It was not easy to turn a novel by José Saramago into a play. Even less when it comes to the Essay on blindness, where no character has a proper name. The Portuguese writer identifies them through short descriptions or by talking about the doctor and the doctor's wife. She is the only character who does not go blind in this pandemic where everyone loses their sense of sight.
It was also not easy to turn this novel by the Nobel Prize winner for Literature into a play, because his style is made up of long sentences, with little or no punctuation, so that it is sometimes difficult to identify who he is speaking to. But the montage that premiered yesterday at the TNC passes the test with flying colours. Clàudia Cedó, the playwright responsible for the adaptation, takes it easy: “Saramago has a genuine, surprising way of writing, an oral style, as if he were speaking to you. That's very theatrical, and when I did the adaptation, the characters would get up and start walking."
This year is the centenary of Saramago and it is the 25th anniversary of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, which celebrates it with the show Assaig on the blind. When Carme Portaceli, director of the TNC, was asked which work by the Portuguese writer she would choose to take on stage, she was clear: "We thought it was very appropriate, and more so coming from the pandemic." Yesterday this adaptation opened the season 22-23 of the Sala Gran, co-produced by the TNC and the São João National Theater of Porto, directed by Nuno Cardoso, who also directs the show that premiered in June in Porto.
To make it even more difficult, the Catalan-Portuguese co-production draws on performers of both origins, who speak in Catalan and Portuguese, with the corresponding subtitles, so that the audience at the Nacional could hear part of the work in the original words of the author. In Porto it was also performed in both languages, with Ana Brandão, Ferran Carvajal, Joana Carvalho, Jordi Collet, Sérgio Sá Cunha, Montse Esteve, Paulo Freixinho, Adriana Fuertes, Gabriela Flores, Pedro Frias, Jorge Mota, Albert Prat, Lisa Reis. and Maria Ribera.
In 1995 Saramago was a visionary, because his pandemic of blindness, more metaphorical than physical, has many connotations with the present. Cardoso refers to it this way: “We live in a very painful time, we came out of two years of confinement, of an effort to overcome a threat that confronted us and the disease. Now, we are facing the war and the tensions that exist in some European democracies”.
“50 years ago, in Portugal and in Spain we came out of the dictatorship and entered democracy under pressure. A democracy that is now being replaced by the siren songs of capitalism, and there is no distribution of wealth. Saramago sensed it in the nineties”.
The premiere of the show, lasting more than three hours, was well received yesterday by the audience, among which was Pilar del Río, Saramago's widow and her Spanish translator; the Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga; the Secretary of State for Culture of Portugal, Isabel Cordeiro; and the general consuls of Portugal and Brazil in Barcelona.
