The anecdote was told by the director Lluís Pasqual in his book about Lorca: they had to do a recital with Núria Espert in Bogotá, The Dark Root, and she couldn't go. The festival director called another actress to rehearse. There was little time and she said to her production team: “To Mr. Pasqual, whatever you need.” “One came and I asked him for a bucket with water and two kilos of flour that the actress had to knead. The man left surprised: 'Two kilos?' After a while he comes back and says: 'How many are there in the company?' Three. 'Two kilos, eh?' Yes. I told him that I would give him the money or I would go. ‘No, no, you rehearse,’ he told me,” Pasqual recalled with amusement. "After half an hour the man comes and explains to me: 'Excuse me, I got you a kilo for one o'clock, the other won't arrive until the afternoon.' I was about to go into fury, but I said to him: 'What do you understand?' And he responded: 'Well, flour, what all of you ask for when you arrive in Colombia.' 'I want real flour,' I pointed out. The man still laughs.”
Those in charge of production in theaters and festivals around the world are used to all kinds of requests to be able to carry out the works, from hundreds of butterflies to thousands of hamburgers to carpet the floor, or, sometimes, for their own consumption. , be it suspicious bottles of whiskey in the technical specifications of the works or the 18 organic eggs that Isabelle Huppert demands in her dressing room. “There are difficult requests, others unusual and some impossible,” dissects Marta López-Orós, production director of the Teatre Lliure.
And there are names that are repeated over and over again as sources of these requests, creators such as Rodrigo García, Angélica Liddell, Romeo Castellucci, Jan Fabre... López-Orós recalls an anecdote from Accidens: killing to eat by Rodrigo García, whose representation It was banned for animal abuse because the artist was going to cook a live lobster live. “We had to find six lobsters with a minimum weight of 2.5 kilos. It was May, a bad month for seafood, and we visited various fishmongers with the performer of the show to cast lobsters, each with his replacement in case they died before the show. In one, the fishmonger, Victoria, wanted to place a three-kilogram abulic lobster for us. The interpreter's response was: 'Victoria, look at him: he is not an actor.' Then, one of the fishmongers refused to sell them to us if it was for a show where they were killed.”
The Lliure producer recalls, within the category of difficult requests, finding volunteers who would have their very long hair shaved live in another García production. One per function. He achieved this by appealing to the creator's fans, who had the opportunity to participate in one of his productions. On the contrary, for another of his works he had to obtain bags and bags of hair, for which they had to ask a collaborating hairdresser to collect it for months. He also had to provide her with an entire family, father, mother, two children and a grandmother, inside a car. For Angélica Liddell, he had to get nurses for her live blood draw on the show The House of Strength. And, for Roger Bernat, he had to get two judges, two prosecutors, two lawyers and two royal coroners for a trial against Hamlet for killing Polonius. “Once the first judge was found, he himself took charge of contacting other colleagues and acquaintances,” he recalls.
The Spanish-Argentine Rodrigo García is the king of unusual requests. Fernando Delgado, production director of the National Dramatic Center, remembers “the famous work of the hamburgers, Gólgota picnic”, a particular revisitation of the Bible. “The entire floor of the stage was made up of 10,000 hamburger buns, there were many protests saying that we couldn't do that, what a waste. Breads that had to be changed from time to time because they would go bad and start to smell. Besides, Rodrigo asked us for a quantity of worms because there was a scene where an actor ate a hamburger full of worms.”
Delgado explains that they must resort to the Civil Guard for the use of weapons, the firefighters for the flames on stage and there are even less clear moments, such as the performance of the Bulgarian Ivo Dimchev in which "blood was drawn during the performance." “In occupational risk prevention we are very strict. You can't imagine what the protocol was like for who cleans up those traces of blood, who disposes of the syringes and needles, how they are disposed of. We had to dispose of them as biological remains in the typical containers they have in hospitals. Apart from the fact that no one on our team, only the company, cleaned the traces of blood that were on the scenery due to the risks." “Then, in an Aitana Cordero show, there was a moment in which an actor ejaculated on a piece of wood. The cleaning was quite an adventure,” he remarks.
Salvador Sunyer, director of the Estación Alta festival in Girona, especially remembers the achievement of a paralyzed dog that knew how to ride in a wheelchair for a work by Liddell and the 3,000 live butterflies for a show by Jan Fabre, Preparatio mortis, along with thousands of fresh flowers. “Besides, you had to feed the butterflies,” he says. And he mentions that “we also had to do, for a company, a casting of Mexican chickens. Production found three different types and the company selected one; We had to distribute the rest among friends, clients, farmers.” Finally, he talks about the 70 kilo dog chosen to “meow” while walking through the audience at a Castellucci show, Ethica. Nature and origin of the mind, with a recording in which a cat's voice sounded.
At the Teatro Real in Madrid there is no doubt that the great protagonist of the unusual requests, if only because of size, has also been Castellucci, with the great 1,500 kilo Charolais bull Easy Rider, undisputed protagonist of the opera Moisés y Aarón. “We had an advantage because it was a co-production and they had already performed it in Paris,” say Nuria Moreno and Ana Ramírez, from the Real's production department, along with Ana Isurmendi, from the mayor's office. “They had trained him and he had done very well there. The problem was where to store it in Madrid so that it would arrive without stress at the time of the performance. We thought about the Plaza de Las Ventas, of course, but there were only the bulls that were going for the afternoon. Then we contacted a company that is dedicated to raising and training animals for shows and movies, and they told us yes, but it would take an hour's truck. At rush hour. In the end we found a wonderful possibility: the stables of the Royal Palace. It took him two minutes to get to the theater and he looked like a king. They washed him every day so that his golden hair shone; he was a true golden calf. He came from an animal rental company and retired here, these were his last functions,” they say.
But there was an unexpected problem. “The first scene rehearsal was terrible. No one came in behind him. And the bull, if he wanted to urinate, he would urinate. And, if he had the urge to defecate, he defecated. He was leaving his little gifts there. And the dancing actors had to roll on the floor. The first day the boys came out: 'Don't touch me!' And we brought in Tere, one of our cleaning staff, and another girl. “They were behind Easy Rider with the bucket, both of them in black.”
“Although the challenge of that production – they remember – was the pool, to which they entered dressed in white with those water-soluble suits and came out dressed in black, we had two divers underneath. The boys had to enter, hold their breath, 30 seconds had to pass between submerging and exiting. They came in dressed in white, the divers took off their suits and they came out as if nothing had happened.”
And they emphasize that in the first season almost three decades ago they already had German shepherds on stage in a production by Pina Bausch, Nelken (Carnations). “They were the first animals we had to look for. They were trained, but in that way. But they did it phenomenally. Now in Madrid you find everything, among other things because it has also become a film set and there are more companies, such as Fauna y Acción, but at the beginning it was an absolute challenge. “Today there are no longer challenges. It's just as difficult to get a white Great Dane to sit still on stage as it is to get an upcoming performer to stay happy. From where I buy, where I go, change this for me, I'm not ready, I don't feel well, I just don't like this, look for a doctor, I just don't know where there is a pharmacy... Everything. They call us. And it's all a challenge. Furthermore, in the opera they are people who spend a lot of time alone. One time one of them told me that he hadn't been in his house for eight months. They come to you and tell you all kinds of things, that's how they let off steam and many times we take them out for a laugh. 'Are you coming?'. Very few say no,” they say.
