“Rage”: returning to a theater as a throw into the abyss

“Wandering through the alternative scene is still very interesting in Buenos Aires. That’s where the strength lies, in independent theaters, neither the commercial nor the official one plays an innovative role, but rather good theater.” says Claudio Tolcachir, who stars in “Rabia”, based on the novel by Sergio Bizzio, adapted by Moni Acevedo, María García de Oteyza, Lautaro Perotti and Tolcachir, directed by the latter two. It premieres tomorrow on Timbre 4 with performances from Thursday to Sunday.

For this premiere, which will have four weekly performances on Timbre 4, Tolcachir partnered with several producers and maintains that he would not have been able to make it otherwise. It has the Spanish leg of Timbre 4 based in Madrid, Morris Gilbert, Mariano Pagani, Teatro El Picadero and Hause & Richman. While screening the 19th year of “The Omission of the Coleman Family,” which returns to Timbre 4, he rehearses with Mercedes Morán and Imaol Arias “Better Not to Say It,” which premieres on March 21 at La Plaza. We spoke with Tolcachir.

Claudio Tolcachir: It seemed like a labyrinth to be able to be in the character’s head, above all things, it excited me and we didn’t know how to do it, an interesting challenge because it was nothing like the previous one. I wanted to do this work because of what the novel provoked in me. I would wake up in the middle of the night and think about the monologue, I have memories of the first reading of the book with clear images of sequences, spaces, tension, pain, when both are separated by a door masturbating, that produces pain in addition to the absurdity and strange of everything. I wanted to produce in the viewer what it produced in me. It is also an action novel, it is not reflective, it tells what the protagonist does and how he thinks. It doesn’t describe, it does, that’s theater.

Q: What does the character feel, in a ghostly way, when he sees other people’s lives go by as a witness and without being able to intervene?

CT: What happens to the character is also the process of evolution of any creative act. Follow an impulse such as hiding in an attic or killing someone, it is facing the emptiness, the abyss, the naivety, the ignorance of the life that is beginning, the fear, and beginning to know how to develop in this new life. Learn to walk, listen, feel, then learn from this new ecosystem and feel that it is his life. At the end of this journey one wonders what happened to me or I invented it, love or this problem happened to me or I invented it. This attic is the eyes to relate to an unknown world, in that sense it is as similar to the creative act of investigating as closing something.

Q: What are the themes of the work?

CT: The work has three lines, one is the thriller that hooks the viewer by what happens. The other has to do with the existential, Waiting for Godot or Chekhov’s Three Sisters, the void. What do I do with my life or how do I invent a feeling of existing. This is very powerful because in the end, close to death, you need to live, love, hate yourself, be jealous, worry. There is also a social criticism, of the mansion, its owners, the employee, and being invisible on the same level as a rat with its animality. In a performance one may become hooked on the love story, with the danger, with class hatred, the work has infinite readings.

Q: What can you say about your character?

CT: The evolution of the character is moving. A bricklayer who killed a guy out of hatred, every time he kills it is out of impotence, that character in his free time discovers that he has time to think, that he had never thought and that is a revolution for him that enables him to another existence, to discover other emotions that I had not registered. He evolves very deeply in his being.

Q: What was the way of working in your triple role as adapter, protagonist and director?

CT: Rage was going back to work the Timbre way. The group and my role to try everything that came to mind, try, discard, throw ourselves into an idea that after weeks we saw was terrible, go back to square one. The team looks with precise acuity and is the breeding ground that I need to live, a group where you go with fear, open your heart, try things and can evolve. Neither Rabia, nor Timbre, nor Coleman could have done it if we weren’t a group. This multiple role is not new but rather it was recovering the group work system that I so needed.

Q: What was the production system like with several partners?

CT: It is one of the first Timbre productions with its Spanish foot, Timbre is installed in Madrid, plus another Spanish production company, and others in Mexico and Sebastián Blutrach in Buenos Aires. As it was a risky project, I am not a well-known person, an adaptation, a monologue, something that had never been done, there were many who came together to share the risk. The advantage of the production system is to be able to pay everyone salaries, make a good set, beyond our previous laboratory stage.

Q: Since you made Coleman 20 years ago, how has the theater scene transformed and why is Coleman still being made?

CT: It continues to be done because the actors continue to enjoy it, and the audience continues to fill the room. I could never tell an actor to continue for so long if it weren’t because he wanted to. The meeting is still a ceremony, doing it, making sure it goes well, discovering things. We do it for ourselves and of course endorsed by the public. During this time, interesting and diverse things happened, the scene became disorganized, one sees one creator, another, and sees very different things, I like that freedom, it bores me when creators put labels, well-made theater, alive and that’s it. The rest is personal language. We are in a time when working conditions are very hard, I couldn’t live off Timbre 4 today or sustain a cooperative for so long, you can’t pay for sets, you can’t call someone to design lights, it’s very difficult for a group that puts its body, hours, furniture, house, to carry out a production. In that we suffer a very great degradation that contrasts with creativity. One thing does not remove the other. The future scares me. I did a children’s play, I played super-tacho, I bought Coleman’s chair, I did it in my house, I didn’t pay for a rehearsal room, we made the lights, I don’t know if a group can now take a house and create a theater, the new groups They will make their history.