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Everything is like a round trip path in which life gets into the theater and the theater in life without one being able to distinguish which plane it is on. In the day-to-day life of number 12 of Porta da Pena street in Santiago, the borders blur. It is the headquarters of the Voadora company, since 2007 home of the vanguard of experimental theater. With the "new normal" of the pandemic, Voadora has broken any remaining mold. He has made the Zoom platform into a five-room rehearsal room, where he works at full capacity in the creation of Siglo mío, beast of mine for the National Dramatic Center.

The premiere had to be suspended on April 22 due to the state of alarm, but its creative process had already been interrupted on March 11. The entry of an actress with coronavirus quarantined the team. Half of the cast is from Madrid and was displaced in Santiago, so the confinement came with several positives and far from home, "a very strong blow."

Trials were resumed with all already recovered but nothing was the same. The final piece will be the result of the respiratory problems of the team, which is felt in how the actors glide across the stage , "with movements that are based on the sensation of waking up the lungs, of breathing." according to its choreographer, Amaya Galeote. As its director, Marta Pazos, explains, "something so big has happened here that it has gotten into the show."

Pazos and Hugo Torres receive us at Porta da Pena, 12 with a mask and the fear of who has spent months without opening the door of a studio that is usually full . In addition to director and actor and author of the soundtrack, they are members of Voadora and parents of Olivia and Noel. "The headquarters of the company is also an enclave where conciliation is maximized. Noel (five years old) comes to greet while they rehearse and Olivia (10) lends her voice to the creation"

Test by videoconference of the company Voadora.MUNDO

This covid essay is lived in separate rooms. Hugo is in a studio riddled with technology that allows him to play a character while introducing meaningful breathing and music. Marta, in a neighboring room, sneaks in through Zoom in the room where the speech teacher Miguel Cubero directs him along with the other actors Miquel Ínsua and Carlota Gaviño. Then he enters another meeting in which Lola Blasco (actress and author of the text) and José Diaz test how to assemble text and music and in a third in which Amaya Galeote and César Louzán create choreographic tutorials.

Every afternoon, they work separately; at the end of the week they share. Marta and her assistant, Vanessa Espín, enter the room many times without their presence being noticed, and others to inspire encouragement : "You have just done theater with capital letters."

Marta had been around this text for two years, winner of the National Prize for Dramatic Literature in 2016. «I wondered why I insisted on doing it and now I know, I had to do it and go through everything that has happened so that everything makes sense . Now all the pieces fit together, ”he explains. My century, my beast addresses how not to lose your way in a time of catastrophes. Although inspired by the Arab Spring and the economic crisis, it is "completely relevant for this moment".

Telematic work is not new to the director, who has been working with the illuminator Nuno Meira from Porto for years, but had no experience applying it to the rehearsal room. "If there is a rebound, we have advanced the work so that it could be released digitally, although its natural life is not that."

The physical distance does not prevent the "gallinometer" from being activated in these tests, because it gives goosebumps to its director. It happened in this essay that witnessed THE WORLD: three actors read, three children sneak onto the stage, the text makes sense and " magic " is created .

The director has tried to "transfer the atmosphere and dynamics of the rehearsal room" to the digital world and, after that scene, she realized that she had succeeded. Vanessa's tears fell and Marta concluded: "This was it, everything flows." The essence of the theater was filtered through the Wi-Fi network and, deconstructed and digitized by circumstances, returned to its origin. Voadora's most avant-garde show will come with a stage covered in plastic, it will bring a diver painted as out of the bile of a whale, he will mix silences, breaths, music, dance and abyss ... And, however, he rehearses every day like the purest theater.

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