David Plana (Manlleu, 1969) premieres Els encantats today at Sala Beckett, directed by Lucia Del Greco (Rome, 1992). Two responsibilities and two generations that have seen very different ways of approaching it.
Plana, with a long career as a playwright and screenwriter, has written a piece that he summarizes as follows: "Some children who have a series of problems related to mental illness ask their father to go to a specific place where they were enchanted by a person in the past, and that causes serious family tensions.”
Del Greco has taken this work and has directed it prioritizing “visual theater”, which has influenced her and with which she identifies. Romeo Castellucci or La Veronal resonate in his imagination. But Plana had raised the work in another way. Therefore, when she attended one of the rehearsals for the first time, she was “shocked”, she confesses.
In yesterday's presentation in the Beckett room, the playwright wanted to read his intervention, to stick to what he wanted to say. “Now I accept it, but since it is the first production of Els Encantats and not the thirtieth, it has been difficult for me to digest it”, Plana has come to say, who intones a mea culpa for “not having been proactive enough, while Del Greco has defended her work very convinced”.
After the predicament, Plana is positive and strongly recommends the show: "Lucia is very respectful with one part of my work, and not with another." And he expresses a reflection out loud: "Now it is common for the author himself to direct his work." To remove iron, the companions told him: "They have treated you like a classic." And Plana replied: "The problem is that I am alive."
In any case, the debate between the author and the director was sincere and enriching and from tonight, and until April 2, the public will be able to issue their verdict on the production that Del Greco has directed of Els Encantats. “Everyone interprets and perceives the past in a different way. From the discomfort of the present, the characters look for a way out in the past”, concludes the director.
The Beckett also presented the play Les maleïdes, by the Majorcan Sergio Baos, directed by Marga López. The author sums it up like this: “There are three women who had to separate and the work narrates their reunion. He goes through a very wide range of emotions.” López adds: "The challenge has been to direct a play that is almost a road movie in theater."
Les maleïdes is a production of the Teatre Principal de Palma, "which is boosting dramaturgy in Catalan in an important way", highlighted Toni Casares, director of the Poblenou theatre, who was accompanied in the presentation by Josep Sardà, director of the Majorcan theater . The work can be seen in the entrance hall from March 22 to April 2.
Els Encantats and Les maleïdes are included in the family cycle, which is the main theme of this Beckett season. Is the family still a valid way of organizing society? Casares wonders. Today talking about family is not the same as it was fifty years or centuries ago. But I admit that it is also a bit pretentious, because what play doesn't talk about the family?
Catalan version, here
