Making vital drama out of a crisis

Spanish theater has been languishing for decades, propped up by dwindling official funding, all too often for works either from Spain's 17th-century Golden Age, or adaptations of Broadway and West End hits. Audiences stayed away in their droves. But there's a change underway that is luring them back. A grassroots movement of actors and directors in Barcelona and Madrid is breathing new life into 20th-century classics, writing their own works, and winning new audiences with their bold, back-to-basics method.

"We're not the first people to take this approach: working without funding or official support," says Miguel del Arco, director of Kamikaze. "With La función por hacer (or, The show still to be staged) we started out in a rehearsal room in Madrid, hoping a programmer, somebody would come up with a proposal."

"If directors put their money on good texts, then we could have a new golden age"

"There's definitely something new underway: a vitality we lost in the 1980s"

Ayanta Barilli, the director of Madrid's Lara Theater, saw the rehearsals, and gave Kamikaze its first break. Eighteen months after it was first staged to a handful of people in the Lara's foyer after the main show had finished on Fridays and Saturdays, La función por hacer, Kamikaze Producciones' freewheeling adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, swept the board at this year's Max Awards - Spain's equivalent to Broadway's Tonys.

From the foyer of the Lara, where word of mouth soon had people lining up for tickets, Kamikaze took the show to Barcelona's Villarroel, "where we started to make a little money," says 46-year-old Del Arco. The show was a success there, and returned to Madrid's El Español, where it triumphed, subsequently heading off to theaters around Spain, and festivals across Europe.

Along the way, the production was lauded by the critics and Spain's leading luvvies, among them the grande dame of the Spanish stage, Núria Espert, who asked Del Arco to direct her in her production of Shakespeare's poem The Rape of Lucrece. José Luis Gómez, the artistic director at Madrid's Abadía theater, one of the capital's more adventurous venues, then invited Del Arco to stage his next production there.

Del Arco chose Maxim Gorky's Summerfolk (Nick Dear's National Theatre production had been a huge success in 1999) transferring the Chekhovian story set in Russia on the eve of the Russian Revolution to modern-day Spain, and calling it Veraneantes. The show sold out its six-week run in April and May, and will be back at the Abadía in September.

In keeping with his no-nonsense approach, Del Arco's production is as minimalist as La función por hacer, with a bare, backlit stage. The seating has been arranged to give the audience the same up-close and personal experience.

"We have shown that we can do a great deal with good actors and a good text; that we can bring the public in, and that is the only thing that really matters," says Del Arco, leaning forward from the front row into the stage.

Some critics say the current vitality of Spanish theater owes much to necessity: these are times of crisis, and the only way to get things done is reduce costs and focus on the essential. They point to Argentina, where over the last decade, a similar revival has taken place.

Director Claudio Tolcachir cut his teeth in his native Buenos Aires a decade ago during the chaotic period known as the corralito, when the Argentinean economy imploded. He rented an abandoned shoe-making plant in the working-class Boado neighborhood, and began rehearsing La omisión de la familia Coleman (or, The Coleman family's omission), his first work as a writer.

"The origins of the piece were born out of desperation, because you die if you don't produce theater," says the 35-year-old during rehearsals for his new production at Madrid's Matadero.

Word soon spread that something special was to be found in the former footwear factory far from the center of town. "Theater appears when something needs to be said. It is your voice. I ask myself: what do I want to talk about? What moves me? And then I start writing. Theater is a dialogue. The answers come from those who see themselves reflected in it," he says, adding that an economic crisis does not provide the best conditions for theater to flourish.

Created from improvisations by Claudio Tolcachir and his collective, Timbre 4, La omisión de la familia Coleman has seen a far longer life (five years of prizes, translations and international tours) than the group imagined. But the show's premise, entangled in the clasping arms of one seriously dysfunctional family, and its themes of loneliness, entrapment and longing, are explored with verve, compassion and blistering humor, and strike a universal chord.

The play was performed at one of Madrid's oldest alternative theater venues, the Pradillo Theater for four days back in 2008. It was seen by Mario Gas, the director of the capital's venerable Teatro Español. Gas put the Español's smaller stage, the Sala Pequeña at Tolcachir's disposal for the following year to stage La omisión de la familia Coleman. Tolcachir returned in 2010 with the second part of the work, Tercer Cuerpo (or, Third body). And he's now back in Madrid, at the Matadero, with his Timbre 4 company to stage the final part of the trilogy, El viento en el violin (or, The wind in the violin).

