Contemporary Catalan Women Playwrights

Ensayos reseña Review Essay/ Ensayo Reseña Contemporary Catalan Women Playwrights: Àngels Aymar, Marta Buchaca, Clàudia Cedó, Cristina Clemente, Lluïsa Cunillé, Daniela Fexias, Elisenda Guiu, Gemma Rodríguez, Mercè Sarrias, Marta Solé Bonay, Victoria Szpunberg, Raquel Tomàs, Helena Tornero, Aina Tur, Ruth Vilar On October 1, 2017, the Generalitat de Catalunya held a vote on 1-O (so named for its date), an independence referendum. The resulting vote, in favor of the province breaking away from Spain, was passed by the Catalan Parliament despite being ruled illegal by the Constitutional Court of Spain, which declared that 1-O was a breach of Spain’s 1978 constitution. After this vote, nearly every day has held a new twist and turn of the political situation, from a declaration of independence to Prime Minister Rajoy invoking Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution and assuming control over Catalonia. As of this writing, the fate of Catalonia and, indeed, Spain is very much in question. We began this essay in 2016 with the aim of looking at how theatre was contributing to a larger reformation of Catalan identity and culture. Given 1-O and the following unrest, the writers and works that we detail here appear to have taken on additional significance. This essay seeks to add to the scope of previous scholarship by contributing to greater dialogue about and recognition for Catalan theatre and Catalan theatre artists in the English-speaking academy.1 In particular, we emphasize a further under-represented group, Catalan women playwrights. The purpose of this article is to provide a window into the vibrant world of Catalan theatre through the work of these selected Catalan women dramatists. Within the overlooked theatrical culture of Catalonia, they represent a diverse array of established and up-and-coming artists whose works have rarely been seen on English-language stages. We elected to arrange this essay as an encyclopedia, in order to give maximum exposure to as many of these writers as possible, while also highlighting notable works by each writer. The project will be incomplete, because to catalog an encyclopedia of Catalan women playwrights would be next to impossible. Furthermore, as neither of us are fluent Catalan speakers, we are reliant on works translated into English or Spanish. In the past years, Barcelona has shifted to a more local reformation of culture. First was the announcement of superilles (superblocks), a radical urban planning strategy designed to help the city to reduce its carbon footprint and transform roads into “citizen spaces”. Then, there was the news of a municipal subsidy, equivalent to 95 percent of property tax for bookstores, art galleries, theaters, and other private cultural institutions. The city’s investment in cultural infrastructure on a store-by-store scale is a change from spending on massive public culture projects surrounding the 1996 Olympic Games in Barcelona, which resulted in the creation of the Teatre Nacional de Catalonya and new Theatre Lluire. In the words of Lourdes Orozco, these large-scale projects were designed to “contribute to the reconstruction of Catalan identity” in the post-Franco era (211). The new tax subsidy shows a willingness to work on a much more local –191 – Lf 43.2 Reseñas / Reviews level, giving direct remittance to more vulnerable, but no less important institutions. Theatre has always been a site of complex questions of representation. Recent discussions in United States about the casting of white actors to play Latinx roles in In the Heights (Hudes, Miranda 1999) and Motherfucker with a Hat (Guirgis 2011), as well as continuing conversations about the inclusion of women and minorities in the selection of plays produced by theaters underscore issues of inclusion, equity, and visibility within American theatre and the democratic system. While these sorts of debates tend to be flashpoints for cultural commentary, a consistently overlooked area is the inclusion of international, non-English-speaking voices into literature and theatre. Though Barcelona and Catalonia are emerging, important, international theatrical centers, the role of Catalan drama within the theatrical world of the United States is very, very small. In “Contemporary Catalan Drama in English: Some Aspirations and Limitations,” John London notes that the invisibility of Catalan dramatists in the United States is indicative of a larger pattern: “examples of Catalan theatrical presence beyond Spanish frontiers have not been accompanied by an equivalent status for Catalan plays in the Englishspeaking world” (453). For example, Catalan director Calixto Bieto has directed several