25 years ago, on September 11, 1997, the Great Hall of the National Theater of Catalonia was inaugurated. The architect Ricardo Bofill built a modern Greek temple, which is an icon of Barcelona. The founding director of the TNC, Josep Maria Flotats, chose L'auca del señor Esteve, by Santiago Rusiñol, directed by Adolfo Marsillach.
But a year before, the equipment had already started with Àngels a Amèrica, by Tony Kushner, directed by Flotats at Sala Tallers, a controversial choice due to the foreign authorship and the theme of the work at the time. Flotats' dream ended in 1998 due to disagreements with Minister Pujals. La Vanguardia speaks with the four directors who have been at the head of the TNC since then. Flotats has rejected the invitation.
Domènec Reixach, the second director, remembers: “I experienced it very intensely. He came from Lliure and was directing the Center Dramàtic Nacional (CDN). I received the call from the Minister and I was a little overwhelmed, but I was excited. We had a team at the CDN that we could pass on to the TNC, as a reward for the work done. It was a great challenge, which I faced with the energy of youth and some accumulated experience”.
Reixach saw clearly the magnitude of the project: “I had to surround myself with a team and we laid the foundations that the TNC should have: a theater open to all, with the presence of classical and contemporary Catalan authorship, the universal repertoire, the universal contemporary and a space for dance For this, there was a commitment from the ministry to open the Sala Tallers permanently”, but it did not continue.
His replacement, Sergi Belbel, says: “The people who work at the TNC form a very solid and competent team. My predecessor had it rougher, because those were the most turbulent years when Flotats left”.
But Belbel suffered the crisis of 2008 and saw how the budget was reduced to almost half: “The 2012-13 season was very bad. They forced us to make an ERE and there was the change of VAT to 21%, which forced me to undo commitments... I keep a sour memory, despite the giant step that the Catalan theater had taken. And a theater like the Nacional has an important game, untouchable, chapter 1, which is the salaries of the fixed team”.
“What I feel most proud of –continues Belbel– is the T6 project, which supports the creation of Catalan dramaturgy. It started in Reixach's time, when Jordi Galceran's El mètode Grönholm was released, and in mine it was consolidated with a higher budget. A company was even created, at the time of Cristina Clemente, Josep Maria Miró, Marta Buchaca, Carles Mallol... They could make big productions, and some, like Albert Espinosa, Jordi Casanovas, Pere Riera and Marc Rosich, premiered in the Sala Great, where it seemed that only Shakespeare and Guimerà could be done”.
Xavier Albertí was the fourth director: “What I am most proud of is making a small contribution so that our fellow citizens still feel dizzy before our heritage, because there are those who think that we have a second division heritage. Without knowing it, it is very difficult for us to understand each other, the evolution of our language, of acting techniques, the reception of contemporary spectators, the contemporary dramaturgical bases and, above all, to understand why the theater is a miraculous receiver of the spirit of the times. ”. Albertí also values the publication of texts and the promotion of contemporary creation.
And he adds: “More than entertaining, a public theater must have other aspirations, such as reconnecting our fellow citizens with the idea of belonging to a society with its compulsions, diversifications, heterogeneities and, at the same time, with respect for everyone, let us think as we think, let us vote what we vote, let us speak what we speak, as a community”.
The current director, Carme Portaceli, declares: “The TNC is a theater that works very well and has many possibilities. The work of people has been shown that could not have been seen anywhere else. Now, like other national theaters in Europe, it works in a certain way and the world is changing very fast. I think it has to grow towards internationalization, as it is done in Europe, and towards the connection with all the social groups that exist in our cities full of diversity”.
“Today we can talk face to face with any European theater –continues Portaceli–. We arouse curiosity, because we are going out to many cities in Europe. We carry out a very interesting experience working in more than one language. Next Thursday's premiere, for example, Assaig sobre la ceguesa, by Saramago, was already seen in Portugal in Portuguese and Catalan, exactly the same as it will be seen here. We have to open, open, open: let them in and let us out”.
And he denounces: “Sometimes we are too conventional because things like mixing disciplines or reinterpreting the classics scare us. In Europe, people are more curious and here, forty years of Francoism, of silence, shame and fear, have made us less curious, we judge too quickly, we do not allow ourselves to be touched and we reject what does not come from whom we expect”.
The Sala Gran, with 845 seats, for Reixach, “asks for certain actors, directions and sets designed for that space, and hard work. The Great Room is the difficulty and also the success. If it fills up, they talk about it and the whole theater lives”.
Albertí says: “We all know that the theater is better received when the actor's eye is visible. Up to row 20 you see the actor's eye, but between 20 and 25, you don't. The theater needs the perception of acting work. But in a national theater you don't always have to fill up." Portaceli adds: "Yes, it is true that you have direct contact and the person who sits from row 19 or 20 is far away, but today we have the resources to solve it."
Belbel reflects: “It is a very complicated room, with an underlying ideology, with an Italian box and a Greek amphitheater. But we had to learn its size and make it a success. It has some terrible technical peculiarities, but if you look at it favorably, great nights have been lived there”.
Belbel also gives a note on contemporary Catalan dramaturgy: “It's ugly that we are scheduled as a quota. We should be programmed because we are interested. And if they consider that there is not enough level, help us to improve it. Theatrically, that can only be done by opening, there is no other recipe. If I don't premiere the play that isn't good enough, I won't make a better one. What works in science, trial and error, in our case, if you make a mistake, it's over. I am now directing Galceran's new play, FitzRoy, the world's most performed author of all time. And our staging at the Borràs theater will not be the first, because it has already been premiered in Bulgaria and Germany. I'm not saying you have to go to the TNC, but it's a matter of national drama that it's hard for a Galceran to make his debut here. Esteve Soler goes all over the world and it cost him a lot to make his debut here”.
And on cultural policy, Albertí concludes: “The first thing that would have to happen is that we have, because it doesn't exist. Cultural policy means knowing where you want to get to, what you want to rank, knowing that not everyone is the same, it is not a distribution policy, creating an audience, readers, enthusiasm, cultural realities. Do not leave it alone to civil society. I think that our institutions are not aware, although they are working, it is not a desert”.
Catalan version, here