Alfredo Sanzol, who after a decade of winning prizes and working in television, now has his second play in production at the Teatro Español, and is preparing La luna, (The moon), which explores his earliest memories. He met up with Tolcachir and Del Arco for a photo session in Madrid's Plaza de la Paja, and shared his views on the new winds blowing through Spanish theater.

Sanzol says he doesn't feel as though he is doing anything new. "What's clear for me is that I have to write about what really interests me, and that means everything. The problem is knowing if you are really saying what you want, or are being influenced by the trends around you." He insists that the new generation of playwrights is standing on the shoulders of writers and actors who pioneered new approaches in the 1970s and 1980s in Spain. "Public funding of theater has played a key role in keeping the audience interested, as have the drama schools. The more people who keep going to the theater, the more opportunities there will be for directors like us," he says.

Sanzol, Tolcachir and Del Arco have also been helped by the appearance of smaller theaters in Spain in recent years, such as the Microteatro por Dinero in Madrid's trendy Triball district, a network of once-rundown streets behind the Gran Vía that sees itself as the capital's Soho. The Microteatro por Dinero has a bar upstairs, and five small rooms below that seat around 30 people. Each night sees the staging of different shows, typically lasting less than half an hour.

In Barcelona, the Biblioteca de Catalunya, the region's new library located in a former hospital, has also made its contribution to reviving interest in theater. Using a few wooden tables and old chairs, Oriol Broggi's La Perla company is rehearsing Ramón Valle-Inclán's calssic attack on bourgeois morality Bohemian Lights.

Across the Catalan capital in the vast concrete monolith that houses the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, Jordi Casanovas has taken his first step into the big time with Una història de Catalunya. This is his 30th production, but until now his FlyHard company has worked in much smaller spaces. He has been invited as part of the Proyecto T6 initiative, aimed at attracting new talent to Catalonia's national theater. "I write at the same time as I rehearse," he explains. "It's riskier, but it is the best way to find the freshness I am looking for. This approach allows actors to really take part in the play, and gives me new perspectives and ideas."

It's a time-consuming way of working, he says, and requires patience. His goal has been to attract new audiences. "The audience has to really feel that they have been part of a theatrical experience. If directors put their money on good texts, and actors get down from their pedestal, then we could be looking at a new golden age."

A new golden age might be a bit much to expect yet, says Andrés Lima, whose Animalario company has been around for over 10 years. "Nevertheless, we are seeing a much more interesting range of works, writers are not afraid to look for and find their own voice. There is definitely something new underway, a new vitality that we had lost in the 1980s. But we face a lot of problems. Funding has dried up, there is no money coming from the state; theater companies are owed money for their productions by town halls," he says.

Miguel del Arco used his acceptance speech at the Max Awards in May to highlight the issue. "The situation is catastrophic, because we are not being paid by local and municipal government. We are living on a shoestring, despite our success. There isn't a single company or producer I know who isn't owed money," he said.

Sanzol says smaller companies are only able to keep body and soul together by going out on the road. "We are just about making ends meet. Independent theater is a tough game," adds Lima, who foresees difficulties for directors who want to take risks unless they can count on state funding. But growing numbers of regions and cities are selling off the theaters they once supported. He says the exceptions to the rule are the Centro Dramático Nacional, Spain's equivalent to Britain's National Theatre, run by Gerardo Vera, and the Teatro Español.

Carlos Hipólito, who recently won critical acclaim for his performance in the stage production of Glengarry Glen Ross, and is a familiar face on Spanish TV, hopes the current theater revival continues. "This new generation of directors has a team approach; they are not interested in conflict; they make sure that their actors' morale is high. They have the talent to know when to keep out of things, and to let the text take over; there's so much less ego around these days," he adds.

Raúl Prieto, who won this year's Max best actor award for his role in La función por hacer, and also featured in Summerfolk, says the success of the new generation of directors is that they engage the audience. "It's not just a question of what one is performing, but the way we work. It's a question of finding a balance between being realistic without pretending that something is real. You could say that this theater looks poorer because it is less grandiloquent, but actually, its simplicity makes it more interesting and deeper."

Manuela Paso, who took the Max best actress award for her role in La función..., feels extremely fortunate to be involved in theater at the moment. "As an actress and a member of the theater-going public, I have the feeling of having lived through a period in which form and design took precedence. But now we are seeing an emphasis on people and the story. It's much more about emotions, and that is what the public identifies with. Before it was as if we were playing at it, but now we really come alive on stage, and that is what theater is all about."