high-visibility productions across the United States from Carmen at San Francisco Opera in 2016 and Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in 2012, yet only Àngel Guimerà, a Catalan writer from the Canary Islands, has seen his work on Broadway. Terra Baxia (1896), often translated as Martha of the Lowlands, made it to Broadway three times. The last production was in 1936. Visibility in the English-language academy for Catalan theatre and Catalan writers has, likewise, been low, though several important works stand out. Key monographs about contemporary playwrights include Sharon Feldman’s 2009 In the Eye of the Storm: Contemporary Theatre in Barcelona, Contemporary Catalan Theatre: An Introduction by David George and John London; “Other” Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth-Century Stage (2003) by Maria Delgado; and David George’s monograph on Sergi Belbel, entitled Sergi Belbel and Catalan Theatre: Text, Performance and Identity (2010). In 2007, Contemporary Theatre Review dedicated a special issue to Catalan theatre—“Catalan Theatre 1975-2006: Politics, Identity, and Performance”—edited by Delgado, George, and Orozco. Given the breadth of Catalan theatre and the relatively few scholars working on it in English, many of these academic works survey a wide spectrum and many are concerned with the founders of contemporary Catalan theatre like Belbel, La Fura dels Baus, and Els Joglars. This review essay is the result of a three-month residency in the city of Barcelona in 2016 and of working with two important Catalan theaters in the city, Sala Beckett and Sala Flyhard. The playwrights we selected for this review essay have been drawn from Sala Beckett’s database as well as the works we saw in Barcelona, with an emphasis on salas alternativas (independent theatres). This compilation is, nevertheless, still a snapshot. Many of the authors complied here –192 – Ensayos reseña have other works available in English or Spanish through Catalandrama or other resources. We highly encourage anyone interested in further reading to visit this resource, or one of the others listed here, so that we can bring greater attention to Catalan theatre in the English-speaking world. As this compilation shows, women playwrights have been crucial to the successes of Catalan theatrical literature in the first decades of the twenty-first century. The work of Lluïsa Cunillé stands alongside notable writers like Sergi Belbel and José Sanchis Sinisterra as one of the founding voices of contemporary Catalan playwriting. The works and authors described here do not fit into a singular mold. Indeed, the spectrum of writing from family comedies to speculative fiction about sexuality, caustic satires about the European Union and international free trade to celebrations of Catalan history, illustrates the dynamism of these celebrated writers who are charting new literary paths across the Iberian peninsula, though certain concerns unite many of the works, like the effects of violence on the individual and society, reclaiming Catalan memory, and the foregrounding of strong female characters. Àngels Aymar has written over twenty plays. In 2015, Hearts Beating Like Drums was seen at the Wild Project Theatre in New York, and Àngels was the first Catalan playwright to be invited to participate in the PEN World Voices Festival. Her play Solavaya was shown at Repertorio Español in New York City. From 2006 to 2009, she was in residence at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. Trueta (2009) is a panoramic biographical play about Dr. Josep Trueta, a brilliant doctor, who has been lost to history. The great innovation of Trueta’s career was a type of plaster casing, which reduced the mortality rate from open wounds and fractures. As a key figure in Barcelona, Trueta was a Catalan nationalist, and as such was exiled to Britain during the Franco dictatorship. In her play, Àngels reconstructs the life of this overlooked historical figure while bringing contemporary issues of Catalan independence and rancor with Madrid to the fore. Marta Buchaca was awarded the best screenplay from the Zoom Festival in 2014 for her adaptation of Les nenes no haurien de jugar a futbol (Girls Shouldn’t Play Soccer). This play has been produced in Greece, Croatia, Cyprus and Mexico. Les nenes no haurien de jugar a futbol begins with what seems like a chance encounter between a mother and young woman waiting in the emergency room of a hospital. They are there for different patients, but what soon becomes obvious is that there’s nothing coincidental about what’s going on. When it’s revealed that there’s been an accident and the mother’s twelve-year-old daughter was in the car with the young woman’s