The play that aims to "truly frighten" the audience

BarcelonaDarkness. Lightning and thunder. Screams. With just these ingredients, it begins The big house, the new play written and directed by Sergi Belbel (Terrassa, 1963), which can be seen from January 20 to February 22 at the Teatre Gaudí in Barcelona. The stage, located in the middle of the auditorium, promises an experience for the most daring spectators, who, if they dare to leave the stands and sit in the front row, will have the opportunity to literally enter the mansion where two sisters, played by Anna Carreño and Gemma Deusedas, "switch each other." The actresses will walk past them and behind them—they are in their own home—and shake them with some of the many shudders and howls they unleash during the play, a "disturbing and immersive" experience with which Belbel, author of works such as After the rain (1993), In Tuscany (2007) and Lali Symon (2023), has set itself the challenge of "truly scaring" the audience.

"Terror is practically impossible in the theater because if you have a dead person, the first thing you think is that with the scene change they'll get up and leave. There have even been cases of an actor having a heart attack live on stage and some audience members saying they were giving a bad performance."

To maintain the intrigue, neither Belbel nor the two lead actresses want to reveal too many plot details. "We can say that they are two women trapped in a house, and that there's a victim-perpetrator dynamic between them," he reveals. "Also, that they feel there's an external threat. This second element can function as a small allegory for what's happening in the world now. You only have to watch the news to realize that nothing is certain and anything is possible." "Threatened, right now."

Who are the two sisters who star in the play, really? Why do they change their names and personalities every time they leave and re-enter the mansion? Besides proposing a game of "fragmented identities," the dining room where the play takes place "seems to have a life of its own." "There's a great intensity from the beginning that's maintained throughout the entire play," comments Gemma Deusedas. Anna Carreño has experienced it as a "great vocal challenge" because she's had to work her voice to the fullest to "speak, shout, and cry at 100%." She also emphasizes the importance of being in "good physical shape." "They are two magnificent actresses, and I'm very grateful to them," says Belbel, before highlighting "the great work" of the entire technical team involved in the play.

Although The big house This is Belbel's first horror play, though the author has long been interested in the genre. He first explored it when he directed The Incomplete Woman, by David Plana, at the Sala Beckett, in 2001, and shortly afterwards with the narrative experiment ofWinter (Empúries, 2002). "I started writing twenty years ago The big house as a tribute, above all, to What ever happened to Baby Jane? (1962), by Robert Aldrich,” but I abandoned it when I began directing the National Theatre of Catalonia,” the author recalls. “I returned to writing it twice: in 2013, which also ended up shelved, and finally in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic.” He succeeded on the last attempt, and the result is a work also inspired by Psychosis (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), The fog (John Carpenter, 1979) and The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973). "A The big house"The terror is mostly psychological, but there's also some blood and guts," he promises.