with Cortazarian resonances and political allusions to the ‘disappeared’ of the period of the dictatorship in Argentina. Yet the Catalan version of the play, translated and staged by Toni Casares, may have inspired another type of reading on the part of Barcelona spectators, who were able to see in the play an alternative political interpretation: an allegory of an equally phantasmagorical Spanish or Catalan land, whose people have gradually been uncovering the remains of those who disappeared during the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorial years that followed. Consequently, while the Catalan theatre scene has demonstrated with the reception of Daulte’s work its undeniable desire to breathe fresh air and to discover new aesthetic paradigms, with this particular play, Ets aquí? it also managed to project its own signs of identity and points of reference upon the stage of the Teatre Romea. Upon contemplating these ‘­round-­ trip’ productions, of theatrical bridges between creators from Argentina and Catalunya, we can only begin to imagine the opportunities for future occasions of mutual contamination and artistic exchange – that is, of influences. To conclude, I would like to return to a passage from Zola’s text, Mon salon, in which he invokes the powerful image of a large museum. Here the Parisian writer imagines the paintings of all the artists of the world, gathered together and exhibited within an immense salon. In Zola’s exhibition space, which serves as a metaphor for the world, the collection of all the paintings grouped together provides him with the opportunity to read, page by page, the history of human creation. It is, as he puts it, ‘le même poème

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en mille langues différentes’35 (‘the same poem in a thousand different languages’). For Zola, then, within the museum that he imagines, there exists the possibility of perceiving influences as multiple voices that are engaged in an immense dialogue, in which they speak about the same subject in many different languages and dialects. The world continues to spin, the field of influences continues to evolve, and the contemporary Catalan theatre scene goes about establishing its own traditions, not in an isolated manner, but rather through its desire to find a place within this exhibition space, in a domain whose creative boundaries are indeed much broader than those designated by its physical limits.

Notes 1

An earlier version of this essay was presented in Catalan as the inaugural address for the academic year of the Màster Oficial Interuniversitari d’Estudis Teatrals (‘Official Interuniversity Master’s Program in Drama and Performance Studies’) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in October 2011. 2 See Mary Dobson, Disease: The Extraordinary Stories behind History’s Deadliest Killers (London, UK: Quercus, 2007). 3 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973) and The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). 4 Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, p. 5. 5 Cited by Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, p. 6. 6 All translations are my own. 7 Émile Zola, Mon salon. Manet. Écrits sur l’art (París: Garnier/ Flammarion, 1970), p. 96. 8 See, for example, Gary Tinterow and Genevieve Lacambre, Manet/ Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003). 9 Javier Marías, ‘El escritor aislado’, El País/Babelia, 3 September 2011. 10 Josep M. Benet i Jornet, Material d’enderroc (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 2010), pp. 248–9. 11 My employment of this term is derived from my reading of Michael Baxandall’s chapter titled ‘Excursus against influence’, in Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 58–62. 12 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: pour une littérature mineure (Paris: Minuit, 1972).

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13 Deleuze and Guattari, p. 35. 14 See Sharon G. Feldman, In the Eye of the Storm: Contemporary Theatre in Barcelona (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2009). 15 Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention, pp. 58–62. 16 Benet i Jornet, Descripció d’un paisatge (i altres textos) (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 1979); Desig (Valencia: Eliseu Climent/Teatre Tres y Quatre, 1991); La fageda: Apunts [sic] sobre la bellesa del temps-2. Descripció d’un paisatge (y altres textos) (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 1979), pp. 75–84. Reprinted in Enric Gallén (ed.), Sis peces de teatre breu (Barcelona: Ediciones 62), 1993, pp. 99–110. 17 Gallén, ‘La fageda, de Josep M. Benet i Jornet: Un nou model de realisme teatral’, in Enric Gallén (ed.), Sis peces de teatre breu (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 1993), pp. 28–33. 18 Gallén, ‘Del temps y la felicitat’, in Josep M. Benet i Jornet, Desig (Valencia: Eliseu Climent/Teatre Tres y Quatre), 1991, p. 19. 19 Harold Pinter, Traïció, trans. Esteve Miralles Torner (Barcelona: Fundació Teatre Lliure, 2009). 20 Guillem Clua, Marburg (Barcelona: Proa/Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 2010). 21 Tony Kushner, Àngels à America. El mil·lenni s’acosta, trans. Josep Costa, (Barcelona: Llibres de l’Index, 1997). 22 Frank Rich, ‘Angels in America; Millennium Approaches; Embracing All Possibilities in Art and Life’, New York Times, 5 May 1993. 23 Kushner, ‘On Pretentiousness’, Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness: Essays, a Play, Two Poems, and a Prayer, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995, pp. 60–1. 24 See Marcos Ordóñez, ‘Los virus de Marburg’, El País/Babelia, 12 June 2010. 25 Cited in Patrick Healy, ‘What “Angels in America” Meant to Them, and to You’, New York Times, 25 October 2010. 26 Kushner, Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1993). 27 Belén Guinart, ‘Las Salas Versus y Beckett ofrecen una mirada a la escena teatral realizada en Buenos Aires’, El País, 26 June 2001, Barcelona, p. 9. 28 Javier Daulte, Teatre 2 (Gore, Fuera de cuadro, Bésame mucho, ¿Estás ahí?, Nunca estuviste tan adorable) (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2007). 29 See Ordoñez, ‘El nuevo teatro’, El País/Babelia, 16 March 2008 and Pablo Ley, ‘“Gore” recala cinco días en Barcelona tras triunfar en Sitges’, El País, 11 June 2002, Espectáculos, 42. 30 Jorge Dubatti, ‘¿Estás ahí? / Ets aquí?: Javier Daulte en Buenos Aires y en Barcelona’, Assaig de Teatre, 46 (2005), 79. See, also, María Florencia Heredia, ‘La producción dramática de Javier Daulte: parodización

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genérica y exacerbación del sentimiento’ (Estudio preliminar), in Javier Daulte, Teatre 2 (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2007), pp. 17–45. 31 Sergi Belbel, Morir (Un moment abans de morir) (Valencia: Eliseu Climent, 1995). Belbel, Sergi and Òscar Roig. El temps de Planck, Barcelona: ­Columna-­Romea, 2002. 32 Jordi Casanovas, Wolfenstein, Tetris i City/Simcity (Barcelona: Re&Ma 12, 2007). La ruïna (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 2008). La revolució, La Villaroel, Barcelona, premiered 30 January 2009. 33 Pau Miró, Plou a Barcelona (with Lluïsa Cunillé, Barcelona, mapa d’ombres) (Barcelona: Re&Ma 12, 2004). Búfals, Lleons, Girafes (Barcelona: Re&Ma 12, 2009). 34 See Miró’s biographical information included on the Sala Beckett website: http://www.salabeckett.cat/autors/miro-1. 35 Zola, Mon salon, p. 99.

Bibliography Baxandall, Michael, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Belbel, Sergi, Morir (Un moment abans de morir) (València: Eliseu Climent, 1995). Belbel, Sergi and Òscar Roig, El temps de Planck (Barcelona: ­Columna-­Romea, 2002). Benet i Jornet, Josep M., Descripció d’un paisatge (i altres textos) (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 1979). —— La fageda: Apunts [sic] sobre la bellesa del temps-2, in Descripció d’un paisatge (y altres textos) (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 1979), pp. 75–84. Reprinted in Enric Gallén (ed.), Sis peces de teatre breu (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 1993), pp. 99–110. —— Desig (Valencia: Eliseu Climent/Teatre Tres y Quatre, 1991). —— Material d’enderroc (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 2010). Bloom, Harold, The Anxiety of Influence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). —— The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Casanovas, Jordi, La ruïna (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 2008). —— Wolfenstein, Tetris y City/Simcity (Barcelona: Re&Ma 12, 2007). Clua, Guillem, Marburg (Barcelona: Proa/Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 2010). Daulte, Javier, Teatre 2 (Gore, Fuera de cuadro, Bésame mucho, ¿Estás ahí?, Nunca estuviste tan adorable) (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2007). Deleuze Gilles and Félix Guattari, Kafka: pour une littérature mineure (Paris: Minuit, 1972).

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Dobson, Mary, Disease: The Extraordinary Stories behind History’s Deadliest Killers, (London: Quercus, 2007). Dubatti, Jorge, ‘¿Estás ahí? / Ets aquí?: Javier Daulte en Buenos Aires y en Barcelona’, Assaig de Teatre, 46 (2005), 79–83. Feldman, Sharon G., In the Eye of the Storm: Contemporary Theatre in Barcelona, (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2009). Gallén, Enric, ‘Del temps y la felicitat’, in Josep M. Benet i Jornet, Desig (Valencia: Eliseu Climent/Teatre Tres y Quatre, 1991), pp. 19–25. —— ‘La fageda, de Josep M. Benet i Jornet: Un nou model de realisme teatral’, in Enric Gallén (ed.), Sis peces de teatre breu (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 1993), pp. 28–33. Guinart, Belén, ‘Las Salas Versus y Beckett ofrecen una mirada a la escena teatral realizada en Buenos Aires’, El País, 26 June 2001, 9. Healy, Patrick, ‘What “Angels in America” Meant to Them, and to You’, New York Times, 25 October 2010. Heredia, María Florencia, ‘La producción dramática de Javier Daulte: parodización genérica y exacerbación del sentimiento’, in Javier Daulte, Teatre 2 (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2007), pp. 17–45. Kushner, Tony, Àngels à America. El mil·lenni s´acosta, trans. Josep Costa (Barcelona: Llibres de l’Index, 1997). —— Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika (New York: Theatre Communications Group: 1993). —— ‘On Pretentiousness’, in Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness: Essays, a Play, Two Poems, and a Prayer (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995), pp. 60–1. Ley, Pablo. ‘“Gore” recala cinco días en Barcelona tras triunfar en Sitges’, El País, 11 June 2002, Espectáculos, 42. Marías, Javier, ‘El escritor aislado’, El País/Babelia, 3 September 2011. Miró, Pau, Plou a Barcelona (with Lluïsa Cunillé, Barcelona, mapa d’obres) (Barcelona: Re&Ma 12, 2004). Búfals, Lleons, Girafes (Barcelona: Re&Ma 12, 2009). Ordoñez Marcos, ‘El nuevo teatro’, El País/Babelia, 16 March 2008. —— ‘Los virus de Marburg’, El País/Babelia, 12 June 2010. Pinter, Harold, Traïció, trans. Esteve Miralles Torner (Barcelona: Fundació Teatre Lliure, 2009). Rich, Frank, ‘Angels in America; Millennium Approaches; Embracing All Possibilities in Art and Life’, New York Times, 5 May 1993. Tinterow, Gary and Genevieve Lacambre, Manet/Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003). Zola, Émile. Mon salon. Manet. Écrits sur l’art (Paris: Garnier/Flammarion, 1970).

