2024-03-25 06:30:32
BarcelonaFor a few weeks now, when I carry them in my pocket, I caress my house keys. It is the fault of Eva Baltasar and a little, also, of the Victoria Szpunberg, but I blame the playwright more for me considering, very seriously, carrying a knife in my bag. Szpunberg is the author and director of The categorical imperative, which takes place at the Teatre Lliure de Gràcia, this production of which you don’t want to hear any more wonders if you don’t have tickets. You should know, however, that Arola has published the text, which I enthusiastically recommend. It challenged me a lot, and I immediately felt the work as a kind of sister ofSunset and fascination, the last novel by Eva Baltasar. Surely, because weather inhabits them (never better said) both.
The protagonist of Baltasar, who has no name, wonders when she went from sharing a flat with friends to doing it with strangers; when the room no longer had a window. They have just kicked her out of the room she was locked in, and she will have to live on the street for a few days. Clara G. de la Szpunberg (a magnificent Agata Roca, impressive!) still has an apartment, but she has to hurry to find another one: a vulture fund has bought hers, and she can’t afford what she has now they ask for it A whore, to put it bluntly, because the prices are what they are (both plays are currently taking place in Barcelona) and her employment situation is what it is: as an associate professor of ethics at the university, she has a salary ridiculous, and he lives under the threat of having class hours taken away from him, which will make his chances of surviving financially disappear altogether. The unnamed protagonist works a few hours at a toy library, but with temporary and low contracts.
The obligation to share a flat to survive
I would explain that they are both alone, but maybe I should use another formula: Clara is “single“. That’s what a commercial that shows him an apartment calls it. You can see that if you say it like that, it’s as if the status were different. How important, the words! The protagonist of Baltasar, they save her, and the Szpunberg’s work portray situations, such as when the real estate agent himself speaks of people looking for an apartment as “aspirants”. He also uses the word “normal”, and quickly foreigners appear, it is not clear if they are part of this category. In any case, both are alone, and they would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that this makes everything more difficult: as Baltasar says, “the city is bloodthirsty, it manufactures loners and forces them to live together.” We live in a society that prioritizes the self, but in the hour of truth forces us to share in order to survive: living alone is becoming a privilege Clara meets different men (her boss, a doctor, a date from Tinder…) absurd, mediocre, cretins. Baltasar’s protagonist is a little more lucky: Trudi, a handywoman, will teach her her trade, and this will save her (at least, momentarily). For Clara, the closest thing to salvation will be carrying a large kitchen knife in her purse.
What skill, that of Baltasar and Szpunberg, to capture the current precariousness. The right to have a roof, the expats, the invisibility of women at a certain age, dark thoughts, despair… Its protagonists live in a narrow and ungenerous system, which suffocates them (hello, categorical imperative!) and which we recognize in our day in day. Reading them, watching them, laughing, even with them, is a real catharsis.
#precariousness #Eva #Baltasar #Victoria #Szpunberg