2023-10-23 22:26:56
A dramatized reading is not the most dynamic stage format that exists and does not usually lead to massive ticket sales. But this Sunday the Gran Teatro Falla in Cádiz, on a very complicated day due to the weather alerts and the hurricane-force winds that hit much of Andalusia, was packed to capacity to attend the reading of I die because I don’t die, the play about Saint Teresa of Jesus by the author Paco Bezerra that the Community of Madrid removed from the Teatros del Canal programming a year ago. This summer of various censorship in city councils governed by the right and the extreme right has given the piece an even greater symbolic weight, if possible. Furthermore, the presence of actresses well known to the public made the show become the great attraction of this first weekend of the Ibero-American Theater Festival of Cádiz (FIT).
The day before the premiere, at the Transoceanic Meetings organized by the festival, Bezerra was warming up. The meeting, moderated by journalist Marta García Miranda, lasted an hour and a half and also included the director of the reading, Matías Umpierrez. When asked why this reading ―premiered at the Sala Berlanga in Madrid― had not had a longer run, with the one in Cádiz being the third one to be made, Bezerra did not bite his tongue: “When we premiered in Madrid, everyone was surprised. He said that the play was going to be put on. We were more skeptical. They also told us that the dramatized reading was sure to have a great tour, but we have not received any calls, only from the FIT of Cádiz and the Segovia Prison,” he explained.
Asked about the reasons, Bezerra, 2009 National Prize for Dramatic Literature, stated that he knew first-hand why. “The theater directors themselves tell me that they have absolute freedom, but then they don’t want to meet with me. Or they tell me to write a new work and that they will program it. When I tell them that what they have to do is program this, they tell me that they are not interested. But how are they not interested? I die because I don’t die “And yes, a work that I have not even written and, therefore, they do not even know what it is about?” he asked himself scathingly. “What is true is that a year and a half has passed since the play was censored and no private producer, no public theater director of any kind has ever called me to schedule this show or to have a conversation,” he concluded.
During the same meeting, Bezerra explained that what is being highlighted with this entire process “is that artistic managers and directors in this country do not have the freedom that they say they have.” “The Community of Madrid explained that Blanca Li was not artistic director, that she did not program, that she simply proposed and then decided who she decided. But they didn’t just say this about her, but about all the artistic directors who work for the Community of Madrid. They discredited them and no one has said anything. They are quiet. “Fear and pocketbooks rule,” said the playwright and then attacked the private company: “Certain producers tell me that what I am doing is detrimental to the sector. It is not like this. My scream simply shows their silence and that makes them uncomfortable. “They know that what has happened is wrong, but they have to finance their new projects and they continue working with the power of the same sign that encourages censorship.”
Even Bezerra dared to name names, something very unusual in the sector. At the presentation of the reading in Madrid, the theater producer Jesús Cimarro offered his theaters to program the play, “but when Cimarro called Bito Producciones [la productora privada catalana que cofinanciaba el proyecto original junto a la Comunidad de Madrid], they told him no. Bito continues producing with the Community of Madrid. They have gone with power, they don’t care about the political sign, then they will be independentists and burn flags in their house, I don’t know, but when push comes to shove, they are with power. Throughout this process I have also been able to see a lot of discomfort in people who in principle are left-wing,” he stated. “Many intimate acquaintances have pointed out to me the then Minister of Culture, Marta Rivera de la Cruz, and the director of the Teatros del Canal, Blanca Li, as censors, but then they continue to collaborate with them,” he said.
Beyond the possible harshness of the statements, Bezerra also made it clear that, after all this time, he is seeing how the entire process has begun to affect him personally. “This, which was something professional, has become something personal. People who were close to me are not so close now because my own presence makes them uncomfortable, my presence seems to conflict them in the contradictions they have between what they think in private and what they do professionally,” he confessed. The meeting concluded with the support of a large part of the public, among whom there were many Latin Americans who said they understood “institutional violence” very well and advocated promoting spaces for conversation and establishing care mechanisms. One participant even stated: “I haven’t spoken for years, years in which I decided to remain silent and listening to you today made me pick up the microphone.”
The reading
Theatrically, the proposal, despite the careful music by Luis Miguel Cobo and the direction of Matías Umpierrez, is still a device where the actresses – María León, Gloria Muñoz, Emma Suárez and Julieta Serrano – sitting in a chair read the text on a lectern. In the work, there is little dramatic action, the text is reduced to a narrative text in which Saint Teresa tells of her resurrection. And, after her, how he has to desecrate her own relics to reconstruct her body dismembered and scattered throughout the world, her difficult insertion into society since she suffers from amnesia at first and has no papers. . Finally, empowerment comes after going through alcoholism, prostitution and heroin, thanks to his becoming a successful stand-up comedian and then a DJ (a nod to the equivalent of DJs in English as an acronym for De Jesús) who hosts trance sessions where expands a spirituality in which religion becomes “thirst for autonomy, desire for knowledge and hunger for freedom.”
The actresses were dedicated, emphasizing the twists of the text and giving life as much as possible to a brave and unprejudiced Teresa of Jesús. One of the highest moments was witnessing the freedom with which Julieta Serrano, at 90 years old, offered tripes to the audience. “There are trips called like me: Santa Teresa. Have you ever seen them? Well, here they are: trips with my face. You can pass them to them and they appreciate them better. By the way, anyone who wants to try it can do so without any problem, but I recommend that, if it’s the first time, they start with a little corner,” she said with that mother superior face from Almodóvar’s film. In darkness. Seeing this great lady of the theater defend the text with a carefreeness full of freedom was the best antidote to the moralistic fuss that the work has raised in certain sectors.
When Teresa de Jesús was already a DJ and the electronic music was playing, the audience began to clap, a good part of the audience even got up to dance wildly. The final applause lasted more than six minutes.
At the end of the play, when Teresa de Jesús is already a DJ and the entire Falla Theater was resonating with electronic music, the audience began to clap, a good part of the audience even got up to dance wildly. The final applause lasted more than six minutes. An applause of gratitude to the actresses but that had a different echo, where the Cadiz citizens were clearly in favor of freedom of expression and in defense of Bezerra’s work.
The afternoon ended in a pure assembly, with Bezerra speaking to the public, who reminded him of his bravery when he attended the Madrid Assembly where he faced the Vox deputy, and warmly applauded each of his speeches. At the end, a woman, from one of the high boxes of the Gran Teatro Falla and without a microphone, said in a loud and clear voice: “This is not a question to Paco Bezerra, it is a question to the audience, has anyone felt upset or outraged by what has been said in the play?” The entire Falla answered in unison a resounding “no.”
Thus ended the first weekend of this historic festival, directed by Isla Aguilar for three years, which began with many doubts and difficulties. The show that inaugurated the FIT, Crew, by the Uruguayan Tamara Cubas, had to be suspended. Although in a press release the festival cited weather reasons and other circumstances, the compelling reason is those unexplained “circumstances.”
The lack of understanding between the management and the Cádiz City Council, which has recently changed its political direction (from Adelante Cádiz to the PP) has caused an inexplicable delay in the tender that allows the hiring of the festival’s technical team, according to sources close to the festival. . The hiring became effective the same week it began, according to those same sources. This circumstance, together with the lack of convening power on the part of the festival management, meant that this show, which required the participation of more than 70 volunteers, did not have enough participants. It is even in doubt that Tamara Cubas’ next show, Offering for the monster, projected to close the Festival at the Falla Theater on November 4 and 5, may take place. For this show, the participation of at least 15 young dancers and actors is required, something that the festival organization has not guaranteed to this day, according to artistic and festival sources.
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