The playwright and former director of the National Dramatic Center edits Lorca and prepares the premiere of ‘Yerma’. He does it while meditating in the morning and playing chess in the evening
Leaving the post of director of the National Dramatic Center, where he spent eight years, Ernesto Caballero (Madrid, 1958) founded a unique company called Teatro Urgente, to search for the Greek origins and essence of theatrical debate. to bring to the contemporary scene. Author of works such as ‘Squash’ and ‘Tierra de por medio’ and director of texts for Calderón de la Barca (‘Eco y Narciso’), Christopher Hampton (‘Dangerous Friendships’) or Juan Mayorga (‘Darwin’s Tortoise’), under many others, now dares with García Lorca, through the adaptation of ‘Yerma’, which will premiere on September 30 at the Quique San Francisco Theater in Madrid.
Monday
4:00 in the afternoon. After a break of a few weeks, I’m rehearsing again. I go to the Quique San Francisco Theater, which used to be called Galileo, where Teatro Urgente is the house company. I say to the actors: Error is our tool, you have a duty to make mistakes. I don’t want them to try their hardest, as is often the case with theater auditions. Here I want you to take risks.
10:05 PM I’m done with rehearsals for today. After working with the actors, I did light tests with the technicians. Homecoming.
11:40 PM With the pandemic, I got used to seclusion and watching series, such as ‘Ozark’ and ‘Succession’. To sleep, today I watch the fourth chapter of ‘La marquesa’, the series by Tamara Falcó. I am very struck by that way of generating a story without conflict. It’s like an advertising world, but a ‘spot’ lasts a minute and this a few hours. It is the arcadia, where there are no misfortunes or ills. Nothing stands in the way of realizing your wishes. It’s a misconception, but I’m fascinated by how he manages to capture. Finally, a conflict appears in this chapter. Someone has knocked over the gate of the farm and she sees it as a great tragedy.
Tuesday
9:30 in the morning. I meditate. It fits me; Anxiety calms me down because I am very nervous. I try to find a 15-minute slot every day, but sometimes I skip it. Now I do it in the morning. Some time ago I did transcendental meditation, but now I practice a Tibetan meditation, of ‘mindfulness’.
12:40 PM I check a database of about two thousand people linked to Teatro Urgente, to select trusted people who come from the audience to rehearse. With those reactions in mind, we have to get to work and start a conversation with them. To be true to our work guidelines, I will introduce the public little by little. I have to do a casting.
10:15 am I open a beer. I am a brewer. It’s a great pleasure. Coming from rehearsal to open the beer can is blessed glory.
Wednesday
10:00 am. I read the press on my mobile. I am subscribed to all newspapers. I also check it before going to sleep. Something can always happen. I also really like Twitter, a bar for cranky drunks, but if you do it right, you can find cultural and scientific references. Theater questions that do not occur to me in any other way. I was a smoker and not compulsive. With this social network, all I have, it’s the same.
5.30 pm I stop the rehearsal. I want to talk about what we do because we don’t want to make theater to please. I’m suggesting that Yerma, beyond her symbolic dimension, is someone who kills, a character who ends up killing her husband. So I ask Karina Garantivá, the protagonist, the following question: at what point can the price of an idea of liberation be a human life? And before you answer, I advise you, as in the old tragedy, be wary of hasty solutions.
00.20 am. I play chess against the machine. I do it every day, every night, at least three games. There are channels that I am very addicted to that show you the latest games from Carlsen or Caruana in ten minutes. I learned it at the age of seven with my father and brother, and I have not left it. Chess is always a game against yourself.
Thursday
6:50 pm In the rehearsal I verify that Karina knows how to work in the here and now, and to be in the place of uncertainty in which the actor has to move, because every moment and every situation is different. She understands that the scene has to be produced every day. But I have to ask her to go to the hairdresser tomorrow. So I tell him, that hair you have is like a mask that takes away dramatic intensity. Part of my job as a director is to look at the subtle, the pragmatic and the refined. In this case, the subtle, like her hair, can cause the audience to distract their attention.
11:10 PM I’m not going to look any further at ‘La Marquesa’. I grab another one that had already started, “I’m a killer.” This series inspired me to a set design that we tested in ‘Yerma’, in which the main character is in an interrogation room and the plot is built with ‘flashback’. But we rejected it, because it highly conditioned the opening of the work. The current approach is made in a larger space and has become a large black wall, which is more eloquent.
Friday
11:25 am In the summer I usually write my works. I’m a playwright for six months and a director for the other six. But this year, with the premiere on September 30, I haven’t been able to devote myself to my own lyrics. This morning I take a break with a good coffee, as I am a coffee grower, to return to Lorca’s dramatic poem, which premiered in 1934. I study his willingness to speak about man with his contradictions, flaws and vulnerabilities, through the history of this female character in search of motherhood. I don’t consider my arrangement complete yet, it starts from the suspicion that the poet could be viewed from a different perspective. It is very difficult to play Lorca, he is very musical. You have to be very careful.
Saturday
10:00 am. We have visitors. A friend of my wife who is from Colombian Guajira. I like to cook and stay for dinner or lunch. I brag that I’m from ‘Euskadi sur’ because I already make cocochas pill pill that my friends from Bilbao have told me are unbeatable. For today I am making paella, a paella from Alicante with vegetables, chicken and rabbit. I’m going to strive. I make an absolutely homemade life.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
