“Cádiz has a lot of history, three thousand years, and we know well that we are passing through this world. That is why we cannot talk about anything serious without, at some point, bursting into laughter”. These are the arguments of Ana López Segovia, author and director of Las Niñas de Cádiz, to describe her theatrical work.
The company presents in Barcelona El viento es salvaje (Fedra y Medea en Cádiz), its penultimate show, recognized with numerous awards, such as the Max for best new show in 2020.
Throughout its career, the company has wanted to experiment with classic tragedy and pass it through the sieve of the chirigota. “We had made a Lysistrata and we wanted to explore how to face a tragedy with our way of being. In Cádiz we do not know how to do anything serious without going through it with humor ”, he continues.
The bacchantes also had their version under the title of Las bingueras de Euripides and now comes this show, which they consider to be their best work. “We mix carnival satire with highbrow literature, and the result is great. It also gives you a bit to think about. The public already sees from the beginning that this is not going to end well, that it will end like the rosary of dawn”, declares Alejandra López, who in addition to being an actress is the production director of the company.
Las Niñas de Cádiz participated in a street theatrical action in Barcelona linked to the jokes that are presented annually at the Liceu, but they had not yet performed any of their shows in a theater in the city of prodigies. For this reason, now is a good opportunity to get to know his work.
“It is a work with an accent, from the south, in which we mix Mediterranean and Atlantic tradition, and the Greco-Latin classics –continues López Segovia–. We bring Phaedra and Medea to the 21st century, gray characters who become tragic heroines, and we propose a tragedy pierced from end to end by laughter. In the show there are all the elements of the Greek tragedy and its characters”.
For the argument, they start from “a particular anecdote: they are two friends who have known each other since they were little children, one is doing very well in life and the other is doing terrible. What designs of life cause this? A terrible thing happens at the play and the friend asks God to give good luck to her friend, who doesn't have it. The Greek gods pass here to the Christian God, who hears the request and says: 'Well, now you will see'. And everything is turned upside down. The easterly wind is like the north wind here, which upsets people”.
And hence the title The Wild Wind. The playwright and director writes in verse, “in addition to the Cádiz quartet, there are lyres, sonnets... And Lorca always appears, of course, and Rubén Darío is also present here”.
Alejandra López refers: "We realized that in classical tragedy there were references to real characters, which is the same thing that occurs in the Cádiz carnival, that's why everything is so linked." Along with the two of them, actresses Teresa Quintero and Alicia Rodríguez also take part in the play. The wind is wild will be at the Condal theater until June 4, in this play produced by the company itself.
