My friend Abel Folk told me that he was presenting a novel at the Alibris bookstore on Tuesday and I went there, sure that it would be worth it. Abel, one of the greats of the current scene, has a very good literary nose, which has borne fruit such as his adaptation of L'última trobada by Sándor Márai.
The volume that he sponsored together with the director of the TNC Carme Portaceli is titled El mar del Tánger and is the work of another colleague, Francisco Suárez. This playwright, born in Santa Marta de los Barros, Badajoz, in 1948, “within a family of gypsy blacksmiths and dealers,” as he proudly explains, has been director of the Mérida Classical Theater Festival and responsible for around fifty montages.
In his playful intervention he explained that a tall and elegant character very similar to the one who tempts Faust in Goethe's work, with whom he struck up a relationship in a churreria on Via Laietana, was the one who suggested that he get into writing.
When Abel told me about the presentation, the first thing I asked him was if The Sea of Tangier (Regional Editor of Extremadura) was a story with a theatrical atmosphere; It is not, but, in his words, “an improbable love story that talks about history, politics and many other things.”
The topic was on my mind because last Christmas I enjoyed reading A brilliant ray of darkness, which Mauricio Bach reviewed in these pages. Ethan Hawke's funny and brilliant novel, centered on a performance of Shakespeare's Henry IV on Broadway (Berenice publishing house), presents a portrait full of contradictions of a Hollywood man embarked on a prestigious dramatic project while dealing with the traumas of a marital separation. That the author is an actor gives him special credibility.
But there are several writers who, without being professionals in the performing arts, have approached this environment in recent years.
What is it about theater that makes it so narratively attractive?
Among other things, a reality different from everyday life that is never banal and can turn out to be magical; a battery of characters, often very talented, also sometimes quite colorful, who work under pressure to make the illusion possible in circumstances that the public usually ignores; a contrast between the idealized vision that accompanies it and the sometimes very harsh experience of its members.
And a direct link with great texts of the universal letters.
And so, while Hawke deals with Shakespeare, the Barcelona author Use Lahoz started from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard to embark on a tortured inner journey with María Broto, the protagonist of his novel Jauja (Destino, 2019). Gemma Sardà, also from Barcelona, takes Edmond Rostand as a reference in La veu del Cyrano (Empúries, 2016) where she reflects on the impact of the death of the actor and dubber Quim Pruna.
The Australian Claire Thomas brings us closer to three female figures that coincide in a representation of The Happy Days of Samuel Beckett (The Representation, Alba, 2021).
The Madrid-born Marta Sanz confronted a rising actress and an old glory in Farándula (Anagrama, 2015). The Irish Anne Enricht recreates the intimate conflict of the daughter of a big star, hospitalized after shooting a producer, in The Actress (Seix Barral, 2021).
Without forgetting Simon Axler, the protagonist of The Humiliation of Phillip Roth (Mondadori, 2010), who “had lost his magic. The impulse was exhausted (...) and the terrible thing happened: he could not act.
Theater for bookstores, with titles to which we can add an interesting recent essay: The Method. How the 20th century learned the art of acting (Alianza). Isaac Butler analyzes how the techniques of the Russian Stanislavski, reinvigorated in New York by Lee Strasberg and based on “living the role”, gave rise to one of the most outstanding schools of actors of all time.