father, questions arise about what brought the two together in that car. With the arrival of Tony, another young man whose girlfriend was also hurt in the accident, the trio of family members turns on one another as they try to figure out the truth that will serve them best. Buchaca also won the Max Prize for the best author in Catalan in 2013 for L’any que ve serà millor (Next Year Will Be Better) written with Carol López, Mercè Sarrias, and Victòria Szpunberg. Clàudia Cedó graduated with a degree in psychology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2005. Subsequently, she received a degree in –193 – Lf 43.2 Reseñas / Reviews dramatic art from Centre de Formació Teatral el Galliner de Girona in 2009. Since then, she has worked to join psychology and theatre. Through Escenaris Especials, she utilizes theatre to develop memory, social skills, emotional expressiveness and management with students who have autism, developmental disorders, or who are undergoing treatment for addiction. Tortugas (Turtles) premiered at Sala Flyhard and won the Premis Butaca de Teatre de Catalunya, an annual award in Catalonia chosen by popular vote, in 2015. Her play tells the story of two couples, one coping with anxiety and the other, unbeknownst to them, using that couple as a scientific experiment. With acrobatic theatricality and a wonderful blending of space, Cedó’s work provides a delightful romp through and harsh look at neuroses and romance. Cristina Clemente’s work has been seen at Sala Beckett, Sala Flyhard, Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, and Teatre Lluire among other places. She has directed work by and collaborated with acclaimed writer/director Sergi Belbel. Consell Familiar (Family Council) premiered at the Cycle of New Playwrights in Tarragona, Spain in 2013. In it, the Plana family has a unique way of operating. Rather than adhering to traditional familial roles, the family comes together in council and elects a president to serve as the head of the family. But when Anna, the daughter, shows up with her boyfriend and Ramon, the patriarch, steps down, all the ceremony and political norms of the family are thrown into the air. Clemente creates, through the play, a lively and smart critique of political and familial structures, examining how far we will go to crack down on dissent from without and within. Lluïsa Cunillé’s notable works include Rodeo (1992), La cita (The Meeting) (1999), Passatge Gutenberg (2001), Barcelona, mapa de ombres (Barcelona, Map of Shadows) (2004), Après moi, le déluge (After Me, the Flood) (2007). La Cita was staged at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh in 1999 and has been published by Estreno. Cunillé has won numerous prizes, including Premio Nacional de Literatura Dramática del Ministerio de Cultura (2009), Premi Lletra d’Or (2008), Premi Nacional de Teatre de la Generalitat de Catalunya (2007). She was the playwright in residence at Teatre Lluire from 2007 to 2011. As Feldman notes in In the Eye of the Storm, Cunillé’s world is so discernable to Catalan audiences that she is referred to as creating her own nation – Cunillélandia. In the words of Sharon Feldman, this “country” is “an unsettling, static universe, where time does not appear to advance; rather, one has the impression that her characters are suspended in an interminably continuous present” (235). La Cita evokes the work of Noble Prize winner Harold Pinter as well as that of expressionist Sophie Treadwell. No matter how many resonances of other playwrights that Cunillé seems to create, however, her work is unique. And sadly, despite her elevated stature on Catalan stages, her plays are far too often overlooked outside of Spain. Daniela Fexias is a playwright and actress who studied with Sergi Belbel and José Sanchis Sinisterra among others. El Bosc (The Forest) won the Crèdit Andorrà 50th Anniversary Prize in 2010. In this play, Judy tracks down her sister, Adele, who has taken over a house in the middle of the forest. Fexias, with the air of a ghost story along the lines of Conor –194 – Ensayos reseña McPherson’s The Weir, recounts the accidents and tragedies in Judy and Adele’s family, including their sister’s suicide and accidental killing of their brother. Fexias’ other plays include L’últim cigarro (2003-2004) and Noms sexe (2004). As of this writing, neither has yet been translated. Elisenda Guiu studied playwriting at Sala Beckett. Her first play, Magnetismes (translated into Castilian as Magnetismos) premiered at Teatre Gaudí in 2014 and was published by SGAE. It is the story of six characters in a big city who are living through various crises: a middle-aged woman who has not been able to find a mature man to start a family, a