Christoph Marthaler isolates six strangers in a mountain refuge

BarcelonaSix characters meet at a mountain refuge. Each speaks a different language. The audience doesn't know who they are or what they're doing in this cabin, and perhaps they still won't know when the performance ends. Swiss director Christoph Marthaler is the master of stage ambiguity, and in He submits He puts it into practice without abandoning the humor and nostalgia that characterize his creations. The production, which can be seen this Friday and Saturday at the Canal de Salt, offers the opportunity to see the work of "one of the great theater directors of the early 21st century, with his own unique and surreal language," says Narcís Puig, director of Temporada Alta. Marthaler has a long-standing relationship with the Girona festival, where previous works such as No idea (2021), King Size (2014) and The travels of Lina Bögli (2011).

Le Sommet It is a co-production between France, Switzerland, and Italy, and it uses this multinational component as a starting point to present an unlikely encounter full of strange elements. English, French, Italian, and German will be spoken on stage, and the play will have Catalan surtitles. "Some characters arrive better equipped than others, but no one seems able to control what happens to them. As the production progresses, it feels like no one is going to escape that space," explains one of the performers, Graham F. Valentine. As is often the case with Marthaler's plays, the characters in Le Sommet They have been built by giving the actors free rein during rehearsals, rather than adhering strictly to a script. "If the audience tries to follow a character from the beginning to the end of the performance, they will be surprised to see how it doesn't follow a linear evolution and how it does unexpected things," emphasizes the show's assistant director, Giulia Rumasuglia. Maintaining the mystery established by the director, the company only specifies that the protagonists will experience scenes "in a sauna and at a party in formal attire."

Understanding each other

Marthaler plays with the double meaning of Le Sommet (which in French means peak, but also summit) to draw parallels between the mountainous backdrop and a hypothetical meeting with political undertones. "The text reflects the abyssal depths of nothingness, a territory where politicians feel very comfortable whenever they want to share their opinions," Valentine points out, adding that the use of language on stage "follows the Marthaler tradition and is on the verge of being nonsensical," while "the music is used grotesquely." Along these lines, the show "poses the question: 'What does it take for us to understand each other? Silence, music, or words?'" says Rumasuglia, who anticipates that the audience will encounter "scenes with absurd elements and familiar or known situations presented in a different way, because rather than asking questions, we know."

In parallel with the performances of Le SommetHigh Season will also host The Hague By Ukrainian artist Sasha Denisova, the play imagines a trial of Vladimir Putin on stage. The production intertwines real elements of the political and ideological reality of the Russian Federation with fragments of documentary war narratives and family tragedies to combat the normalization of armed conflict. The performance takes place this Saturday at the Teatre Municipal in Girona.