The gala began spiky at the hands of a frenetic and powerful Cayetana Guillén Cuervo who set the pace in a ceremony that was capable of handing out 33 awards in just two and a half hours. And it is that the first thing that these awards demonstrated was their television capacity. It was the first edition and the gala was broadcast on La 2 de RTVE. They didn’t fail. In the first half hour, the four Musical Theater awards had already been given: three for Company, the Antonio Banderas show, and four of the first extraordinary prizes.
In addition, in that first run, well-known people such as Nacho Cano, Maribel Verdú or José Sacristán had already passed through the stages of the Spanish Theater in Madrid, and winners such as Antonio Banderas himself (on two occasions for the Best Show and Best Actor in a musical theater) or Antonio Resines, who received the award granted by the Government of Cantabria under the striking motto of Award for the Return to Life due to the serious illness caused by COVID-19. The actor received it with humor: “It’s a complex award, you’re all scared to see who gets next year. Seriously, this award is dedicated to all the people of the Gregorio Marañón hospital, especially the people of the ICU”.
This first stage ended with the Award for Social Change and Inclusion in the performing arts, awarded to a brief Bob Pop who said he had everything to receive the award: “Faggot, disabled and fat, I have it all.” Dynamism and great convening power in less than half an hour, quite a demonstration of television know-how. Nothing would stop the rhythm of this gala that began hours before with a long red carpet that went from the statue of Calderón de la Barca to the statue of Federico García Lorca in the Plaza de Santa Ana. The truth is that there cannot be a more theatrical carpet ; in it, the actresses, actors and theater people could have their most ‘Goya’ moment. And they took advantage of it. The truth is that the strength of Cayetana Guillén Cuervo is unquestionable. Every time he walked on the carpet, he received the applause of many people from Madrid.
the reign of musicals
With the same rhythm, the prizes dedicated to dance were given to three established figures of flamenco dance, Israel Galván, Rocio Molina and María Pagés. After which, in the transversal awards, those where different disciplines opted, the musicals reigned, taking the lighting award for the choir boysthe wardrobe for The endless story and the stage design for the The time between seams.
Ángel Gil, director of the Thalia Theater in New York, received the Award for Best Contemporary Hispanic Authored New York Performing Arts Production. An award that, as this newspaper announced, has created controversy because, although it appears on the list of finalists, it is an award granted by a commission set by the Academy and is not voted on by academics. The winning work was Life lessons by the author Eduardo Galán, who in addition to being an author is the vice president of the Academy itself.
Some transversal and international awards that the Academy will have to clarify and outline in successive editions and, after which, the purely theatrical awards were given. Luis Bermejo received the Award for Best Theater Actor for the innocent saints and Goizalde Nuñez by The life is dream of the National Theater Company. The Best Actor Award went to Carmelo Gómez for The wars of our ancestors, “It’s my first big theater award, I’m delighted,” said the actor who years ago decided to dedicate himself and train in theater and put his film career aside. Blanca Portillo received the Best Actress Award for Silence of Juan Mayorga, whom he thanked for the award and described as a genius, “thank you for having written this play and for feeling the theater as you feel it,” he said of the playwright who immediately went up to receive the Best Authorship Award for his play El golem. Another great theater performer from Madrid, Laila Ripoll, received the Best Director Award for her work Tea Rooms.
The most coveted theater award, that of Best Show, went to the play the innocent saints, produced by GG Producción Escénica and Teatro del Nómada, a play by Miguel Delibes adapted by Fernando Marías and the production director, Javier Hernández-Simón. The actor Javier Gutiérrez, who plays Paco el Bajo, the role played by Alfredo Landa in the Mario Camus film, and who is also a co-producer of this show, wanted to dedicate the award “to all Paco el Bajo and Regula , invisible beings who try to survive in this country day by day”.
The gala did not have great speeches or claims. This first edition has not had big winners either. Antonio Banderas with Company has received the largest number of statuettes, three. And two prizes have taken the work the innocent saints. But perhaps the winners of these first Talía Awards have been two already hard-working and all-rounders in the theater, Yayo Cáceres and Álvaro Tato, responsible for a theater that unites music, classical theater and contemporary modes. Yayo Cáceres collected the Best Original Music Award for to die, a play written by Álvaro Tato and performed by Marta Poveda and Aitana Sánchez Gijón that narrates the vicissitudes of the rogues of yesteryear. A work that also collected the award for Best Company Show. But in addition, Cáceres and Tato collected, together with their company Ron La La, the award called Best Private Stage Show Producer, an award for which they passed over the all-powerful producer Pentación and which represents a boost to this small company.
Full stop was seeing one of the great theater actresses, Lola Herrera, at 83 years old, receiving the Honorary Award for Professional Career. She received the award from Antonio Banderas who dedicated a heartfelt letter to the actress from Five hours with Mario, an actress who has one of the most relevant careers of her generation, something that Banderas highlighted, emphasizing that the award was also a recognition “to all that generation full of great actors”, to end up describing her as “one of the great ladies of the theater, one of the great Lolas of Spain”. “I have been in the profession for 65 years and I have never worked in this theater and it excites me”, said a stupendous and grateful Lola Herrera who also wanted to point out that “these awards can make a place in history in the face of an art as ephemeral as the stage , these awards have to serve to give memory to the theater”.
But perhaps one of the most relevant and differential points of the gala was its ability to include disciplines such as opera or music, hitherto absent from this type of award. An inclusion that made it possible for the Talías to shine with their own light. Being able to hear a zarzuela like The Wildcatbrilliantly interpreted by Pilar Jurado and Alejandro del Cerro, was the preamble to one of the most hilarious moments of the gala with the tenor José Manuel Zapata who presented the lyric awards and who sarcastically asked the musicals to give them the overbooking of public “because the lyrical one is dying, you don’t know what it is to sing and look at the stalls and see a leafy field of silver spines and a mobile UVI at the door of the theater”. Because, otherwise, the usual theater won. No gap for more contemporary bets. Even the opportunities that were in the finalists, such as the fakers by Pablo Remon, the will to believe by Pablo Messiez or Mariana of Luz Arcas, were left in dry dock. It will have to be in another edition or, seen what has been seen, in other awards.