It was Xavier Francès who thought that the Vienna Congress of 1815 could be very good material for a comedy by La Calòrica. “I discovered this episode reading Josep Fontana's book Capitalisme i democràcia – explains the caloric actor –. The political leaders buried the revolutionary ideas in order to continue occupying power and agreed on what they had to do if one day the people revolted again. Furthermore, a congress that was supposed to last four days was extended by nine months. That became a party, where there was no shortage of food, even though the people of Vienna were hungry. The congress attracted so many politicians from other countries that the city was overwhelmed.”
Now, for La Calòrica to take a historical theme and turn it into a comedy, in this case with the title Le congrès ne marche pas, is a complex, hard and extraordinary process, which usually offers dazzling results. It has happened with each of the plays they have staged and, although with this one it is not yet known how it will go, the public has given them absolute trust, so that for the five weeks they have planned at the Teatre Lliure de Gràcia they have already sold out. the 200 entries of all functions.
What Xavier Francès did not know when he proposed his idea is that the playwright Joan Yago and the director Israel Solà would turn him into the Spanish character in the show, sent by Ferdinand VII to the Congress of Vienna. Despite his last name, neither the actor nor the character he plays knows Marguerite Yourcenar's language, so "the other representatives will ignore him a lot due to his inability to communicate, in addition to representing an empire that goes from layer to layer." drop".
The other performers have had to practice French at a forced pace to be able to premiere this multilingual comedy today, since this language was the one used as the language of culture and communication on an international scale. Because this has been one of the other challenges of La Calòrica: making all the characters, based on historical figures, speak in their own languages.
Thus, although the narrator, Pau Masaló, puts the voice-over in Catalan, the rest of the characters speak Russian, English, Spanish, German... and all of them, if they want to make themselves understood, a little French, a job that one A number of language consultants have had to work with the company. “Languages have been one of the main challenges, which is where we have worked on these characters,” declares Marc Rius, another historical calorie. And Júlia Truyol not only has to speak languages, but she has had to change sex to play the Viennese host.
For the occasion, the company has also expanded. “We have had to grow as a company to be able to explain this congress and we have added four more interpreters. It is interesting to work with people from older generations, like Roser Batalla, and younger ones,” says Solà. The performers will split into more than one character, a trait that is a trademark of the house, “although we have not done it as much as in other works,” the director points out.
The company is surprised by the validity of what happened at that conference. “Two hundred years later we are still the same,” says Iago. Things do not change not because we are stupid, but because there is an oppressor class that rules and prevents us from doing so. “They have no interest in the world changing, because it endangers their interests.”
Le congrès ne marche pas is a co-production of La Calòrica, the Teatre Lliure and the National Dramatic Center. After the performances in Gràcia he will perform in a few Catalan towns and next year he will perform in Madrid. Given the responsibility of having sold out the tickets before starting, the caloric Esther López concludes: “It's brutal, but we are calm because we have done what we wanted to do, we have gone where we wanted to go and we have tried what we wanted to try.”
Catalan version, here