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La Cubana in the ­Twenty-­first Century: The Popular and the Political MARIA M. DELGADO The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London

The Catalan performance group La Cubana emerged in 1980, at a time of great social change in Spain. Like La Fura dels Baus, formed in the same year, the company emerged from illegitimate performance spaces, from an occupation of the streets that had both political and cultural reverberations. Their performance vocabularies were rooted in the vein of n ­on-­ textual dramaturgies questioning the primacy of the written play pioneered by the alternative theatre movement labelled teatro independiente (TI) which materialized during the latter years of the Franco regime as a protest against the linguistic prohibition and the imposition of Castilian, and an official theatrical culture based around dramatic texts and fixed theatrical spaces. Exploiting the ­counter-­cultural potential of carnival, La Cubana’s first production, Dels Vicis Capitals (‘Of the Capital Vices’),1 staged in their hometown of Sitges in 1981, utilized the urban landscape as a creative backdrop, ­ re-­ envisaging two Mallorcan e­ighteenth-­ century entremeses (interludes) in a public square. Its subsequent production, Agua al siete (‘Water to Room 7’) in 1982, moved indoors to Sitges’s Jazz Drac pub, where the keeper of a brothel delighted in tales of the visitors’ comings and goings. The production was to provide a prototype for a model of theatre which

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‘­re-­appropriated’ ­non-­theatrical spaces and prioritized role over character, with actors undertaking inventive doubling to personify the expansive cast. The company’s next production, Cubana’s Delikatessen, first presented at the Sitges Festival in 1983 but then adapted to a range of different performance environments across a subsequent ­two-­ year period, was a theatrical collage made up of different actions or ‘happenings’. Scenarios were conceived that saw characters trapped behind shop shutters, market traders peddling medicinal stones, an adulterous couple caught r­ ed-­handed by a husband returning home earlier than expected, and a tour of Barcelona that envisaged the city as a theme park packaging itself for the bid to host the 1992 Olympic Games. In a world where shopping malls are the cathedrals of the present, and representation, as Jean Baudrillard reminds us, shapes the way we process and make sense of the real, La Cubana conceived the supposedly everyday as a theatricalized environment.2 Cubana’s Delikatessen commented both on the diverse roots of the city’s past and the ways in which ‘tourism is an exchange that thrives on difference becoming familiar, the distance of the foreign or the inapproachability of the past transformed into a package tour’.3 La Cubana were to return to this formula in 1988 with Cubanadas a la carta, where once more the diverse actions devised by the company commented on the ways in which ‘the authentic’ can be fabricated through synthetic counterfeiting. With La tempestad (The Tempest, 1986), the company moved indoors, kidnapping the proscenium arch towards participatory ends by deconstructing both Shakespeare’s play and the n ­ ineteenth-­ century architectural spaces in which it is habitually performed. Metatheatrical g ­ ame-­play has continued through the company’s trajectory. Cómeme el coco, negro (‘Black, Like a Coconut’, 1989) presented a ­music-­hall review where the audience arrived m ­ id-­ performance unaware of the fact that the starting time had allegedly been changed. A mere twenty minutes into the show, the audience was told that the m ­ usic-­hall entertainment had ended and that they should leave the auditorium. The company then proceeded to dismantle the makeshift theatre in which its cabaret had been staged in front of an audience who were gradually implicated in the backstage intrigues, the offstage rivalries, the putting away of costumes, props and set. The meticulous ‘pulling down’ of the

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show commented on the whole process of ‘making’ theatre. A reworking for the 2005 Edinburgh International Festival, as the ­English-­language Nuts CocoNuts, presented a tired and tatty Gibraltarian theatre company down on its luck that had swapped its usual haunts on the Costa del Sol for a single night performance in Edinburgh as part of a British C ­ ouncil-­promoted ‘Get to know the theatre of our colonies’ tour. Cómeme was later revived in 2007 to mark the t­ wenty-­fifth anniversary of the company.4 All of the company’s productions since La tempestad have involved the audience entering into a performance game where they watch the beginning of a show of some sort that is then spectacularly interrupted, shifting the performance into another register. For Cubana Marathon Dancing, their contribution to the 1992 Olympic Festival, this involved a t­ wenty-­four hour dance marathon staged by a multinational seeking to exploit the potential of the city’s assets. The competition was interrupted by a loud explosion that heralded the end of the world and the beginning of the supposed afterlife – a kitsch imagining of the icons of heaven and hell involved in playful mirth. Cegada de amor (‘Blinded by Love’, 1993) had an audience sitting down to watch an outlandish technicolour ­sub-­Almodóvar film where audience heckling led indignant onscreen actors to jump out of the screen and into the auditorium to set the record straight. The interplay of live action against the celluloid exploits resulted in a ludic interaction between the live and the mediatized that played out debates raging in critical and academic fields. In Equipatge per al 2000: Més de pressa, més de pressa (‘What Should We Take? Faster and Faster’, 1999), the audience arrived at Barcelona’s Centre de Cultura Contemporània (CCCB) to see an art exhibition that camouflaged a series of m ­ ini-­ sketches deconstructing the politics of high art consumption. In Una nit d’Òpera (‘A Night of Opera’, 2001) the metanarrative of Aida was displaced by a series of small stories charting the loves, toils, turmoils and travails of the cast and crew of a fictional opera company seeking to ensure that Aida continue whatever mishaps were occurring backstage. In Mamá, quiero ser famoso (‘Mummy, I Want to be Famous’, 2003), a TV show offering celebrity to ordinary punters clamouring for their five minutes of fame ultimately imploded through the need to win a ratings war always in search of new extremes of bad taste. In Campanades de boda (‘Wedding Bells’, 2012), the wedding plans of a bourgeois family are threatened by domestic squabbles and a

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groom who cannot be present, leading to a f­ ull-­scale relocation of the event to a proscenium arch theatre. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus on the company’s ­twenty-­first century productions, which have been marked, I would argue, by an ever more prominent s­ocio-­political agenda. This is not to say that the company’s earlier work did not comment on these concerns. Cubana Marathon Dancing warned of the dangers of embracing a sanitized global culture where local traditions are sacrificed, prostituted or reworked to fit the demands of the larger organizational body. Cegada de amor exposed the fraudulence of the iconography of the ­all-­singing, ­all-­dancing festive utopia promoted by the Franco regime in the interests of nurturing the burgeoning tourist trade. In Equipatge per al 2000, the flamboyantly attired guides, at once indicative of and parodying the standardization which is a hallmark of the leisure industry with its emphasis and logo and recognizable emblems, defiantly reminded audiences of the contrived nature of consumer culture where the corporate identity subsumes individual aspirations. The company’s ­twenty-­ first century work builds on these earlier productions. Television’s complicity in promoting a culture of commodity and consumerism, the focus of Mamá, quiero ser famoso, had its genesis in Equipatge per al 2000 as the conduit for advertisements that served to provide surreptitious modes of indoctrination for the characters facing its persuasive models. The numerous scenarios chronicling Western society’s obsession with gadgets that provide the illusion of controlling time, the focus, through the giant mirrored peepshow car park, on voyeurism and its role in crafting a debilitating culture of material consumption served, on the cusp of a new millennium, to question the achievements of the past century and point to theatre’s potential in offering a space for engagement and activism. Both Mamá, quiero ser famoso and Campanades de boda have developed the company’s nomadic, itinerant tradition, touring the nation with acerbic commentaries on cultural commodification and consumption. Both offer narratives ruptured by asides, musical numbers, intrusions and the imminent threat that things might go wrong – the show might not go on – which exposes both the resilience and frailty of theatre.5

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Dissecting the Confessional Culture of Celebrity: Mamá, quiero ser famoso In Mamá, quiero ser famoso the confessional culture of celebrity is interrogated through the medium of a TV show produced by a fictional CBN company – note the link to the USA’s powerful CNN – that allows those willing to prostitute themselves for television exposure to undertake any number of demeaning tasks. Reality television, that process of supposedly democratizing celebrity, giving everyone their five minutes of fame, is here deconstructed in what is arguably the company’s most corrosive show. Within the framing device of a British TV show that purports to give ordinary people a stab at fame, presenter Jimmy Taylor (Santi Güell) and his coterie of glamorous (and largely female) assistants, bring on stage those who have acquired fame and are desperate to hold on to it and those who desire it at all costs convinced of the idea, articulated by the woman who clambers down from the balcony because she wants to make it on stage, that ‘cojeré especialidad cuando sea famosa’ (‘I’ll specialize when I’m famous’). Friends and families speak to the camera not each other and jostle to outdo each other in the hope that the camera will come to rest on them. The different sketches that make up Mamá, quiero ser famoso ask how the grey eye of television kidnapped our l­iving-­room and took over our lives. It probes the ways in which television functions as therapy for our confessional age where we have to see a lot of ‘porquería’ (rubbish) to boost our sense of ­self-­worth. The remote control of our TV sets is here presented as a prosthetic limb. The Gutiérrez family (Xavi Tena, Meritxell Huertas, Meritxell Duró, David Pintó), winners of the ‘famosos para siempre’ (‘famous forever’) competition – a take on the ‘Amigos para siempre’ song for the 1992 Olympics – appear on stage weighed down by television sets, indifferent to the fate of the family’s elderly grandmother who staggers beneath the weight of the contraption, wearily conceding ‘somos monstrous televisivos’ (‘we are television monsters’). The title Mamá, quiero ser famoso comes from Concha Velasco’s Mamá quiero ser artista (‘Mummy, I want to be an artist’) where she is told in no uncertain terms by her mother that this is no acceptable career choice. According to founder member and director Jordi Milán the difference now lies in the fact that the mother also craves the fame sought by the daughter.6 Indeed, Amparito (Esther