young man in a wheelchair who has been dumped by his girlfriend, a young woman who hates her telemarketing job and wishes to move to Germany, an unemployed screenwriting professor and his banker friend, and a middle-aged man who does not want to continue a relationship and receives an strange proposal from a telemarketing woman he does not know. The play’s title provides a metaphor for the dynamics of the intersecting storylines—characters are attracted and repelled by an inevitable force like magnets. Most recently, her play Explica’m un conte (translated in Castilian as Cuéntame un cuento) was published as a part of Arola Editors’ collection Textos a part. Gemma Rodríguez’s original works include T’estimaré Infinit (translated into Castilian as Te querré infinito, which premiered at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in 2004; 35.4 Estem quedant fatal (35.4 We Are Looking Bad), which premiered at Teatre Tantarantana in 2002; and L’ham (translated into Castilian as El anzuelo), which was shown at Sala Beckett in 2007. She also participated in workshops at the Royal Court. Gemma is a founding member of the women’s creative association Projecte Vaca, an organization that seeks to promote women in the arts (projectevaca.com). 35.4 Estem quedant fatal takes a panoramic, manic view of one day in the life of a highly competitive, testosterone-driven globalized workplace. Riffing off stereotypes from drama about business like David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, Rodríguez’s work seems even more prescient in the post-Brexit era as it skewers European Union economics, which seem bent on self-destruction. Mercè Sarrias presented En defense dels mosquits albins (In defense of albino mosquitos at Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in 2008. It subsequently travelled to the Theâtre Le Periscope (Quebec) and the Théâtre de la Vieille 17 (Ottawa). En defense dels mosquits albins is an energetic, quirky romp about a divorced couple, Marta and Albert, who are trying to deal with three situations: their daughter Laia who wants a moped and claims to date her literature professor; Marta’s recurring trouble with traffic fines; and working together on the environmental assessment of a planned development. With wit and a keen eye for situations, Sarrias’ play is engaging, funny, and poignant. Some of her most recent work includes L’any que ve serà millor (currently untranslated), a collective work with Marta Buchaca, Carol López and Victoria Szpunberg and Quebec-Barcelona, a project with the Théâtre de la Sortie de Secours of Quebec that premiered in 2012. Marta Solé Bonay graduated with a degree in audiovisual communication and currently writes scripts for Televisió de Catalunya. Limits won the eighth –195 – Lf 43.2 Reseñas / Reviews Guillem d’Efak Prize, which is awarded by Sa Xerxa, a non-profit organization that aims to promote youth theater in the Balearic Islands. When Carla, a seventeen-year-old, accuses an older classmate of rape, it turns the lives of her friend Diana and her mother Gloria upside down. While Carla’s accusation rocks the world around her, as the play progresses, we begin to doubt the validity of her accusation at the same time she becomes more and more numb to the pain that she is causing around her. In Limits, Solé Bonay preys on literary tropes like The Bad Seed and our own fears to test contemporary mores. Victoria Szpunberg is originally from Buenos Aires. Her plays have been seen at Sala Beckett, Teatre Lluire, Teatre Tantarantana, the Grec Festival, and others. She has also collaborated with choreographers and teaches at the Institut del Teatre and at the Escola Superior de Coreografia de Barcelona. As Feldman remarks in In the Eye of the Storm, Szpunberg’s plays Esthetic Paradise (same name in Castilian) (2004) and L’aparador (The Window Display) (2003) “offer coherent reflections with regard to the excessive attention devoted in contemporary society to aesthetic images as fabricated physical appearances” (323). La màquina de parlar (The Speaking Machine), similarly, plays with our ideas of connection. It was produced at Sala Beckett and directed by Szpunberg in 2007. Set in the near future when “we no longer feel human but can still be sad,” Szpunberg’s piece of speculative fiction delves into alienation, a desire for interpersonal connection and crosscultural slippages. Mr. Bruno trades in his Speaking Machine (played by a woman) for the latest in companionship—a pleasure-giving pet, which runs amok. Raquel Tomàs is a playwright and director. L’home estampa, un spectacle bodegó (Beasts of Burden: A Modern Day Fable of an Ass and Woman) was seen at the 2010 Festival du Grec. Tomas composed Apocalipsi