“The work is plotted with two fundamental impulses, that of Don Quixote and Segismundo, two myths that Spain gave to the world,” says Eusebio Calonge from the prestigious Andalusian company The sievewho returns to Buenos Aires with “Manual for building a dream” and will be presented for three weeks only at the CTBA’s Regio Theater.
With tickets at 13 thousand pesos, the play can be seen from Wednesday to Sunday from August 21 and has text by Calongedirection and stage space of Paco from La Zaranda. In its more than four decades of existence, La Zaranda has carried out an intense and coherent creative work that has earned it international prestige. Its trajectory is characterized by existential commitment and by starting from its traditional roots to reveal a universal symbolism. Its dramatic resources are the search for a transcendent poetics without losing the everyday, the symbolic use of objects, visual expressiveness, the incarnation of texts in purely theatrical situations and the search to capture living characters.
Perhaps contrary to the above, Calonge He spoke about theatre in Spain: “In Spain, companies have almost disappeared, with the result that creative theatre has disappeared, and productions have been introduced, which act as franchises, the success of Broadway or the one in Paris or London. People no longer think about the audience but about the number of seats sold, that is, it is managed from the box office, not from the stage. Theatre has become another form of zapping, with the face of the famous person on duty, selling not entertainment but stupefaction.”
Journalist: Why is this work a decided ode to hope? What do you think about when you talk about the darkness of this hostile world?
Eusebio Calonge: Because when everything darkens, when everything tends towards a fall in values, the theatre must not lose its dignity, it must continue to maintain a meaning, and only hope can give us this. Perhaps the mirror of the theatre in which man looks at himself, body and soul, reflects him in the abyss, but making him contemplate himself already gives him a distance, establishes a point of judgment, that is, it can form a critical spirit. In a world where information has abolished thought, this seems to me to have a fundamental role. These shadows of the world come from the ambition for power, violence, injustice, so much pain that art tries to at least make beauty and reflection. Bringing it to the realm of my profession, the purely theatrical one, this power is exercised by those who use the theatre as a springboard for their ambitions.
Q: Why do you set the play in the intimacy of the dressing room and the magic of the stage, which reflects the work of the actor as a metaphor for life?
EC: This work opens a path as a pilgrimage, showing two options to take, among the temptations of our time: vanity, success, greed, even that victimhood into which we so often fall or that of following one’s own conscience with integrity. This was a very frequent plot in medieval theatre, it is the mirror that we unearth in that dressing room. The actor is also a frequent motif of allegory, he dresses up as a character that destiny gives him and that he loses with death, so this path where life is decided I think concerns everyone. Yes, theatre as a metaphor for life is a classic argument in theatre, and this work by Zaranda is an approximation, an extraction of what remains alive in those texts.
Q: What is this endless journey through history like?
EC: It is infinite from the point of view of human creativity, subject to his eternal passions, his ancestral fears, and constantly giving shape to his dreams.
Q: How do dreams play with the real world?
EC: I believe that dreams are part of our reality, at least that reality is made of the same material as dreams, as Shakespeare would say, life has no more consistency than these for Calderón. Although man has moved away from what was once a place of revelations. Reason harassed them, tried to reduce them to science, knowing that this is silent before the great enigmas of existence. Dreams only had art as a refuge. Only the creator frequents that path that leads from dreams to reality to lead others from reality to the dream.
Q: What can you say about theatre today in Spain and around the world?
In Spain in particular, companies have almost disappeared, with the result that creative theatre has disappeared, and productions have been implemented. These act as franchises, the success of Broadway or that of Paris or London. People no longer think about the audience but about the number of seats sold, that is, they manage things from the box office, not from the stage. Theatre has become another form of zapping, with the face of the famous person on duty, selling not entertainment but stupefaction.
How do you see theatre and culture in Argentina?
EC: We learned a lot from Argentine theatre, great masters on stage who we were fortunate to have honoured us with their friendship. In my opinion, Argentina gave the world at the end of the 20th century the theatre with the most powerful language of that time. Many things remain alive from that true explosion, others have been neutralised by commerce. But La Zaranda always returns to Buenos Aires to continue learning.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