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Cámara), the child prodigy who can recite endless facts and figures about the crown jewels of the European royal families gleaned from the gossip magazines that dominate the Spanish news stands, is made to perform live by her ambitious parents (Toni Torres and Maria Garrido) from the hospital bed of Madrid’s Paz hospital where she is recovering from appendicitis. Nothing is sacred; the search for fame and celebrity sees a trio of nuns (Meritxell Huertas, Ota Vallès, Maria Garrido) turn to rock’n’roll, setting the catechism to pop (see image 1), a prostitute yearn to be a tertuliana, holding court on a chat show where she can scatter advice to all those willing to listen, and a disabled ventriloquist thrown out of his wheelchair and made to perform on his feet in the bid to secure ratings. Antonia la Churrera (Annabel Totusaus), a thinly veiled caricature of gossip show queen Antonia dell’Atte, shares her rags- t­ o-­riches tale of a life in thrall to the camera, appearing on 1970s show 1,2,3, waving madly to the camera while supposedly paying her respects to Franco lying in state, smashing TV monitors in electrical stores because they are not screening her image, and rushing down to the intercom of her flat at times when she is acutely suffering cold turkey from a lack of screen exposure. While La Cubana’s shows have habitually celebrated the right to be different, here television is shown to want to remove members of the public who ‘quedan mal’ (‘look bad’) and do not fit the regimentalized culture of what looks good on screen. The scenography for Mamá, quiero ser famoso provides an arena where surveillance prevails. Dominated by a giant staircase from which those in search of fame descend and the three giant screens that replay ­on-­stage action, activities in the stalls and interviews conducted with members of the public in Madrid that comment on culture of celebrity, this is a space which replays television’s mediatization of the live and fetishization of the immediate. The screens display advertisements for cleaning fluids and tea packaged for our tabloid MTV attention spans. Their juxtaposition with a programme on the rainforests serves to decontextualize the political in ways that indicate how television’s montage, embodied by CNN’s ubiquitous coverage and its pretence of objectivity has, in the words of American director Peter Sellars, ‘erased the emotional power of the events in our own lives’,7 so that we pass from news item to news item, from an advertisement to the pursuit of a celebrity to the news that 300,000 died in the Tsunami without

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balancing the weight of significance. Television puts everything in the public domain and while this may give the impression of a trauma shared, as the acerbic ventriloquist Sebastián L’Amour (Xavi Tena) observes, ‘vende el montaje’ (‘the edited product sells’) – it is not about what you are selling but how you sell it.8 Crucially, Mamá, quiero ser famoso also comments on reality TV shows’ fascination with ‘authenticity’ and the ‘live’, with the thin line between artifice and the real, ‘a fixation on categories of duration and physical space, and a provocation to individual experience and participation’.9 The pleasurable thrill of such programmes as Gran Hermano, Operación Triunfo, La Academia, La Granja, Telecinco’s Crónicas Marcianas and TNT and the programas del corazón that have saturated ­peak-­time television like Telecinco’s A tu lado, Salsa Rosa, Aquí hay tomate, Ana Ros, TVE1’s Gente and Antena 3’s ¿Dónde estás corazón? rely on the thrill of the live for their appeal. This is television that appropriates the presence of the theatrical, with an audience that thrives on observing a space designed to house the ‘live performance’ whether that be housemates confined within a geographically enclosed environment or celebrities spinning fictionalized confessional tales of the trials and tribulations of an existence lived in the goldfish bowl of the camera’s glare. Reality TV promises authenticity, the allure of ‘real people’ in their r­eal-­life environment but what it delivers is the performance of a self, where ‘lived experience becomes our most immediate commodity’. For trash television ‘turns experience into performance, and performance into experience. It is a striking product of (late-) late capitalism, in its commodification of experience for an audience used to small and swift gratifications’.10 Mamá, quiero ser famoso satirizes a television culture that spins the promise of participation based on degradation and exploitation – the demand for ratings sees the accordionist María Pilar (Meritxell Duró) and her son (Toni Torres) forced to perform naked in one of the show’s most disturbing moments and the child prodigy Amparito made to sing ‘Andares de reina’ from her hospital bed by her ambitious parents. As she screeches from her hospital bed, her mother (Maria Garrido) dons Amparito’s flamenco dress on her knees to perform the accompanying gestures. Mamá, quiero ser famoso also exposes the supposed authenticity of reality TV by demonstrating how audiences are manipulated by placards that direct them to ‘insultar’ (insult) and ‘gritar’ (shout)

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at specified moments. The show’s presenter, Jimmy Taylor, boasts that they are in the business of ‘fabricando fama’ (‘fabricating fame’) and Mamá, quiero ser famoso indicates how the prensa del corazón, selling 4 million magazines a week with its ‘reyes de la revista’ (‘magazine monarchs’) in search of ever more intimate revelations and titillations, is crucially implicated in this culture of serial possession – we can all own a particular brand of Levis, wear CKOne, and have Sara Carbonero in our s­itting-­rooms. As Joan Vives’s number ‘Los reyes de la revista’ sung by four pushy journalists states: ‘Cortamos, pegamos, / metemos, sacamos, / decidimos e inventamos la realidad’ (We cut and paste, / put things in and take them out, / we decide and invent reality). For Jordi Milán ‘La televisión tiene mucho de teatro y, en cambio, hos ha hecho creer que todo lo que sale por televisión es verdad. Al teatro vamos a sabiendas de que todo es mentira, pero se dicen verdades’ (‘Television has a lot of theatre in it and, yet, it has led us to believe that everything that appears on television is true. We go to the theatre knowing that it’s all a lie, but truths are told’).11 In an age where screen stars decorate plays in the West End of London and New York’s Broadway, where the ubiquitous screen has infiltrated all corners of our existence, mediating what and how we see and feeding our voyeuristic cravings for the thrill of the live, Mamá, quiero ser famoso demonstrated how television brought celebrities into our f­ront-­room, filtering through news and gossip of their activities to the extent where we labour under the illusion that these strangers are people we know well. Mamá, quiero ser famoso juggles tropes that those familiar with the company’s work will recognize: the nod to the recent past – the show has a distinctive Eurovision 1970s look of colourful lapels, glorious flares, brilliant white hotpants; Joan Vives’s witty, pastiche musical numbers that draw on the pasodoble, ’70s glam rock, sevillanas, the exhibitionism of big Broadway production numbers; the plumes that habitually make an appearance in La Cubana’s backstage musicals; the chorus of male dancers struggling ever so slightly to lift their female companions who cannot quite manage to make it all look effortless; the lopsided wigs and h ­ orn-­rimmed glasses that mark out the actors. Significantly, it also continued the company’s exploration of linguistic difference and cultural power. While La Cubana have often presented bilingual versions of their productions, with predominantly C ­ atalan-­ language versions of Cómeme and

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Cegada de amor toured in Catalonia and ­ Castilian-­ language adaptations presented outside Catalonia, the dynamic of multilingualism has often permeated the narrative frame of their work. In La tempestad, the use of José María Valverde’s ponderous translation of Shakespeare’s play obliquely commented on the uneven trajectory of his work in Catalonia, where, in the n ­ ot-­so-­ distant past of Francoism, theatrical activity had been controlled and curtailed by linguistic censorship, and camouflage and parody proved powerful weapons in the ­ethno-­national agenda. In Cegada de amor, protests from a La Cubana plant, the audience member Paquito, heckling from the stalls as the producer Andreu Marçal addressed the audience in Catalan or the ensuing film dialogue was conducted in Catalan, were defiantly answered by Marçal with comments about how Spain is a state made up of different nations. It has not just been C ­ astilian-­language purists that have been satirized by the company. While ostensibly performed in Catalan, Equipatge per al 2000 negotiated the ­Catalan-­Castilian axis in its strategically placed security guards whose Andalusian accents and C ­ astilian-­ language dialogue positioned them within a particular class structure of immigrants now residing in Catalonia. Their position as cultural outsiders commenting on what the illuminated ­question-­ mark exhibit might mean, was reinforced by their social exclusion in an exhibition where Catalan was presented as the official language but actor plants switched effortlessly from Catalan to Castilian, responding to whichever language the audience members used.

