What is the first thing you would do if, after eight years of incessant activity, you had real time for yourself? Maldives? Yoga? Gym? Fill the lungs in the saw / field? Or clean closets and put order at home ... and, incidentally, in your head. This is how Helena Pimenta confesses, although it is not quite true. After eight years at the helm of the National Classical Theater Company, the witness has just passed Lluís Homar and faces a new stage: that of unemployment, a word that he acknowledges that "fortunately" he had never used in the first person, but also one full of freedom and illusion But, as we say, it is not entirely true.
The culprit is Calderón de la Barca. Life is a dream marked the beginning of Pimenta as director of the CNTC. He did it out loud by putting Blanca Portillo to give life to Segismundo (yes, a woman to the surprise of many) in a bold staging that made clear his intentions at the head of the institution that Adolfo Marsillach raised in 1986. And now redial your goodbye. This week he has released the same title (at the Comedy Theater in Madrid until October 20) but performed by The Young Classical Theater Company, which he had not directed so far. It's been an "exciting experience. They've given me a gift," he adds in a broken voice. "In the end I start to cry," he explodes with laughter. Because if something is loaded, Helena Pimenta these days is thrilling to the surface. Of laughter and grief, of serenity and curiosity, of pride and freedom. Words all repeated constantly in this conversation.
"Now is the time to recognize your own space," reflect on these first days of farewells. One thing is clear, in addition to exercising and cleaning shelves: "From here to December I will take some time for myself and to assimilate all the experiences I have lived, which have been many and very intense. It is very important to recognize you in where are you, "he says and stresses," without fear. "
This opens the future to this director and playwright, National Theater Award 1993 , who does confess that she has had to mentalize to face this new stage. "The theater does not leave you hollow. It is done by illusion and vocation and catches you so much that you do not know yourself outside of it. As I knew it was going to be eight years, I was preparing with the feeling of grief. I have loved what I have loved a lot. done and I'm very proud. It's a loss, but that's not bad. You have to know that things have an end and I am very proud of the institution and of being part of it, "he says.
"It has been a dream in every way"
Since Helena Pimenta entered the CNTC in 2011, through a public contest called in application of the Code of Good Practices of the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the number of spectators has increased from about 60,000 to 202,000 of the 2018/2019 season . An increase that has gone hand in hand with a firm commitment so that the golden authors continue to vibrate in full XXI ... and not only the best known and not only in the capital of Spain. The word, the verse and the actor were the three main axes of his director program , which he has had in the collaborations with new playwrights and directors and in the co-productions other decisive legs. And a milestone: the return, with the mayor of Zalamea (another Calderón, of course), to the Comedy Theater after 13 years of very long works.
"It has been a privilege to defend our language and our culture and to do it by working with the classics, vital for the construction of the individual because they manage to take you to places where the daily word does not take you. It has been a dream in every way," he reflects against The coldest data. Do you have anything left to do? "Actually, nothing. I've learned that you can't do everything. It would be very daring, and Lluís [Homar] comes with a formidable enthusiasm, enthusiasm and preparation to give him the life he understands."
Pimenta was the first woman to take the reins of classical theater . Asked if she has had any difficulty, she replies: "Sincerely yes, but not so much from the inside as from the outside, where we still have to fight against attitudes and against that mask that we want to impose on women. I have never wanted to use it" . And leaves another message for politicians, those from different governments that she has seen happen during these eight years. "Politicians have to be aside for these institutions to have absolute independence."
And now? "I am open and curious to everything that comes." On the horizon there is not only Life is a dream, because in November it replenishes in the CNTC Punishment without revenge and in its head there are already several projects. Accompanied by his laughter characteristics, he says he wants to go to Paris, but as a nuanced listener, to a course on Meyerhold's biomechanics. He already has a dramatized reading in the SGAE with texts by contemporary playwrights and wants to direct works outside of Spain. "France, Italy, Poland ..." In addition, his company Ur Teatro-Antezerkia, founded in 1987 , never closed and will return with more force because, he confirms, they already have titles in their heads.
All this while watching the sea, take care of those quiet conversations with the friends you miss so much, enjoy the family, tidy up the house and recognize yourself, he says, in his silences. "I am not going to rest absolutely because I get bored, but I do want to enjoy the pleasure of thinking." Always, he adds, "very curious and closely following the heartbeat of the CNTC because I will always remain in it." Or, as Lope wrote, "I'm leaving, not the soul."
Calderón, always
Choose an author or classic text to help us understand this convulsive world. That is the predicament to which we submit Helena Pimenta farewell. Only one. Life is a dream, respond without hesitation. "We live in a moment in which we do not understand who has invented this world, if what they tell us is true or false, how are we going to hold and rebel against constant manipulation" and Calderón, he explains, helps us decipher it . In fact, finishing with this work its stage in the CNTC was not premeditated but "an intuition" because "it is a necessary work for another generation to pick it up from the scene and be its transmitter". Calderón always. Of course, putting the focus "on rebellion and the right to build your own freedom."
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