Albert Boadella celebrates 60 years in the theater and is about to celebrate, on July 29, 80 in life. And he continues directing theater and saying what he thinks even though he makes enemies. The Teatros del Canal, the stage flagship of the Community of Madrid, which he directed between 2007 and 2016, dedicate a cycle to him that includes his new work, Malos tiempos para la lírica, a zarzuela made up of music from many others with the tenor Antoni Comas and the soprano María Rey-Joly on stage. They are the same protagonists of Diva, Boadella's previous work, about María Callas, which is also being recovered now. The eternal jester talks about his career, the theater, the situation in Catalonia and even the theater Pedro Sánchez.
How do you endure 60 years in a profession as precarious as theater?
It has given me a formidable life, of constant adventure. When I started I had the impression that life would be very precarious, that perhaps there would be very difficult seasons, and it has not been like that. Later, I have been lucky enough to create many adversaries, which gives an extraordinary march. It ends up being like a drug that you can't get rid of. It has had consequences, of course. When one says what one thinks very directly and on many occasions it is logical that there are some counterparts, and sometimes they were difficult and painful. I ended up in jail, in exile, my relationship with my own land became very complicated... But it has been an immense pleasure. I would repeat 60 more years.
Where is today that figure of the jester who has practiced so much with Joglars, always poking his finger in the eye of power, how has he evolved?
It has a very complicated position, because the great emergence of the media means that the situations that are created from the political and power point of view are almost self-parodied very soon after. There are people who have asked me to make a satire of the process. Now it is impossible. 20 years ago it was easier. In a week events will have overtaken me. They are more theatrical than the theater itself. Hence my change a bit in the last 12 years. The theater has to take more refuge in the world of theater as art, curse more at beauty, poetry, which today are enormously stimulating for the spectator. Bait has little place in the theater, because it is constantly surpassed in the external world of communication.
Wouldn't 'Ubú' make sense today?
No, surely. It could be done, but events in 15 days would have overtaken it. Imagine that 'Ubú' had done it ten years ago. Pujol's confession appears and he is overcome. We have abandoned the age of innocence in theatrical communication, where exposing a president of the government had its audience and his catharsis. It no longer seems so much the function of the current theater, which for me is excessively concentrated in small stories of couples, threesomes, mother and son, son and mother. It has lost the epic dimension, which it has to recover. The one that the Greeks had, the classics. They were less concerned with the anecdote and more with the man in front of the world and society. I have made this trip to the world of poetry because politics no longer had anything to say. And in recent years I have seen that many other things can be said through emotion.
If we weren't in the world of social networks, would there be a character that you would bring to the scene like Pujol or Dalí?
The case of the current Prime Minister is unique, formidable. He holds power, goes his way, a Guinness of inbreeding, of the nose, does and undoes his way regardless of everything and has a rather theatrical interest for me. He is quite a character. But after ten days I would have mounted another battle with the judiciary and the situation would have overcome me. But his position, in which in the same speech he can say one thing and the opposite in 10 minutes, is a testimony of our very important time and of many millions of Spaniards, the people who tell you one thing today, another tomorrow and that suits
Do you see anyone other than Sánchez theatrical?
For a play you need a character, you don't use certain people with a parody or ridiculous side that you use for a sketch. I chose Pujol because he is a character. A great character. He could be the opposite of his thoughts, in total disagreement, and I think he has not been a good character for my land but he certainly has a dimension. For a work he gives you a lot of himself.
Why hasn't he been a good character?
What we are experiencing now in an almost grotesque way is the consequence of a planting that he did very well, with great cunning and discretion. Objectives that tended to maintain a conflict with the whole of Spain instead of seeking channels. Seems like a negative path to me. That it has resulted in people much lower than the political quality of Pujol sending to ruin what he perhaps, if he had governed 40 more years, would have achieved. I'm not saying that the policy he made in relation to his intentions was not adequate, that's for sure. But some mediocre knocked it all down and put him in an impossible position.
The current situation has no possible political solution. Millions of people have experienced this process of impulse to hate everything Spanish and there are two generations like this. The only way out is a new generation that may now be 10 years old and say 'hey dad, mom, teacher, but where have you gotten me, what is this, what future does this have?'. I think there will come a generation that will face that mediocrity, that disaster that has been created. I trust more in the generational aspect than in the political one, which in my opinion has very few arrangements. Especially when the nation's own government has gotten in the way and instead of solving the problems, I think it has aggravated them.
Are you still president of Tabarnia, is it over?
That was the closest form to the theater, to what could currently be the stage confrontation against positions of power, which is performance. It is different from the play and it does work today. I did a performance in Waterloo and it has its strength. But I'm 80 years old, I'll be in a few months, I think these adventures are no longer my turn. There must be people who understand that perhaps this has an important force, putting them in the mirror. Look what they are. That was the best of Tabarnia.
One of the frequent attacks against you is that you do not criticize the conservatives.
I make an important counterweight to my guild. My guild is only on one side. For many years now he has been located in defense of the left and of what I call the silly soup. And that's terrible. It is an incredible lack of freedom. I have wanted to be a little cricket in this situation, publicly denounce that my union is lacking in freedom. There are no voices in my union that are not progressive, there is no anti-progress theater. I have placed myself in this field many times for ecology because it seems shameful to me about my union. Or shameful to see the Goya awards, if the PP had made these disasters, freed 500 rapists, let's imagine what the Goyas would have been. Instead there, with the President of the Government in front, all in silence. Shameful. I defect from this guild.
Now, that I am conservative? Since I was 18 years old. When I was 25 I didn't like the Beatles because they had very long hair. I have been a conservative conservative. I have tried to look back, I have been very interested in the past, the art of the past, the company I founded has been in force for 63 years, I have kept a wife for 47 years, with whom I live, I have made a traditional family, children, grandchildren, I live in a 17th century house that I have restored, more conservative than me... now, that does not mean right-wing, I have never been a right-wing man, never. Neither of the characteristic left, I have been in the most liberal positions.
But I was lucky that Esperanza Aguirre took perfect advantage of my leaving Catalonia and offered me to direct the Teatros del Canal. So of course, the Boadella facha has left with hope Aguirre. It's stupid. I was never told a word here about what I had to do, I have never been in a state of freedom like that. It is true that I had an infallible technique: I signed contracts from year to year, I never wanted to commit myself for four or six. So at any time I could say if I don't like it I'm leaving.
What does the title of your new work, 'Bad Times for Lyrics' allude to?
It's a zarzuela. A story of love and heartbreak with a generational confrontation, made with the best zarzuela composers, Sorozábal, Chapí, Chueca. But the title has a broader scope: these are bad times for the arts. Except for dance, because surely dance had never been done and danced like now, probably thanks to the technical and scientific evolution of the sport. The rest are in low moments. Painting, sculpture, music, theater. Let's be honest, when you have already exposed a dung on a pedestal there is a flight forward that has no future. He only has the possibility of a rebirth. The same with music, when you have tortured and destroyed the eardrums of all the spectators, the future is difficult.
In the theater there is not a Molière, a Shakespeare, an Aeschylus. Perhaps the times are not helping. I believe that the moment in which Picasso began to paint in half an hour and an hour and had extraordinary success, it was Mephistopheles who inspired him. From there the arts become games of occurrences. With Joglars I achieved something unheard of, rehearsing a play for five months. And very worked. This is how a work can be done. In 15 days as it is rehearsed now, it is not possible to make a level artistic creation. Times do not help and artists do not rebel against the pressure of time itself that forces them to make a type of construction that is not the one that has to do with the best of their trade.