The Wedding as Recession Drama: Campanades de boda (2012) In 2005, while presenting Nuts CocoNuts at the Edinburgh International Festival, Jordi Milán mentioned plans for a forthcoming production looking at the backstage preparations for a large family wedding.12 Weddings, Milán elaborated, are theatrical performances with a script that is followed by those involved in the action. Weddings lead people to do things in the name of the ceremony that they would never normally do and dress up in ways that do not necessarily suit them.13 Weddings bind families and communities together; they offer connectivity at a time of mobility and change and provide a mode of bringing different constituents

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together, albeit temporarily within a particular space. The production opened in March 2012, a time when the ruling political parties in both Spain and Catalonia were refusing to consider any kind of political partnership and ruthlessly pursuing a politics of exclusion – in the case of Spain a culture of sidelining the cultural and linguistic difference of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia; in the case of Catalonia pursuing a populist separatist agenda without considering the possible renegotiations of the Statute of Autonomy – the metaphor of nuptials was used to argue for partnerships that offer new models for civic coexistence in the wider Spanish state. Campanades de boda presents a treatment of the wedding as onand ­off-­stage drama. Crafted during a fi ­ ve-­month rehearsal period, it functioned as a frenetic satire, negotiating and interrogating a series of clichés about weddings. In Campanades de boda nuptials were exposed as a fusion of panic, neurosis, vanity, and narcissism. ­Cross-­cultural misunderstandings proved the least of the couple’s worries. As the company’s first new production since 2003, it attracted significant ­pre-­opening publicity.14 Indications by Milán that this might be the company’s last show, further added to the sense of anticipation.15 The opening night on 14 March 2012 was celebrated in a theatre adorned with the trappings of nuptial celebrations: box office assistants were clad in wedding dresses by ­high-­profile bridal gown designer Rosa Clará, a giant tiered wedding cake and gigantic bunches of flowers adorned the public spaces in the Teatro Tívoli, a photographer was on hand to document the proceedings. A celebrity guest list including actors Josep Maria Flotats, Joan Pera and Mónica Randall, e­ x-­Cubana performer Santi Millán, and ­film-­makers Joaquín Oristrell and Ventura Pons were targeted on exit by the media to offer sound bites on the production. The mechanics of production and performance that run through social rituals are centrally exposed in Campanades de boda. The wedding became a means for the display of m ­ iddle-­class affluence by a family with a reputation to maintain and a business to run. The Rius family are florists, owners of the Floristeria Rius open 24/7, and daughter Violeta (Montse Amat) is getting married. Only this bastion of Catalan enterprise and respectability is marrying a famous Bollywood actor, Vikram Sodhi (Ajay Jethi), whom Violeta met at the Café de la Radio while he was working in Barcelona. While she would rather just have a small ceremony, her mother has

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other plans. Act 1 takes place in the chic apartment of Violeta’s mother, Hortensia (Annabel Totusaus), who is leading on the lavish wedding preparations with her sister Margarita (a return to the company for one of its earliest collaborators, Mont Plans). The action is structured across a run up to the wedding through a series of flashbacks – from six months to a mere six hours before the big event – with a sense of countdown indicated through the projections on a screen. The action offers a fusion of Ray Cooney’s drama of cross-­ ­ purposes, a ­ Feydeau-­ esque French farce of narrative complications and the escalating chaos of Robert Altman’s A Wedding (1978). As with Altman’s film, there is an expansive cast, the use of a tiered wedding cake as a prominent publicity element, and conflict through an unconventional pairing: for Altman the conflict comes through a class schism, distance (as well as race and ethnicity) separating the two families. Violeta’s family are beset by their own internal squabbling. Hortensia’s former husband, Paco Zamora (Xavi Tena), an e­ x-­ policeman who evidently models himself on a fusion of Tom Selleck’s Thomas Magnum and James Garner’s Jim Rockford, arrives with his alcoholic French girlfriend Margot (Meritxell Duró) in tow. And Margot can always be relied on to arrive drunk, desperate for drink, or inappropriately attired, at any event. Violeta’s siblings have their own concerns to grapple with. Narcís (Toni Torres) is a h ­ en-­pecked husband in awe of his voluptuous and fiery wife Regina (Babeth Ripoll), a volatile Brazilian who uses their small daughter as a bartering tool in her wars with Narcís’s imposing family – who evidently resent her. Brother Jacint (Bernat Cot) has a gay partner, Juan Carlos (Oriol Burés), and longs for the l­arge-­scale social nuptials being lavished on Violeta. But the family want to keep Jacint in the closet as they all fear the conservative streak embodied by Paco’s ageing Tía Consuelo (Meritxell Duró). Consuelo is draconian in her beliefs, arriving at the house sporting fiercely traditional Roman Catholic convictions, an imposing walking stick – like that of Lorca’s Bernarda Alba – and a mysterious package that she refuses to part with. The package is revealed in Act 2 to be a portable altar complete with an iconic Virgin Mary that she opens out during the civil ceremony as her way of ensuring there is a religious presence at a wedding that she sees as dominated by pagan values. Consuelo is clearly no fan of Hortensia and Margarita; her rabidly anti-­ ­ Catalan sentiments manifest themselves on numerous

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occasions. Paco cowers to her, refusing to acknowledge his own separation from Hortensia in an attempt to keep up appearances within his highly conservative family. Manolita (Maria Garrido) is the compassionate and loyal Andalusian family servant who has served the Riuses through thick and thin. Like Consuelo she is ‘other’ to the Catalan family, but her fluency in Catalan suggests a level of assimilation that Consuelo – consistently clad in black and flapping around the stage like a deranged raven – fiercely rejects. Manolita has had to assimilate because economically she had no choice. She comments on the action as a chorus of sorts, a member of the wider community who stands on the periphery of the family. She doles out advice to Violeta and leads the audience through the tussles, tantrums and intrigues besetting the Rius clan – a metaphor for a Catalan political class that made alliances with the ruling political parties in Madrid that later ended in acrimonious divorces. Like Lorca’s ageing Doña Rosita, she also reflects on her own lost love. Her predicament is further echoed in that of Modesto (Jaume Baucis), who supervises delivery for the family business and pines adoringly for the single Margarita. Music is used to signal scene changes in Act 1 – with characters weaving through each other in a stylistic dance from scene to scene to Joan Vives’s jaunty score. Indeed, the structure of Act 1 is very much that of a classic farce with the forthcoming event threatened by a range of unforeseen calamities. The wedding planners, from the company Campanades de boda, do not quite have control of the event – one of a number of references to poor organization at institutional level that allude to Spain’s economic woes. The concejal (city councillor) who was due to officiate at the ceremony is now indisposed so an actor is contracted to take his place. Recruited from street theatre on la Rambla, however, he is not too confident with the text he has been given to perform and panic ensues as he fluffs his lines and suffers a bout of acute diarrhoea. Wedding preparations are further threatened by a range of visitors – both foreseen and unforeseen – and this allows for the narrative to be consistently interrupted. The restaurant is changing the menu at the last minute. Unwanted gifts arrive – including a hideous porcelain statue – pointing to a culture of ostentatious consumption. The Romanian cleaner has to be shown the ropes by Manolita. The hairdresser turns up with dynamic ideas for styling Violeta. Regina stomps in to confront Narcís –  and pushes Paco into the food

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prepared for the family. A tuna made up of four s­ inger-­musicians, including a b ­ushy-­ haired, animated tambourine player who performs with great gusto (Maria Garrido), serenade the ­bride-­ to-­be with ‘Me gusta mi novio’ (‘I like my fiancé’) – the allure of traditions that have existed for centuries and that are slavishly maintained however anachronistic they may appear (see image 2). Violeta is unhappy with the ­meringue-­style dress that her mother has chosen for her, and the camp dress designer, Anselmo de la Croix (Toni Torres), faces the challenge of designing a dress in the six hours remaining before the wedding that will simultaneously please the Bride and not alienate her mother. Momentum escalates as the act progresses with the drama over the dress and venue providing the move from Act 1’s comedía de tresillo (boulevard comedy) to Act 2’s participatory experience. With 1,000-plus invited guests and an escalating list of potential additions, the decision is taken to move the event to a larger venue and this is where the Tívoli is revealed as the chosen location. As Manolita bursts into song – music is linked with love as in the classic Broadway musicals and is used to signal moments of heightened emotion throughout Act 2 – Violeta disappears under the layers of white cloth that Anselmo de la Croix and his team will fashion into a wedding dress. Manolita’s song ‘Al día’ guides the audience into making the transition from the boulevard comedy of the first act to the wedding venue of Act 2. Flower petals are scattered across the space to the saccharine sounds of the ‘Flower Duet’, from Léo Delibes’s opera Lakmé, guests cascade down the aisle towards the stage, and the audience are given brightly coloured hats to wear and greeted as friends in the fevered rush of activity that opens the opulent ceremony. The ceremony, however, is soon shown to be bereft of one key element, the groom. Vickram cannot leave Mumbai and so the wedding will have to take place via video link with a family substitute, Ana Porrón, who works as a secretary at the Instituto Cervantes in Mumbai, standing in for the Bride, to orchestrate proceedings from the Luxury Wedding Bombay Center and the regal Kandarp Raturn representing the Groom in Barcelona. (The decision to have the actress, who takes the role of Violeta (Montse Amat), double as Ana Porrón, provides a further playful layer of interconnectivity.) This is a wedding for the digital age where geographical distance is no impediment to nuptials. The visible absence of key family members points, albeit indirectly, to a

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culture of absence that shapes contemporary Spain; it is estimated that 700,000 people have left Spain since the recession began to seek employment elsewhere.16 These are the missing generation for whom communication with home is realized through Skype, Facetime and social media and they are made visible through a dramatic mechanism that acknowledges the absences that now shape the fabric of many of Spain’s families and communities. The Act 2 film, as in Cegada de amor, is p ­ re-­ recorded. The interaction between film and theatre does not involve characters stepping out of the celluloid, as in the earlier production, but rather engaging with screen culture. It is a physical manifestation of the relationships with tablets, computers, video games, and streaming media. In an age where so many of our personal relationships are mediated through social media, how long can it be before even the most intimate of ceremonies are realized through screen media? The geographical distance between Mumbai and Barcelona is enacted through the physical distance between film and theatre that is played out in Act 2. Virtual realities have provided new engagements with and understandings of presence and presence is evidently a key factor in immersive virtual reality technologies.17 The wedding does bring the couple together –  albeit temporarily –  but the differences between their cultures cannot, like the differences between the spatial and social contexts evidenced in the screen/stage encounter, be erased or dismissed. Act 2 functions as a variation on the backstage musical for the virtual age. The wedding offers an appropriate stage for this show within a show as it provides a consummate example of the genre’s habitual positioning of the success of the couple in a metaphorical relationship to the success of the show.18 Weddings, of course, often feature in screen narratives as a mode of showing a restoration of order and narrative closure. Here the couple has to overcome a range of obstacles – including the physical absence of the groom – to achieve this symbolic union. Margot trips over the train and then vomits before being carried off; Narcís is visibly caught up in the war between his wife and the rest of his family; the video link between Barcelona and Mumbai threatens to break down; a petrified actor performs the ceremony as if explaining a story to children – but the show must, as in Una nit d’Òpera, go on. At a time where politics in Catalonia has encouraged political antagonism, theatre here becomes about the creation of a community brought