life (currently untranslated), a sound theatre project for COMRàdio in 2007. She is at present the artistic director of Dramangular. Tomàs describes L’home estampa, un spectacle bodegó as a “textual project of scenic inquiry.” Playing off myth and archetype, the script for this play is really more of a script for an installation. The two characters, Woman and Ass, go through both the everyday and mythic conflicts of a couple. Tomàs’ set directions vividly create a dynamic physical, aural, and emotional landscape for a theatrical installation, which plays with our connection to the earth, food, and each other. Helena Tornero has won numerous prizes including the Premi Joan Santamaria Prize, awarded by the cultural association Penya Joan Santamaria, the SGAE prize, and the 14 d’Abril Theatre Prize given by Direcció General de la Memòria Democràtica del Departament d’Interior. You’re pretty and I’m drunk premiered at the Teatre Lliure in 2011 and Don’t Talk to Strangers (Fragments of Memory) was seen at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in 2013. With echoes of recent works by Caryl Churchill and María Irene Fornés’ Conduct of Life, Tornero investigates the ability of a dictatorship or repressive regime to alter or destroy memory in Don’t Talk to Strangers (Fragments of Memory). In a series of short vignettes around particular ideas, characters—marked only by monikers like “The Brother,” “The Fake Singer,” or expressions/traits like “Excuse me for Existing”—attempt to recreate stories, –196 – Ensayos reseña share their past, and tell untellable stories. Tornero notes that her play can be deconstructed and the fragments retold in any order, reconfigured according to the desires of the producers. Aina Tur is originally from Minorca and has studied acting, pharmacology, and Catalan language and literature. Dimecres (Wednesdays) was presented at Collecció Paraula de Dramaturg. In addition to her playwriting, Tur translated Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire into Catalan. In a series of short vignettes, Wednesdays dramatizes the journey of a Minorcan man through the exploits in his love life. He is around thirty years old, and the same actress plays all the twenty-one women who participate in his romantic escapades. Tor plays with conventions here, giving her male protagonist the appellation “Him,” while his female companions take on names: Teresa, Neus, Mercè, Blanca, Claudia, etc. Instead of “Him” being successful in his romantic achievements, each scene ends with an unrequited moment as a potential love affair is ruined or slips away. Ruth Vilar is a member of Cos de Lletra Theatre Company, where she works as a playwright and director, and which recently celebrated their ten-year anniversary. She holds a degree from the Institut de Teatre and a master’s degree in Literary Creation from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Vilar has written around a dozen plays for theatre, prominently including Cinc vares de terra, L’espedaçament, and La tràgica mort de la Barbuda. Most recently, Vilar has completed Las ávidas raíces and La pedra a trossos. As in other realms of Catalan society, women have been at the forefront of helping to establish Catalan theatrical culture following the Olympic Games over twenty-five years ago. The range of plays and work done by the women collected in this compilation illustrates the strength and depth of theatre that is occurring across Catalonia. Though their plays and in their work, these women are changing the face of contemporary Catalan culture and bringing a new generation of playwrights onto the stages across the region. Note 1. We would like to express our utmost gratitude to Enrique de Heriz, Toni Caseras, Sergio Matamala, Mercè Samuell, Roser Blanch, Clara Cols, and all the people at Fira Tarrega, Sala Flyhard, and Sala Beckett for their help on this project. In particular, we are greatly indebted to Catalandrama, an initiative of the Fundació Sala Beckett/ Obrador International de Dramatúrgia. Catalandrama is a free database of contemporary Catalan Theatre translations, which can be accessed (in Catalan, English, Spanish, and other languages) at http://www. catalandrama.cat. Bibliography Feldman, Sharon. In the Eye of the Storm: Contemporary Theater in Barcelona. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2009. London, John. “Contemporary Catalan Drama in English: Some aspirations and Limitations.” Contemporary Theatre Review 17.3 (2007): 453-462. Orozco, Lourdes. “National Identity in the Construction of the Theater Policy of the Generalitat de Catalunya.” Romance Quarterly 53.3 (2006): 211-222. –197 – Yamile Silva University of Scranton Hank Willenbrink University of Scranton