2024-08-02 20:51:20
The Féile Olite has reached 25 years. Many years have passed since Mayor María del Carmen Ochoa turned one of Navarra’s main festival spaces in the eighties into one of the summer events dedicated to classical Spanish theatre. Little remains today of that festival that the historian Rafael Pérez Sierra ordered during his first five years. Instead, a large red flower reigns in the Plaza de los Teobaldos. Pieria rose bigcreated for the festival by the artist Marta Pazos, who has become an icon of this festival determined to be one of the most important events in contemporary Spanish theatre.
Francisco Nieva and his theater of madness fall apart before the machinery of the festival
A good example was the piece presented this week, Like a father by Miguel Oyarzun and Juan Ayala. A community theater piece, performance collective and site-specific (works created for a specific space) that arose from a workshop with volunteer citizens from the merindad of Erriberri, the Basque name for this town south of Pamplona. In the abandoned church of the Convent of San Francisco, and although there was a strong gale, as the wind from the north of the area is called, after the evening was canceled, this piece began where the public could attend the conversations between grandparents and grandchildren. The identity, the transmission of values and the fears and desires of the two generations were retold in the body of this church from the 15th century.
Oyarzun and Ayala, who have already presented this piece at the Fourth Wall in Madrid this year, have collected the methodology of the Canadian company Why Not Theatre and his work Like Mother, Like Daughter. I Like a father, the eye turns towards grandchildren and grandparents and with particular emphasis on the memory of what the Franco dictatorship was and meant, which the grandchildren, between six and 15 years of age, do not know much about. “What’s that about you being hidden, grandfather, and what’s the meaning of hidden?” asked two grandchildren of a grandfather, from Navarre, who went to work in a factory in the area when he was 16 years old. “Don’t you know what stealth is?” the grandfather then asked them, “I do, it has to do with a clan, with a TV channel, right?” said the youngest.
The grandfather went on to explain to them what it means to be “children of a dictatorship”, without freedoms, and what it was like “to be treated like slaves in the factory and to want to change things.” “Do you think you can change things?” asked the grandfather affectionately to two grandchildren who were not sure, “maybe writing,” said one of them. Two generations were thus opposed, one that grew up under the fear of hell and guilt, “now that we are here, in what was in the church, it is correct to say, we were not happy,” on the same grandfather; with another person, yet to be done, with fear of loneliness, to be alone.
The piece also knew how to accept new realities, children who had to migrate to big cities like Bilbao or the migrant communities for their parents’ jobs. A young man from Peru talks in the room with his grandfather who comes to visit him from time to time, “Do you want to study at the university in Peru?” his grandfather asks him. “No, I have my friends here, my parents,” his grandson replies with affection.
After an hour of conversation, the participants in the play invited the attendees to the cloister where long tables were set up. With generous creation the conversations increased. In the second part, although there was no longer a stage, the dynamic of the piece was still active between the participants and the same audience who continued to talk about their fears regarding the death of the elderly and how to remember those who leave. Oyarzun and Ayala dominate this line of sight. The two have just completed a trilogy about childhood at the Reina Sofia Museum. Self (2022) where youth and their use of new technologies tackled Guy Debord’s text Association of shows; Capital (2023), who did the same with 16-year-olds who were starting to enter the labor market; and Reduce (2024), who addressed the environmental crisis and the economic model of capitalism in light of the youth who are beginning to be aware of the challenge they will have to face.
The project Like a father, which continues this philosophy of community theater and collective creation, is a very good example of the line followed by this festival with the new direction three years ago by María Goricelaya and Ane Pikaza, directors of The Wandering Dramaa Basque company that has become known throughout the country with shows such as Alsace o Tow. These two from Bilbao won the competition to direct the festival three years ago, and next year will be their last. “We will present ourselves again with a new project to see if we can continue,” Goricelaya tells this newspaper.
A new way
Pikaza and Goricelaya managed to undertake a double feature for this festival. In each issue it is about bringing the most relevant newly created works in the country. A good example was the show that opened the festival, forever, a work by Kulunka Teatro that won this year at the Max Awards. Another example is Lear solved, by Andrea Jiménez, one of the most acclaimed works wherever he goes. But, rather than trying to bring contemporary programs that have not been in the regional community until now, we also work with the local performing arts community, for whom creative residencies and workshops have been created that are increasingly receiving a better response. “This year is the one in which we have received the greatest demand and response from the theater people of Navarra and Euskadi,” Goricelaya confirms. In this issue, as a result of the artistic residencies, two works are featured: And come back, come back, come back… by Maialen Diaz and Emilia Acaya, and Philiafrom the company Paraván.
The previous director, Luis Giménez, who presided over the festival from 2017 to 2021 and removed the word “classic” from its name, is the change of this festival to the contemporary. An opening consolidated by the new direction that went further, the editions ordered by Giménez chose a contemporary but more traditional theater. However, not all opinions agree with this turn. In statements to the local media, the former mayor María del Carmen Ochoa said that the “classical surname” of the festival was not respected: “Today Olite does not have the National Classical Theater Company (CNTC) nor the support of Almagro, “We were not able to defend what we did.”
However, María Goricelaya asserts that this change was already in effect when they gave the direction of the festival. “Also, in our dialogue with the Navarrese companies, we were able to confirm that they do not need a classical theater, because therefore there is no circuit where they can perform it. They require us to be able to see, work and create synergies with contemporary companies,” says the director, who presented a risky program this year with proposals such as veterans. The Galindos, a very heroic street and circus company; the Galicians of cool, who presented their piece on Hellen Keller; and the Chileans of it Villaone of the best international pieces to pass through Spain this year.
Three plays in this edition have been produced by the National Drama Center (CDN) and another by the CNTC, Male scream by Alberto San Juan, a re-reading of the myth of Don Juan from a critical view of machismo which can be seen this weekend in the main space of the festival, La Cava. The same space when the festival ends this Sunday with another work by the CDN, Irribarneby Esther Carrodeguas, a political theater show that addresses the real Fraga Iribarne.
The time has changed. Gender, immigration, historical memory, political theatre, shown and a large rose placed in the center of Olite as a symbol. Although it is the 25th year of the festival, apart from some events more focused on the festival site and a photography exhibition at the House of Culture, there are only a few individual posters hanging in some windows to remind us of past editions. “No one here remembers the classics anymore,” an elderly person from Olite tells this newspaper.
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