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together through stage, screen and auditorium. The audience are made to feel a part of the t­ eam-­effort in a series of ways. The Indian guests sing Joan Manuel Serrat’s Paraules d’amor –  Catalan music refracted through an ‘other’ culture; Jacint and Narcís embark on a performance – playing the cello and reciting verses in honour of their sister’s nuptials (before the temperamental Renata finally succeeds in dragging the confused Narcís off home). The screen and stage worlds then unite in a jubilant choreographed rendition of the Punjabi wedding song from Brides and Prejudice (2004) with a cast of over two hundred.19 Not even Consuelo’s brutal rendition of ‘Salve Rociera’ – replete in full mantilla – as the Punjabi Wedding Song gets underway, can tarnish the celebratory mood. The wedding party thus effectively becomes La Cubana’s celebration of its relationship with its loyal audience – what ­Joan-­Anton Benach has classified as a generosity and guarantee of a unique participatory experience.20 The show’s final number, ‘Como nos gusta hacer teatro/Com ens agrada fer teatre’ (‘How we love making theatre’) by Joan Vives, one of the company’s most regular collaborators, summarizes the pleasures of crafting theatre with an audience. Here theatre centres on the creation of a community brought together through stage, screen and auditorium. The audience are made to feel a part of the team effort in a series of ways. In Act 1, members of the audience are named in Hortensia and Margarita’s discussion of seating plans. In Act 2, the wedding party talk to audience members as they make their way to the stage. Audience members are invited to act as bridesmaids and witnesses to the ceremony and a photographer moves across the auditorium taking photographs of the audience in their wedding hats. These photos are available p ­ ost-­performance on a website run by the newspaper El Periódico, http://album.elperiodico.com/galerias/ lacubana/, or from Fotoprix shops (priced at 1€). As such, the guests take a primary role in the family album realized for each show on this website. Ephemerality may insist on the here and now of the performance, but the souvenir memento offered by La Cubana offers an ­after-­effect, a way of ensuring that the performance’s ‘effects’ linger well after the audience have left the theatre. El Mundo’s María José R ­ agué-­ Arias laments that for all its ingenuity, Campanades de boda is ‘teatro comercial para todos los públicos’ (‘commercial theatre for all audiences’), rather than the ‘inovación y vanguardia’ (‘innovation and ­ avant-­ garde’) that

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defined La Cubana’s earlier work.21 Certainly, the production draws on tropes from the company’s previous pieces. The manic comings and goings of Hortensia, Margarita and Manolita in Act 1 have much in common with the adventures of the three single seamstress sisters in the company’s 1992 television offering, Teresina S.A. Jesús (Jaume Baucis); the company representative from Campanades de boda sports a bright aqua green jacket that recalls the company uniforms of Cubana Marathon Dancing. Paco, in a nautical blazer, ­jet-­black dyed hair and a matching moustache, shares a name and attitude with the conservative ­anti-­Catalan heckler in Cegada de amor. Manolita functions as a worthy successor to the m ­ iddle-­aged wardrobe mistress, Lolita, in Una nit d’Òpera. The screen–stage interaction that follows recalls the games of Cegada de amor. Vikram’s family attempts to marry Margarita off to an elderly relative. Tia Consuelo gatecrashes the wedding stage, portable altar in hand, like a successor to Antonio Valdivieso’s formidable mother, Doña Trinidad Gordillo, in Cegada de amor. The production’s fluorescent and flamboyant aesthetic – Cecil B. De Mille filtered through John Walters22 – again harks back to both Cegada de amor and Mamá, quiero ser famoso. While the doubling of roles has been a regular feature of their work – here the cast of twelve take on ­fifty-­three roles – the onscreen world presents a further image of community. Vikram, his parents, friends and extended family celebrate, through song and dance, the nuptials of Violeta and Vikram. Musicals have often celebrated the joining of different musical traditions; here Bollywood meeting with Catalan vaudeville functions as a metaphor for the couple’s union and a wider commentary on the culture of binary absolutes that shape contemporary Spain. ABC’s theatre critic Sergi Doria claimed that Campanades de boda offered ‘Medicina de La Cubana para tiempos de crisis’ (‘La Cubana medicine for a time of crisis’),23 and Campanades de boda opened at a time of significant hardship in Spain – in March 2012 the nation’s unemployment rate stood at 24.4 per cent, the economy continued in recession and Mariano Rajoy’s budget austerity measures left most municipal bodies stripped of everything but the most basic level of funding. Indeed, despite Milán’s early concerns about touring possibilities – Mamá, quiero ser famoso had toured for three years – the production went to play 782 performances in fifteen theatres across Spain; it returned to the Tívoli theatre for a final run, closing on 3 August 2014.24 The introduction of a 13 per cent

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rise of VAT on theatre tickets on 1 September 2012 (from 8 per cent to 21 per cent) was deemed to be key in the loss of a million spectators from the performing arts in the first two months of its implementation – a drop of 35 per cent.25 The fact that over 500,000 spectators saw Campanades de boda during its 16-month run is even more remarkable against the broader landscape of declining audience numbers. The production’s run was set against the increasingly polarized relationship between Artur Más’s Generalitat and Mariano Rajoy’s centralist government. Tía Consuelo, as representative of the extreme right in Spain, has to be placated rather than confronted. Perhaps the squabbling Rius clan is, in the end, a metaphor for a Catalan political class whose members made alliances with the ruling political parties in Madrid that later ended in acrimonious divorce. The culture of evasive rhetoric, aparencias, espejismos and exhibicionismo – denounced by Antonio Muñoz Molina in his 2013 book, Todo lo que era sólido26 – is here all too evident in the voracious overspending that marks all aspects of the wedding. Campanades de boda, however, does not opt for a simplistic attribution of blame for this. There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality here; no pitting of Catalonia against Madrid. Rather the focus is on a production that stresses the importance of c­ross-­ cultural understanding, of recognizing difference and trying to accommodate dissent. The wedding celebrations provide a space for different communities to come together, albeit temporarily, in search of some kind of meaningful dialogue.  The production, however, also suggests that the differences between their cultures cannot, like the differences between the spatial and social contexts evidenced in the screen/stage encounter, be erased or dismissed as easily as Spain’s politicians may assume. In this global interconnected age, Ana Porrón can ring Spain in the production’s final moments, when she realizes she has been locked in alone at the Mumbai wedding venue after all the guests have gone home, and know that it is only a matter of time before she is rescued.

Conclusion In the ­twenty-­first century La Cubana have continued dismantling the hierarchies between low and high art that marked their early

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work. Their interrogation of the surreptitious vocabularies of trash TV in Mamá, quiero ser famoso was followed by Campanades de boda’s fusion of vaudeville, boulevard comedy, Bollywood cinema and virtual realities. Their dramaturgy presents transgression as both form and content, subject and object; while their denunciation of celebrity culture and excess commercialism also points to how we can all participate in the choral activity from which early theatre emerged in ancient Greece. They have used tourism and the consumerist imperative as both subject and structure, offering a space to engage with the politics of consumption in the age of the global village, and consistently eschewed the single protagonist in favour of the ensemble. Their narratives have provided a space for eccentricity and community in an era where the individual is paramount; and placed onstage human shapes that go beyond the lithe body beautiful of much performance art and musical theatre. La Cubana’s work has offered incisive political commentary on contemporary culture, language and ideology while celebrating the often unacknowledged toil and labour that go into the making of theatre. They continue attracting some of the most eclectic and diverse audiences I have ever been part of, who congregate to celebrate the power of theatre as a space of debate, dissonance and laughter.

1. Nuns set the catechism to pop in La Cubana’s Mamá, quiero ser famoso. Photo: © La Cubana

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2. The kitsch, playful aesthetic of La Cubana: la tuna celebrate the forthcoming nuptials with the bride, her mother and aunt in Campanades de boda. Photo: Josep Aznar, courtesy of La Cubana

Notes 1

2 3 4 5

For a more detailed overview of La Cubana’s trajectory, see Maria M. Delgado, ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the ­Twentieth-­Century Spanish Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 225–74. The introduction to this chapter draws on material published in this earlier book. A revised Spanish-language version of this chapter forms part of «Otro» teatro español: Supresión e inscripción en la escena española de los siglos XX y XXI (Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2017), pp. 513–35. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). Dennis Kennedy, ‘Shakespeare and Cultural Tourism’, Theatre Journal, 50/2 (November 1998), 175–88 (p. 187). For further details, see Jordi Milán, ‘“A Theatre Without Curtains”: On Process, the Actor as Artisan and La Cubana’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 17/3 (August 2007), 346–56. While the core company members that made up La Cubana in the 1980s and early 1990s may now have gone their separate ways, their traces are visible across the Catalan cultural landscape. For example, Santi Millán’s ­cartoon-­like elasticity was drawn on by Ventura Pons in Amor idiota/Idiot Love (2004) and José Carbacho’s lively directing

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6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

