"We lost Margarida Xirgu, Uruguay won her"
Cristina Clemente signs a comedy directed at the Lliure by Israel Solà and performed by postgraduates of the Theatre Institute
BarcelonaThe commemoration of the 50 years of the Teatre Lliure has led its management team to look at projects from another perspective. For this reason, this time the IT Teatre Lliure initiative –which brings together postgraduates from the Institut del Teatre with a professional director and playwright to jointly create a show– focuses on one of the great names of the Catalan scene of all time, Margarida Xirgu (1888-1969). Playwright Cristina Clemente and director Israel Solà have been in charge of building Xirgu, a comedy about the performer's legacy that features an artistic team essentially formed by young postgraduates, but which this time adds a professional actress to the cast, Muntsa Alcañiz. The show will be seen from November 19th to December 13th at the Espai Lliure.
"We have all heard of Margarida Xirgu, we know the square and the award that bears her name, but what was she like as a person? I have the intuition that we know her so little precisely because she was an actress, not an author. The work of a performer is completely ephemeral," reflects Solà. Clemente's text is, according to the director, "a comedy with airs of Pirandello" that places at the center the idea of the transmission of a legacy. "We learn theater from our masters. In Xirgu's case, her chain of transmission was broken by the Civil War and exile. She was one of our most important theatrical references and she disappeared from our orbit. We lost her, Uruguay won her," emphasizes Solà.
The show starts with a group of young performers who arrive, precisely, at a house in Montevideo run by a woman. From this irruption, characters will appear who will link the past with the present with fragments of texts by Lorca, Guimerà, and Pérez Galdós. "It is a show that drives one mad. People from the Renaixença, the generation of '27, and performers who are now starting their theater careers appear. There is no single role for each actor, but rather the characters transit between them and each one brings their own sensibility," says the director. The cast is made up of Queralt Borja, Pilar Grimalt, Valeria Pisati, Gemma Polo, Beatriz Ribas, Roger Sahuquillo, Guillem Valverde, Sara Vinyals, and Muntsa Alcañiz, who precisely in 1985 received the Margarida Xirgu award for Conversation at the Stein residence about Mr. von Goethe, absent. "From Xirgu, I keep her words about how to be a good actress: one must be bold, have a good memory, and a lot of intuition," underlines Alcañiz.
Tour through five municipalities
Xirgu is linked to the Reverberacions project, through which the show will not only reach five Catalan municipalities (Vic, Granollers, Sallent, Viladecans and Vilanova i la Geltrú) but will also develop laboratories and artistic interventions related to the show and designed to connect the theater with audiences that do not usually go to the theater. In this edition of the project, we will work with several groups of young people and adolescents and with a group of older women who migrated from various areas of the Spanish State. Among the artists participating in this edition of Reverberacions are Tàtels Pérez, Fabiana Vinagre, Laia Nogueras, Aitana López Ropero and Miquel Carbonell.
