Presentation of Season 2022 - 2023
Looking forward with hope
Antonio Tabucchi
The virus sent us home. Into isolation. Then, war on our doorstep, rising energy prices, those men (because there are only men) who meet every day to stop the war and never seem to reach any agreement (when you see them, something tells you they will never reach an agreement), bombs, civilian fatalities, systematic rapes of women (something that is hardly mentioned). Over four million people who in four weeks have had to flee their homes... An exodus almost without precedent. History repeats itself even though this is the 21st century.
After a time, you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and enchaining a soul.
So much information, constant connection thanks to digitalisation; but this does not mean more links or more proximity. The social networks, while putting ego at the core, have killed the social dimension of communication; we are invited to explain what we think about everything, to express our opinions unopposed, to exercise a cruel and unnecessary “sincerity” that has little to do with a “real” human relationship.
Don’t trust anyone who says: “I always say what I think.” The truth must contemplate its impact on the other; saying nothing is a magnificent option if what we intend to say does not improve on silence.
We are invited to express our needs, our desires, and turn them immediately into rights! The worship and adoration of the “self”. Despite digital hyper-communication, solitude and isolation increase.
Who has persuaded us of the idea that the origin of all pleasure is a satisfied desire?
Only a capitalist society pushed to its limit aims at the immediate satisfaction of desires. In the society of immediacy, satisfying a desire almost automatically has become a new nameless drug.
There are so many enclosed souls... Communication without community. The world has become an archipelago of solitude.
Theatre is a ritual and a space of equality between humans. This space of equality and profound listening is illuminated by an invisible beauty, of thousands of years, of thousands of voices, of memory, of experiences and reflections that others have made before us, of questions, of awareness of human existence and of this light that remains alive and needs patience to be seen.
Patience is protective; it enables us to endure adverse situations without falling apart. Patience is the mental capacity to postpone and control impulses and persevere in a behaviour despite difficulties; it is the strength of the soul against passions. With patience you see the trees sprout to fill with life in spring. And with patience you can see this revealing light. All that is nature, development, peace, prosperity and beauty in the world rests on patience; it takes time, silence and trust. And this will lead us to awareness, to the realisation of what we are and to the ethics and morals that we must follow.
It is a time of changes and ruptures that we, artists, theatre people, have to transmit with a language that reaches the heart, not as one of the thousands of news stories that constantly reach us. It is possibly the only motivation to leave home now: to be together, to breathe and beat together, to have an experience together. Theatre is an experience that pivots around this wonder that the human mind possesses: the ability to experience other worlds, and theatre is a place where you can experience other worlds, where life and the mysteries of human existence are discussed as if it were another place, another world. Through crying, laughter, emotions, hopes and disappointments, theatre allows us to understand our existence a little more. And, as Peter Sellars says, it enables us to see through blindness and denial with liberating clarity and force.
We need time to listen, time to love, time to react. We are beginning to feel so secure about what we see, about how we see it, that we have lost our capacity to see new alternatives, new possibilities, that we no longer allow ourselves to be surprised by different approaches, nor do we have the ability to see invisible relationships and timeless connections. We have stopped imagining and desiring because we have internalised the idea that we know what will happen and, above all, how it will end.
I think that the evil that exists in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions without astuteness can lead to as many disasters as evil.
Theatre is a reflection of all the lives that accompany and free us, forever, of solitude. We humanise ourselves with words, with art; this is why it is essential to communicate through art in the face of so much toxicity and lies. Social and public sense against wild and privatising individualism. Awareness leads us to solidarity and empathy, and reminds us that all people are alike.
But, in reality, in life we do nothing but look for a place to stay forever.
What is it that, today, makes us a little curious, a little enthusiastic? Hope. We create this hope that we lack today. This is a time to rethink our minds and our lives, our stories and therefore our future. None of us can do this in isolation; we all have to do it together. We don’t need to be entertained, we need to come together and share the public space, and we need to cultivate this shared space. That’s why we tell you: come, come in, laugh, cry, dream with us in the theatre.
...but you’ll grow up, you’ll get older and you’ll have principles of your own, maybe mine, maybe your father’s, and you’ll realise that there is more to principles than there seems, you’ll realise that your principles determine how you live your life, how you fall in love, how you see the world, people, everything, never be afraid of ideas, because a man with no principles is not a man, men who have no principles are puppets, or worse, they become immoral, dishonourable, heartless.
Almudena Grandes (The Frozen Heart)
Carme Portaceli Artistic Director