"The theater has to show you what we don't want to face. It doesn't have to make us feel like good people, it has to remove taboos and reflect the worst of our society." This is how Magda Puyo, the director of Quan ens haguem torturat prou, presented her new proposal, a work by the British playwright Martin Crimp, which will premiere tomorrow at the Sala Petita of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and will last until February 19. With Anna Alarcón and Xavi Sáez as protagonists, the work aims to show a dangerous game of power, where desire and the limits of gender roles are questioned.
Martin Crimp, one of the most relevant British playwrights of the 1990s, "has always touched on the great topics of contemporary debate in a forceful, ironic and self-possessed way," explained the director at the presentation of the play. Pamela, which was an 18th century bestseller by Samuel Richardson, is a novel that explains the relationship between a 15-year-old maid and her master. The story inspired Crimp to write a work to question the relations of power and desire between the powerful and the oppressed. Now, with Quan ens haguem torturat prou Magda Puyo presents on stage six archetypal characters that represent the shadows and some lights of the radically ambiguous nature of the human being.
None of the characters have names. The master insists on calling the maid Pamela, although she has never responded to that name. Complicated relations of power and domination between men and women, of different ages and social classes, are woven from language. However, the norms established by the heteropatriarchy are subverted when the characters switch roles. "All the characters receive and inflict torture on each other," the cast stressed.
"Possessing the word will be of vital importance so that the oppressed can fight their master," Puyo explained. In this way, all the characters "change their skin" and the limits of gender and desire, historically linked to cultural performativity and economic power, are blurred.
With twelve scenes, which according to the director are twelve different paintings, Crimp's work manages to deconstruct many things: the limitation of social class, colonialism, fatphobia or hegemonically masculine language. "Thanks to works like this, many questions can be reconsidered. What is a man? What is a woman? Does desire always go according to ideology? Does desire have a gender? Is there a feminine language? Is it possible get rid of gender roles?" reflected the director.
"Virginie Despentes has already explained it: women are forced to derive pleasure from their lack of sexual power. That is why there are women who fantasize about rape," Puyo illustrated. "We have the patriarchy embedded in our brain and that causes our subconscious to want pain." With this reflection, which may seem uncomfortable, the director also wanted to emphasize that patriarchy kills women, but also men, and that ending it would benefit everyone.
In addition to the scheduled performances, a post-performance colloquium will be organized on February 3 by the cultural journalist Carme Tierz and the TNC has published a book on Martin Crimp's work, which can be purchased for five euros at the ticket offices of the lobby or on the theater website.