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debut Tapas (2005), realized in association with Juan Cruz, fielded an ensemble cast in its bittersweet look at a group of neighbours in L’Hospitalet. While early collaborator Mont Plans returned to the company for Campanades de boda, the t­wenty-­first century has also witnessed the building up of a new company of actors including Jaume Baucis, Meritxell Duró, Maria Garrido, Xavi Tena and Annabel Totusaus. José María Gutiérrez, ‘Jordi Milán i Milán, director de La Cubana, “La risa fácil idiotiza”’, El Diario Montañés (29 June 2004), p. 61. Peter Sellars, ‘The Question of Culture’, in Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (eds), Theatre in Crisis?: Performance Manifestos for a New Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 127–44 (p. 128). The choice of a ventriloquist to articulate such a dictum is not insignificant, for ventriloquists are illusionists, duplicitous beings that flourished in n ­ ineteenth-­century vaudeville through their promotion of the disjuncture between what members of an audience appear to see and what they can hear. The link between the onset of modernity (embodied by the advances signalled by cinema and later television) and the demise of ventriloquism may perhaps also be obliquely commented on by Mamá, quiero ser famoso. Andy Lavender, ‘Pleasure, Performance and the Big Brother Experience’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 14/2 (February 2004), 15–23 (p. 15). Lavender, ‘Pleasure, Performance and the Big Brother Experience’, p. 23. Quoted in Javier López Reinas, ‘Jordi Milán, director de La Cubana. “La television es portadora del virus vanitas incontrolada”’, ABC (3 February 2005), ‘El Cultural’ supplement, p. 58. Milán, ‘“A Theatre Without Curtains”’, p. 356. Milán, ‘“A Theatre Without Curtains”’, p. 356. A ­small-­scale project, Pili & Willy, due to open in 2009, was pulled after four months of rehearsal close to opening because the casting dynamic failed to deliver the result that Milán had hoped for. The lead role necessitated a n ­ on-­ Spanish actor with good spoken Spanish but neither the Australian actor from Nuts CocoNuts nor the German actor who was subsequently contracted offered the ‘magia especial necesaria’ (necessary special magic) (email to author, from Daniel Compte, 4 July 2012) and the production never opened. Begoña Barrena, ‘Perdices para todos’, El País (15 March 2012), 42; Marcos Ordóñez, ‘Blanca y radiante va la novia’, El País (14 April 2012), ‘Babelia’ supplement, 22. See Carlos Marichal Salinas, ‘Cinco siglos de idas y venidas’, El País (14 June 2014), http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/06/10/opinion/1402391034_ 652593.html.

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17 See Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye, Performing Presence: Between the Live and the Simulated (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). 18 See Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1993), p. 80. 19 The number was shot at the company’s Hospitalet de Llobregat offices with Barcelona ‘housing’ the ‘international’ dimension of the project. La Cubana once more demonstrate the potential of theatre to ‘fabricate’ what we understand as ‘the real’ or ‘the authentic’. While the production counted on an Indian adviser, Vikram’s family were never defined as exclusively Hindu or Sikh – with vocabularies of both fused in the representation. The version of ­Bombay-­Mumbai is, like the Catalan characters themselves, a satirical vision of their prototypes. 20 ­Joan-­Anton Benach, ‘La Cubana i la teoria de l’excès’, Els Temps (27 March 2012), 76. 21 ­María-­José ­Ragué-­Arias, ‘La Cubana, ayer y hoy’, El Mundo (9 April 2012), 40. 22 Juan Carlos Olivares, ‘Campanades de boda’, Time Out (22 March 2012), 57. 23 Sergi Doria, ‘Nupcias “made in Bollywood”’, ABC (16 March 2012), 41. 24 Milán, cited in Andreu Gomila, ‘Entrevista Jordi Milán: l’últim casament de La Cubana (possiblement)’, Time Out (1 March 2012), p. 16. Already in its initial Barcelona run, Campanades de boda resulted the second biggest box office hit of the 2011–12 season with 140,876 spectators – only Los miserables secured greater figures with 164,876 spectators. See Justo Barranco, ‘El balanç de la temporada teatral. El teatre barceloní desafia la crisi amb un altre rècord’, La Vanguardia (13 September 2012), 28–9. 25 Anon., ‘El teatro pierde más de un millón de espectadores en 2012, según las industrias culturales’, http://www.redescena.net/actualidad/ ficha.php?id=4949 (posted 8 January 2013). 26 Todo lo que era sólido (Madrid: Editorial Seix Barral, 2013).

Bibliography Anon., ‘El teatro pierde más de un millón de espectadores en 2012, según las industrias culturales’, http://www.redescena.net/actualidad/ficha. php?id=4949 (posted 8 January 2013). Barranco, Justo, ‘El balanç de la temporada teatral. El teatre barceloní desafia la crisi amb un altre rècord’, La Vanguardia (13 September 2012), 28–9. Barrena, Begoña, ‘Perdices para todos’, El País (15 March 2012), p. 42. Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

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Benach, J­ oan-­Anton, ‘La Cubana i la teoria de l’excès’, Els Temps (27 March 2012), 76. Buffery, Helena and Carlota Caulfield (eds), Barcelona: Visual Culture, Space and Power (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012). Delgado, Maria M., ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the ­Twentieth-­Century Spanish Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). Delgado, Maria M., «Otro» teatro español: Supresión e inscripción en la escena española de los siglos XX y XXI (Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/ Vervuert, 2017). Doria, Sergi, ‘Nupcias “made in Bollywood”’, ABC (16 March 2012), p. 41. Feuer, Jane, The Hollywood Musical (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1993). Giannachi, Gabriella and Nick Kaye, Performing Presence: Between the Live and the Simulated (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). Gomila, Andreu, ‘Entrevista Jordi Milán: l’últim casament de La Cubana (possiblement)’, Time Out (1 March 2012), 16. Gutiérrez, José María, ‘Jordi Milán i Milán, director de La Cubana, “La risa fácil idiotiza”’, El Diario Montañés (29 June 2004), 61. Kennedy, Dennis, ‘Shakespeare and Cultural Tourism’, Theatre Journal, 50/2 (November 1998), 175–88. Lavender, Andy, ‘Pleasure, Performance and the Big Brother Experience’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 14/2 (February 2004), 15–23. López Reinas, Javier, ‘Jordi Milán, director de La Cubana. “La television es portadora del virus vanitas incontrolada”’, ABC (3 February 2005), ‘El Cultural’ supplement, p. 58. Marichal Salinas, Carlos, ‘Cinco siglos de idas y venidas’, El País (14 June 2014), http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/06/10/opinion/1402391034_652 593.html. Milán, Jordi, ‘“A Theatre Without Curtains”: On Process, the Actor as Artisan and La Cubana’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 17/3 (August 2007), 346–56. Muñoz Molina, Antonio, Todo lo que era sólido (Madrid: Editorial Seix Barral, 2013). Olivares, Juan Carlos, ‘Campanades de boda’, Time Out (22 March 2012), 57. Ordóñez, Marcos, ‘Blanca y radiante va la novia’, El País (14 April 2012), ‘Babelia’ supplement, 22. Ragué-­Arias, ­María-­José, ‘La Cubana, ayer y hoy’, El Mundo (9 April 2012), 40. Sellars, Peter, ‘The Question of Culture’, in Maria M. Delgado and Caridad Svich (eds), Theatre in Crisis?: Performance Manifestos for a New Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 127–44.

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Index

¡Ay Carmela! (Saura, 1990), 11, 99, 102 ‘Ay Carmela’ (song), 101 Abel Sánchez, 102 Abramovi´c, Marina, 78 Adefesio, El 22 Agrupació Dramàtica de Barcelona, 53 Albee, Edward, 143 Alberti, Rafael, 22 Alfaro, Carles, 163–4 Almodóvar, Pedro, 11, 99 Altomar, Gabriel, 3 Amado, Jorge, 28 Amenábar, Alejandro, 99 Anatomy of Influence (Bloom), 157, 169n4 Angel of History, 125–7, 132 Angels in America (Kushner), 7, 164–6, 170n21 Animal Studies, 140–2, 146 Antiphon, 79 Antiphon the Sophist, 90n28 Anti-Spanishness, 141 Anxiety of Influence (Bloom), 157, 169n4 Aragon, 1 Archer, William, 74 Archibald, David, 99, 100 Arias-Salgado, Gabriel (Director General of Cinema and Theatre), 47 Aristotle, 83 Arnau, Carme, 30n11 Artaud, Antonin, 76

Catalan Culture.indd 195

Ayguadé, Sílvia, 80 Aznar Soler, Manuel, 29n3 B, Franko, 78 backstage musical, 180, 186 Baix Empordà, 18 Balmés, Jaume, 2 ban on performances in Catalan, 36, 37–41, 47–8, 55 Barba Hernández, Bartolomé (Civil Governor of Barcelona), 47 Barcelona, 2, 16–20, 22, 31n61, 35–8, 41, 43–4, 46–7, 49–55 Barcelona, mapa d’ombres (Cunillé), 171n33 Barchino, Paco, 50 Bardem, Juan Antonio, 99 Barish, Jonas, 90 n22 The Bastille, 92n37 Barthes, Roland, 85 Baucis, Jaume, 184, 188, 191 Baxandall, Michael, 162, 169n, 170n BBC World Service, 112 Beck, Julian, 77 Beckett, Samuel, 19, 22 Belbel, Sergi, 6, 60, 163–4, 167 Bellow, Saul, 31n16 Benet i Jornet, Josep M., 6, 42, 82, 158–60, 162–4, 169n10, 170n16 Benjamin, Walter, 10, 118, 125–7, 132, 134–7 Bésame mucho, 170n28

