“A man and a woman sitting at a table oppose long monologues as in dreams. For different reasons and for different purposes, they build through words a new reality. At this point the work is devastating,” Facundo Ramírez, director of “Landscape”, by Harold Pinter, says with performances by Marcela Ferradás and Ramírez himself, who also occupied the scenery and lights. The functions are on Sundays at 19.30 at the Cultural Center of Cooperation. We talked with Ramírez.
Journalist: What attracted you to this work by Harold Pinter? What can you say about the dramaturgy of this colossal author?
Facundo Ramírez: Harold Pinter’s universe has its own atmosphere, such as Jean Genet or Samuel Beckett’s. Understand it, exceeds the intellectual explanation through words. There is something that echoes in one from a visceral, intuitive place, to be able to dump it to theatrical language and that is present on the stage. In Pinter, that atmosphere is linked to the idea of how the apparently normal passing of everyday life begins to be threatened. In the specific case of this work, for what is not said, for distorted memories, for forms of violence contained. Then there is a strangeness. And the reality, imperceptibly, is disturbed, becomes increasingly distressing. The everyday is no longer what it was supposed to be. That starting point was always fascinating in this author.
Q.: A man and a woman sitting at a table oppose long monologues as in dreams. How is this flow in a vigil that has so much of that flow of the unconscious and surrealism of the dreamlike?
FR: Pinter deceives us: it faces us to a marriage that is apparently talking on a kitchen table. But as the work progresses, one realizes that in reality that woman and that man are not talking, or almost do not, but throw their words into the void. Therefore the flow of those words is melancholic and overwhelming. And at this point Pinter fools us again. Do those words really have more than vacuum? Of course.
Q.: With apparent calm, as if they were dialogue, let memories, hidden desires, reproaches, fantasies and gag violence, what topics are addressed?
FR: “Landscape” is a work crossed by loneliness, frustration, incommunication, and by the effort to create a forced past, which does not exist. Both characters, for different reasons and for different purposes, build a new reality through words. At this point the work is devastating.
Q.: In Pinter’s works the cliff is discovered under the irrelevance of everyday life. What is that abyss? The collapse, the degradation of love, incommunication, corrosion for the passage of time appear. What else can you say?
FR: Pinter tells us about the collapse, of the end. All the collapse of a compressed life in 45 minutes. However, that end is just the beginning. Because it seems that for the characters of the work, the abyss in which they are trapped and of which there is no escape, is a perpetual present.
Q.: How did you work on?
FR: The setting is ascetic: two chairs separated by a table. Light and shadows. Only that table is a world: the world that unites the characters, as if it were a communicating glass. But it is also symbolicly and graphically, which separates them. That is why it is huge, since it accentuates the loneliness and incommunication of the characters. I sent a three -meter table, and for practical issues, I did not do it even longer. Anyway, the result visually moves away the show of realism, something that always interested me as a director.
Q.: How do you see theater and culture?
FR: We live very difficult times. Given the adversity, the makers of the culture of our country always became more creative, we always manage to find a way of not stopping. And our theater is a clear show of that. But it is not enough. It is worrying that you have the illusion that we will ever be able to be a serious country without a true cultural project. The most developed countries in the world that we say admire them had always clear. We should learn from them once, and not do the opposite.
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.
