Who is Romina Paula, the author of the iconic 'El tiempo todo entero'?

BarcelonaThe Argentine playwright Romina Paula (Buenos Aires, 1979) and her company are old friends of the Catalan public: in 2011 the play The whole time, and later at the Teatro de Salt. Since then, this work has become a benchmark of contemporary Argentine theater, and now Temporada Alta itself has included it in its Barcelona Flash de Otoño at the Teatre Lliure from October 21 to 23. Furthermore, a few days earlier, on October 18 and 19, the same festival scheduled a show from two years ago at the La Planeta venue in Girona, Shadows, of courseThe performers, Esteban Bigliardi, Esteban Lamothe, Susana Pampín, and Pilar Gamboa, are the same as in 2011, a significant milestone considering their busy schedules.

The whole time It is a very free version ofThe Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, and the starting point of Shadows, of course it's the movie The third generation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But Romina Paula's theater goes far beyond her adaptations. "Romina is an artist who touches many hats: in addition to theater, she has written novels and films," says the director of the Temporada Alta festival, Narcís Puig. "Making films is one of the things I like most, being with a crew filming a movie," says Romina Paula. "But theater, and above all, working with our theater company, is the place where I feel most artistic—if I can allow myself to, although I'm a little embarrassed to say it. It's a place where I feel most like an artist, acting, where we ourselves push the boundaries as we try things. Theater is also the place where it all began, where I discovered what acting meant, with the first play we ever did,It makes some noise".

Regarding the adaptations, Puig clarifies that they are very different from each other. While the characters ofThe whole time They are somewhat reminiscent of Williams's, in the case of Shadows, of course Fassbinder was a reference point for finding extravagant "concrete theatricality." "Originally, we wanted to make The Glass Menagerie, but we couldn't have raised the money for the rights in years, so we had to come up with something else," says Esteban Lamothe.

The revealing human side of detective stories

The movie The third generation It stars a "very ridiculous" terrorist cell, as Romina Paula says. "They have to go unnoticed, but they disguise themselves in a very striking way," explains the author. And in Shadows, of course, the protagonists are a married couple whose son has disappeared and two "unrealistic" police officers who investigate the case. "But then there are a lot of divergent stories, which is something I also usually do: there is a plot that advances, but the characters contribute their own worlds. In this case there are also several more police cases, because for me there is something of humanity that explodes or emerges in police stories," he explains.

Romina Paula's company is about twenty years old. She and the actors came from the same schools and shared the same references. The protagonist ofThe whole time is an "inexplicably maladjusted and passive" girl, and her mother, a brother, and a friend of her brother also appear. In addition to Williams, another important reference is the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. This Mexican detail has to do with the fact that many people of Paula's generation were born in Mexico because their parents had gone into exile due to the Argentine dictatorship. "It's very interesting to see how the works age. For me, they've aged well, but I'm not one to give an opinion. In the first part, where we talk about those crimes that were previously called passionate"Now they're femicides, and this change in words was politically very important, and the play predates this. So you also have to listen to it and see it and ask yourself what's happening, how it fits into the present," she explains. And in an Argentina governed by Milei's far-right, Paula hopes to continue having "a country, and above all, a country where theater can be done."