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196 Index Betrayal (Pinter), 7, 164 Beuys, Joseph, 143 Bigas Luna J. J., 108 Blake, Nicholas, 64 Bloom, Harold, 157, 169n4 Boadella, Albert, 139, 141, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152 Bombings of Barcelona, 118, 122, 126–9 Bonavia i Panyelles, Salvador, 51 Borges, Jorge Luis, 29 Borràs, Jaume, 49–50 Broadway, 77 Brook, Peter, 65, 84, 149 Brossa, Jaume, 3 Brossa, Joan, 5, 43, 83, 91n33 Bruch, Araceli, 18 Bruguera, Josep, 50 Bruixes de dol, 18 Búfals (Miró), 171n33 bullfight ban, 139, 140–1 bullfighting, 138, 149, 150, 151 Buñuel, Luis, 99 Burden, Chris, 77 Burés, Oriol, 183 Caganers, 109 Cain and Abel, 101, 102, 105, 108 Caine, Michael, 63 Cámara, Esther, 177 Campanades de boda (La Cubana), 8, 175, 176, 181–93 Campos de Castilla, 102 Carbacho, José, 191 Caretaker (Pinter), 163 Carlist Wars, 102, 104 Carmen (Saura, 1983), 99 Carner, Josep, 15 Carrion, Ambrosi, 15 Caruth, Cathy, 123, 125 Casacuberta, Margarida, 17, 29, 31n15, 33n40 Casals, Montserrat, 28 Casanovas, Jordi, 167, 171n32 Casares, Toni, 7, 168 Castile, 1

Catalan Culture.indd 196

Castilian (Spanish) language, 35–9, 42–4, 46–7, 50–1, 54–5 Catalan language, 6, 36–7, 38, 40–2, 46–9, 54–5 Catalan nationalism, 3 Catalan Parliament, 140–1 Catalanism, 140 Catalonia, 1 Catholic Monarchs, 104 Caulfield, Carlota, 3 Cegada de amor (La Cubana), 8, 175–6, 180–1, 186, 188 celebrity culture, 178, 190 censorship, 4, 36–56 Centro Dramático Nacional (Madrid), 60 Certeau, Michel de, 23 Cézanne, Paul, 162 Chardin, Teilhard de, 29, 31n16 Chaudhuri, Una, 15, 29n4 Christie, Agatha, 64 City/Simcity (Casanovas), 167, 171n32 Ciurans, Enric, 50 civil war, 35, 37, 38 Clua, Guillem, 7, 164, 165–6, 170n20 Coca, Jordi, 10, 118, 121, 123, 126, 132 comedia de tresillo, 185 Cómeme el coco, negro (La Cubana), 174, 175, 180 Cortázar, Julio, 168 Costa, Josep, 164, 170n21 Cot, Bernat, 183 la crisis (Spanish recession beginning 2007), 181–92 critics, 54–5 Crown of Aragon, 104 Cuadernos para el Diálogo, 163 Cuadra de Sevilla, La, 144 La Cubana, 7–8, 173–94 Cubana Marathon Dancing (La Cubana), 175–6, 188 Cubanadas a la carta (La Cubana), 174

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Index 197 Cubana’s Delikatessen (La Cubana), 174 Cubism, 3 Cunillé, Lluïsa, 171n33 d’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 68 Danan, Joseph, 90 Daulte, Javier, 7, 166–7, 168, 170n Daví, Pío, 50–1 De Filippo, Eduardo, 77 Deleuze, Gilles, 160–1, 169n12, 170n13 Dels Vicis Capitals (La Cubana), 173 Demoiselles d’Avignon (Picasso), 162 Descripció d’un paisatge (Benet i Jornet), 162–3, 170n16 Desig (Benet i Jornet), 7, 163–4, 170n18 Dickinson, Emily, 77 Diderot, Denis, 6, 68–70, 74, 79, 89, 93 Disease: The Extraordinary Stories behind History’s Deadliest Killers (Dobson), 169n2 D’Lugo, Marvin, 103 Dobson, Mary, 169n2 domestic violence, 130 Don Quixote, 1 El Dorado (Saura, 1988), 103 Dos Españas (negra/eterna), 101, 103 Dubatti, Jorge, 167, 170–1n30 Duplicity, 64 Duran, Rafel, 164 Duró, Meritxell, 177, 179, 183, 191 Dwarfs (Pinter), 163 ecocriticism, 14–15, 17–18 apocalypse 17, 18, 21, 22–3, 28, 32n30 body and landscape 15, 16, 20–1, 22, 23, 24–5, 26, 29 deep ecology 17, 22, 23, 24–6, 29 ecofeminism 15–16, 22–3 georgic 23 nature / culture relationship 17–18, 29

Catalan Culture.indd 197

pastoral nostalgia 15, 17, 20–1, 22–3, 26–8, 29 posthumanism 17, 18, 23 social ecology 22–3 Equipatge per al 2000: Més de pressa, més de pressa (La Cubana), 175–6, 181 Escola d’Art Dramàtic Adrià Gual, 53 Espriu, Salvador, 5, 43 ¿Estás ahí? (Daulte), 170n28 Ets aquí? (Daulte), 7, 168, 170n30 exile, ecologies of exile 14–15, 26–7 gender exile 15–16, 23 in France 18 in Vienna 27–8, 29, 31 stages of exile 15, 16, 18–19 return 17–18, 22, 23, 27–8, 29 Fàbregas, Xavier, 39, 43, 44 Fageda (Benet i Jornet), 162, 163, 170n16 Falange, 128, 131 family unit, 131 Farce, 16 Fascists, 104 Feliú i Codina, Josep, 50 feminist readings, of Rodoreda 15–16, 23 difference feminism 15 ecofeminism 15–16, 22–3 Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, 2 Ferres, Antonio, 119 Fiesta Nacional, 15, 138 Flotats, Josep Maria, 164, 182 Foix, Josep Vicenҁ, 3 Fomento Martinense, 49 Fondevila, Santiago, 100 For Whom the Bell Tolls, 99 Forqué, Verónica, 100 Fortunet, Rosendo, 43 Fox, Soledad, 118 Franco (Francoism, Francoist), 80, 100, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108 Franco, Francisco, 22, 38, 63, 77 French Revolution, 76, 80

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198 Index Frente de Juventudes, 118, 127, 131 Freud, Sigmund, 80 Fuera de cuadro (Daulte), 170n28 ‘La Fura dels Baus’, 6–7, 77, 173 Futurism / Futurisme, 3 Galiana, Manuel, 60 Gallén, Enric, 35, 43, 47, 51, 163, 170n17 García Escudero, José María, 40 García Espina, Gabriel (Director General of Cinema and Theatre), 47 García Lorca, Federico, 8, 183, 184 Garcia, Rodrigo, 144 Garrick, David, 69, 74 Garrido, Maria, 178, 179, 183, 184, 185, 191 Gas, Mario, 60 gender, 54–5 Generalitat de Catalunya, 1, 16, 104–5 Generation of 1927, 3 George, David, 4, 35 Gilabert, Pau, 67 Girafes (Miró), 168, 171n33 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 6 Goffman, Erving, 75 Gómez, José Luis, 100 González Oliveros, Wenceslao (Civil Governor of Barcelona), 41 Gore (Daulte), 166–7, 170n28 Goya, Francisco de, 22, 31n16, 157–8 Greif, Michael, 165 Gual, Adrià, 4, 43–4 Guattari, Félix, 160–1, 169n12, 170n13 Güell, Santi, 177 Guimerà, Àngel, 43–4, 60 Guinart, Belén, 166, 170n27 Healy, Patrick, 170n25 Heidegger, Martin, 23

Catalan Culture.indd 198

Heredia, María Florencia, 170n30 Hernández, Emilio, 60, 84 Homage to Catalonia, 105 Huertas, Meritxell, 177–8 Hughes, Robert, 1 Hutton, Edward, 2 Ibsen, Henrik, 4 Incerta glòria, 121, 128 International Brigades, 103, 107, 109–10 In the Eye of the Storm (Feldman), 170n14 Jacobs, Michael, 2 Jesus Christ, 85 Jethi, Ajay, 182 Joglars, Els, 8, 77, 138, 140, 148, 151–2 Kafka, Franz, 160 Kean, Edmund, 74 Klee, Paul, 125–6 Kushner, Tony, 7, 164–6, 170n21 Lacambre, Genevieve, 169n8 LaCapra, Dominick, 132 Laforet, Carmen, 128 Land and Freedom (Loach, 1995), 105 Landscape (Pinter), 163 Larsson, Stieg, 6, 65 Law, Jude, 63 Lawrence, D. H., 31n16 Lehmann, Hans-Thies, 90n25 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 74 Ley de Memoria Histórica (2007), 100 Ley, Pablo, 170n29 ‘Lily Marlene’, 102 literature, 132 The Living Theatre, 77 Lleons (Miró), 168, 171n33 Lluch Ferrando, Fernando, 40 Lluís, Josep, 70 Loach, Ken, 105 Löwy, Michaël, 125 Lucero-Montaño, Alfredo, 126

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Index 199 Machado, Antonio, 102, 105, 108 Madariaga, Salvador de, 112 Madrid, 2, 35, 36–7, 44, 46 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 4 Magenti, Leopoldo, 50 Mainer, José-Carlos, 119 Majas (Goya), 158 Mamá, quiero ser famoso (La Cubana), 8, 175, 176, 177–81, 190, 191 Mancomunitat, 3 Mancomunitat, 104 Manent, Marià, 128 Manet, Édouard, 157–8 Manet/Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (Tinterow and Lacambre), 169n8 Màntua, Cecília A. (Cecília Alonso Bozzo), 5, 44–7, 51–5 Maragall, Joan, 111 Marburg (Clua), 7, 164–6, 170n20 Marҁal, Andreu, 8, 181 Marianne, 102 Marías, Javier, 158–9, 161, 169n9 Marín Melià, Francisco, 39 Marinetti, Filippo Tomaso, 3 Marranca, Bonnie, 14–15, 29n2 Material d’enderroc (Benet i Jornet), 159, 169n10 McNally, Richard J., 122 McNerney, Kathleen, 15 Memòria general d’activitats, 70 memory, cultural memory 15, 17, 29 and ghosts of the dead 17, 18, 25, 26–7, 33n37 and landscape 15, 17, 22, 23, 24–5 and testimony 16, 24–5, 27–9 and trauma 14, 25, 26–7, 27–9, 33n37 spaces of memory 15, 17, 27–8, 29 Spanish national memory 16 memory boom, 120 Meredith, George, 24 Milán, Jordi, 177, 180–2, 188, 190–3

