Àlex Rigola: "We have an expired figure, a King who has stolen, and society has not gone out onto the streets to end the monarchy"

The Teatro de la Abadía de Madrid recovers its activity with a montage of 'La gaviota', by Chejov.

At the helm, the Catalan director

(Barcelona, ​​1969), again in the capital three years after his departure from the Teatros del Canal as a critic of the PP for the 1-O.

What is the good and the bad of making a theatrical 'classic' like Chekhov? The worst of the great totems are not the totems themselves, but their heirs. For me it is necessary that the people who are on stage count themselves, more than the characters themselves. What is your system in the face of works like this? That the author and the director serve the actors, that they can tell their doubts and their fears, people so generous that they are capable of showing you their weaknesses. Because to make a fiction, the cinema does it much better. So my way of seeing it is how to combine reality and fiction in direct contact with the public, always breaking the fourth wall. Does the theater director have to be noticed? I think a bit like everyone and I am in everyone. I take advantage of those voices to ask myself questions, to tell things that I cannot do directly, thoughts that are sometimes very private and that you elevate them to the public. That is where I feel comfortable: addressing the viewer directly. I'm going to tell you something that happened to me. Why is 'The Seagull' still fresh 125 years later? The personal conflicts that we all have are very well represented in Chekhov, we see ourselves in those characters. The greatness of these existential doubts of the 19th century is that they need very little to be transported to today. For example? There is a moment when someone says: "What harm does unrequited love do." And this journey tells us that, deep down, we are very similar in structures of operation, of reaction to what love is. One of the ways out of the discovery that the world is very hard, of living in suffering, is through love, in its different versions: giving yourself to others, not only in romantic love is where you find your own well-being, your own salvation. And in romantic love too, of course. From the theater, how do you see what is happening now in the world? We have been talking for a long time that this system does not hold. Before, an economic crisis. Now, a pandemic surely the direct or indirect fault of humans. Within that thought that the world belongs to them and that we should not be compensated with the rest of nature, how does the current situation enter a play? In the montage, the actors put on the mask as protection between them, because they also need to take care of themselves in that sense, because apart they are in film shootings and also pending other montages, and they cannot afford that an entire team has to stop. Can a pandemic be inspiring? For me it would be impossible to make a piece this year about Covid. But I am sure there are images that could be wonderfully transferred to the world of opera. I would see myself making a requiem dedicated to Covid. How will this affect love and sex? Fucking is not going to end. Systems are going to be found: look for people with whom you have sincerity, who have not been with anyone for 15 days ... If not, the body explodes. Surely, it can lead to a certain puritanism. Or the most puritans will be delighted with the situation. What solution do you see for the other pandemics, in this case moral ones? Get out of that world in which they put us where there is a thought of possession: of objects, of how to show ourselves, what we want to teach of us. It seems that this need to buy objects and to become objects, role models, is fundamental in our life. That is why it is very good to stop being your own center, which is another form of love. Helping is like giving love. What has saved you? After eight years of directing an institution like the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona, ​​I lived more hours in that building than at home with my partner, which also had devastating effects. We had traveled a lot, won awards, made a program that we could be proud of, they had spoken well of us, and so on. And finally, what I was left with was human relationships, with people I had met and the ties we had established. If there were continual tension in rehearsals, I would not resist it. For me, the result does not justify the trip we all make. It is now three years since 1-O in Catalonia and his departure from the direction of the Madrid Canal Theaters in protest at the then attitude of the PP, which also governed community. How do you see that conflict now? I cannot answer you now, because it is a complex answer. We would need an hour because the analysis I do not think is a situation of Catalonia-Spain. It is not easy to answer questions such as where we are, where we are going and where we come from, how it is interesting to divert the main issue on the one hand and on the other. We are facing a society that does not seem to react. We have an expired figure, which is that of a king who has stolen. This money is not going to be recovered and there is no intention to return it. And society has not taken to the streets and is ending the monarchy. In addition, the majority of deputies say that this is not an issue to investigate or rethink. And all this with a government that, theoretically, calls itself progressive. But, returning to your question, in the end it is all a matter of fear and possession by both parties. And, therefore, it is a basically right-wing thinking: I, me, me, with me, mine ... Individual or collective? Revolutions are only achieved individual by individual. When there is one, it is because it has occurred within each of the people who will later become a group. People are not a swarm of bees. And I know that I am not going to change the world, but I can do my bit, which is totally insignificant for any revolution, but it is necessary if we want to achieve something.

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