Catalan Culture.indd 199

Millán, Santi, 182, 191 Miralles, Esteve, 164, 170n19 Miró, Joan, 3 Miró, Pau, 167–8, 171n33 misogyny, 130 Mizrahi, Irene, 117 Molas, Joaquim, 119 Mon salon (Zola), 157, 168–9, 169n7, 171n35 Monseny, Federica, 107 Moratin, Jesus, 140 Moreno-Nuño, Carmen, 117 Morir (Belbel), 167 Muñoz Cáliz, Berta, 56 Muñoz Molina, Antonio, 189, 193 myth, 15, 17, 19–20, 24, 27 Nada, 128–9 Negrín, Juan, 112 Nichols, Geraldine Cleary, 15, 30n7 Night Out (Pinter), 163 Night School (Pinter), 163 Noucentista movement, 3 Nunca estuviste tan adorable (Daulte), 170n28 Nuts CocoNuts (La Cubana), 175, 181, 191 Obiols, Armand, 29 Olivier, Laurence, 63 Olympia (Manet), 158 Olympic Games of 1992, 174, 175, 177 Ordóñez, Marcos, 170n29 Oristrell, Joaquín, 182 Ortiz, José María, 46 Orwell, George, 105 Pagès, Vicenç, 123 Pàmies, Ramon, 43 Paradoxe sur le comédien, 69 Parejo, Benito, 106 Paris, 61, 92n37 Parisian audiences, 72 participatory theatre, 78, 173–94 La Pasionaria (Ibárruri, Dolores), 107

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200 Index Pastorets (Nativity plays), 4, 41–3, 55 Patterns of Intention (Baxandall), 169n11, 170n15 Pedrolo, Manuel de, 10, 18 Pensky, Max, 126 Pera, Joan, 182 Pétomane, 108–9 Philip II, 104 Philip V, 104 Picasso, Pablo, 3, 162 Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde), 157 Pili & Willy (La Cubana), 191 Pinter, Harold, 7, 162–3, 163–4, 170n19 Pintó, David, 177 Pirandello, Luigi, 85 Pla, Josep, 11, 98, 110 La plaça del Diamant, 122 Plans, Mont, 183, 191 Platel, Alain, 143–4, 145–6 Plato, 66, 84, 85 Plou a Barcelona, 168, 171n33 Plutarch, 90n22 Poles, 109–10 Pons, Ventura, 70, 89, 182, 191 Popular Party, 11 ‘postdramatic theatre’, 78 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, 120, 121, 123, 130 prensa del corazón, 178, 180 press, 39, 48–9, 50–51, 53 Pritchett, V. S., 1 programas del corazón, 178–9, 180 Racine, Jean, 67–8 Radstone, Susannah, 132 Ramona, adéu, 129 Randall, Mónica, 182 reality television, 8, 177, 179 repression, 128 Republic (Second), 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110 Resina, Joan Ramon, 17, 30–1n14 Reventós, Joan, 129 Revolt of the Catalans, 104 Revolució (Casanovas), 167, 171n32 revolution, 102

Catalan Culture.indd 200

Rich, Frank, 164, 170n22 Richards, Michael, 119 Ripoll, Babeth, 183 Rococo, 78 Rodoreda, Mercè, 9, 14–33, 122 aesthetic philosophy 18 biographical readings of 15, 16, 18, 23, 28 feminist readings of 15–16, 23 thematic readings of 15, 23, 28 maniquí, El 9, 16, 18–23, 31–2n27 Act I 19 Act II 20 circumstances of composition 16, 18 humour in 19, 21, 22 in perfomance 19, 22, 31n natural world in 20, 21 plot 19–21 political reading 19–20 ritualised violence in 21 setting 19–20, 22, 31n sexuality in 19, 20, 31n meva cristina …, La 23 Mirall trencat 16, 23 mort i la primavera, La 26 plaça del diamant, La 10,17, 23, 24, 28, 32n torrent de les flors, El 31n Quanta, quanta guerra... 9, 16, 17, 23–9, 31n14, 32–3n37 circumstances of composition 16, 23 cultural memory, and 17, 28–9 dream motif in 24, 27, 28–9 exile subject in 23, 24–6, 30n7 home, and 26, 27–9 myth of Cain in 24, 25, 30n12 Picaresque in 23, 30n11 posthhumanism, and 17 prologue to 16, 17, 23, 27–9, 30n protagonist 17, 23, 24 quest narrative, as 23, 24, 26, 30n

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Index 201 relationship to otherness 24–5 translation of 32n29 trauma of war 14, 24, 25, 29, 33n37 visionary quality 24–5 Viatges i flors 26 Rodero, José María, 60 Rodríguez Méndez, José María, 60 El Rogle, 88 Roig, Montserrat, 128–9 Roig, Òscar, 167, 171n31 Rokeby Venus (Velázquez), 158 Room (Pinter), 163 Ros, Samuel, 40 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 68, 74 Second Discourse 68, 72 Ruhl, Sarah, 165 Ruïna (Casanovas), 167, 171n32 Rusiñol, Santiago, 4, 19, 43–4, 50 Sade, Marquis de, 65–6, 85, 92n37 Sagarra, Josep Maria de, 43–4, 50 Sala Beckett, 163, 168 Sales, Joan, 121, 128 Salvat-Papasseït, Joan, 3 Sanchez, Jose Antonio, 151 Sanchis Sinisterra, José, 11, 100, 110–11 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 73 Saura, Carlos, 11, 99, 103, 104 Schechner, Richard, 75 Shaffer, Anthony, 6, 63–4, 87, 96 Shakespeare, William, 43 Sight Ache (Pinter), 163 Signature Theatre Company, 165 Silence (Pinter), 163 Sirera, Rodolf, 5–6, 9, 60–97 Homenatje a Florentí Montfort (with Josep Lluís) 70 Plany en la mort d’Enric Ribera 70 Trio 85 Tres varacions sobre el joc del mirall 89n21 Sis peces de teatre breu (Benet i Jornet), 170n16 Sitges Teatre Internacional, 166 Sleuth, 6, 63–5, 87n6, 93–4, 96

Catalan Culture.indd 201

Socrates, 61, 66, 68, 79, 84 Solà Isern, 123, 130 Soler, Frederic (Serafí Pitarra), 43, 48–9 Solon, 76, 78 space, 131 Spanish Civil War, 14, 16–17 Spanishness, 142 Stanley, M. T., 103 Statute of Autonomy, 16, 104 Stanislavski, Konstantin, 69 St Augustine, 84 ‘Suspiros de Espana’, 101, 106 Teatre Lliure, 163 Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 18, 164 Teatre Romea, 163, 168 teatro independiente (TI), 7, 77, 90, 93, 173 television, 78, 82 La tempestad (La Cubana), 174–5, 181 El temps de les cireres, 128 Temps de Planck (Belbel and Roig), 167, 171n Tena, Xavi, 177, 179, 183, 191 Teresina S.A. (La Cubana), 188 Teta i la lluna (Bigas Luna, 1996), 108 Tetris (Casanovas), 171n32 theatre, 4, 14–15, 18–22, 35–56 Theatre of Cruelty, 6, 76, 90 Theses on the Concept of History, 10, 125 Theses on the Philosophy of History, 118, 127 Thespis, 76 Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness: Essays, a Play, Two Poems, and a Prayer (Kushner), 170n23 Thomson, Richard, 118 ‘Tierra de Alvargonzález’, 102 and ‘pacto de olvido’ 17 and landscape 14–15 and Relaño, Maruxa 32n29

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202 Index Tinterow, Gary, 169n8 Torres, Toni, 178, 179, 183, 185 Totusaus, Annabel, 178, 183, 191 Traïció (Pinter), 170n19 Transition to Democracy, 16 trauma theory, 119, 120, 121, 124, 129, 130 Tree, Beerbohm, 74 Trueta, Josep, 112

Vila, María, 50–1 Vilaret, Mercè, 60 Villalonga, Llorenç, 18 violence, 131 violence and trauma of 14, 23, 33n37 Vives, Joan, 180, 184, 187 Voltaire, 74 Vosburg, Nancy, 15, 30n7

Una nit d’Òpera (La Cubana), 175, 186, 188 Unamuno, Miguel de, 102, 111 Urrutia, Federico de, 105

Wagner, Richard, 3 Warren, Karen, 22 Weiss, Peter, 64–5 Werckmeister, O. K., 126 Wilde, Oscar, 157 Wolfenstein (Casanovas), 167, 171n

Valencia, 1, 39, 40, 45, 46, 50,61 Valencian, 81 Valencianisme, 82 Valle-Inclán, Ramón del, 10 Vallès, Ota, 178 Vallmitjana, Juli, 19 Velázquez, Diego, 157–8 El vel de Maia, 128 El verí del teatre, 6, 9, 60–1, 63–8, 70, 73–9, 81–8, 91–6 Vicens Vives, Jaume, 2

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Xenophon, 66, 68 Apology 66 Memorabilia 67 Young Lee, Jun, 126 Zarzuela, 3 Zola, Émile, 157, 168–9, 169n7, 171n35

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Tabula Gratulatoria

Roger Bartra Helena Buffery Catherine Davies Sharon G. Feldman David T. Gies Stuart Green David Hook Toni Ibarz P. Louise Johnson Sally-Ann Kitts Biel Sansano Phil Swanson Marian Via Rivera-Womack

Catalan Culture.indd 203

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