(Creation Residence )
L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà)
From 30/05/2011 to 05/06/2011
Presentation :
On 04/06/2011 at 19:00 in L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà)
Gonzalo Cunill, Juan Navarro
The Woodcutters is a curious title, referring to the felling of artists. Not only in the metaphorical sense but also literally: artists bought and cut down by the state-society.
An "artistic" supper after a funeral. An "artistic" dinner in honour of a "living, acclaimed" actor, following on from the funeral of a dead, failed actress: Joanna.
Though all the action in The Woodcutters centres around an armchair where a man sits remembering and thinking out loud, other spaces are conjured up: streets, "The Iron Hand", old apartments of the Auersbergers, the present home of the Auersbergers.
The armchair is a past and present observation point from which Viennese society is dismembered, x-rayed, suffered, along with society in general and the appearances these societies impose, that turn humans into masks, flesh as dead as zander-fish served at dawn when it must inevitably already have gone off.
Joanna the suicide. The burial. The waiting. The allusions to Wild Duck as the paradigm of "grand theatre". The dinner. The flight. In order to write "at once and immediately about this artistic dinner of the Gentzgasse, immediately, he/she thought, at once, over and over again, as he/she ran through the city centre, at once and immediately and at once, at once, before it's too late".
The work of adapting the novel The Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard for performance will be based on the most scrupulous respect for the author's text and the translation of Miguel Sáenz.
Juan Navarro and Gonzalo Cunill met in Madrid in 2001, after a performance of "Ronald, the McDonalds' Clown" by Rodrigo García and the Carnicería Teatro, in which Juan was taking part. Gonzalo has worked with Rodrigo García since his early pieces, such as "The Three Little Pigs" or "Kitchen Notes". This meeting between Juan and Gonzalo led to a long friendship and working relationship. The two share a common vision of the stage and both worked throughout the 1990s in creative contemporary theatre in Europe, with a long list of creative artists, work reflected in their biographies as they developed parallel languages in different countries. Their first piece together, directed by Juan, was the 2005 show "Fiestas populares" (Folk Festivals), produced by the Mercat de les Flors. From then on they have worked constantly together on different projects as well as coinciding on projects by Rodrigo García, most recently "Gòlgota Picnic" (Golgotha Picnic), which opened at the Centro Dramático Nacional on 7th January 2011.
A show by Gonzalo Cunill and Juan Navarro based on the novel The Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard, opening at the 2011 Festival Temporada Alta (High Season Festival) in Gerona.
The idea of holding a residency at L'animal a l'esquena in Spring 2011 is for a first encounter with the results of theatrical adaptation work already carried out by Gonzalo and Juan in collaboration with Antonio Fernández Lera. The length and complexity of the novel The Woodcutters means that the text must be cut meticulously in order to make the performance piece possible. The first phase of the project will consist precisely in discovering the dimensions of the literary work on stage and so forming a more organic opinion of the presence of the words.
The second phase planned for the residency will be to take a more performance-based approach to the imagery of the book, distancing ourselves from the words as an element on stage and developing the contextual evocations suggested by Thomas Bernhard, perhaps from a more conceptual point of view, involving the body, images, action. In this second phase we shall also have guests working on the music. The book contains strong musical references which act directly to increase the dramatic tension of the story, so that we need to experiment with this musical presence in order to include it in the grammar of the performance piece and give it the same dramatic weight as Bernhard does in his narrative.
Stage design will be a third focus of this creative process. Making use of the infrastructure offered by L'animal a l'esquena, we shall spend some time considering the creation of a context, the set, and the possible inclusion of audiovisual material in the piece. Fernando Esparza, lighting designer for this piece and a regular collaborator on all technical aspects of our work, will be there to help with this aspect.
Translating a novel like The Woodcutters into performance involves our undertaking a long process of experimentation. The work we propose for this residency at L'animal a l'esquena is a moment of reflection, a turning point, vital for the rehearsals to follow.
L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà)
From 30/05/2011 to 05/06/2011
Presentation :
On 04/06/2011 at 19:00 in L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà)
Gonzalo Cunill, Juan Navarro
The Woodcutters is a curious title, referring to the felling of artists. Not only in the metaphorical sense but also literally: artists bought and cut down by the state-society.
An "artistic" supper after a funeral. An "artistic" dinner in honour of a "living, acclaimed" actor, following on from the funeral of a dead, failed actress: Joanna.
Though all the action in The Woodcutters centres around an armchair where a man sits remembering and thinking out loud, other spaces are conjured up: streets, "The Iron Hand", old apartments of the Auersbergers, the present home of the Auersbergers.
The armchair is a past and present observation point from which Viennese society is dismembered, x-rayed, suffered, along with society in general and the appearances these societies impose, that turn humans into masks, flesh as dead as zander-fish served at dawn when it must inevitably already have gone off.
Joanna the suicide. The burial. The waiting. The allusions to Wild Duck as the paradigm of "grand theatre". The dinner. The flight. In order to write "at once and immediately about this artistic dinner of the Gentzgasse, immediately, he/she thought, at once, over and over again, as he/she ran through the city centre, at once and immediately and at once, at once, before it's too late".
The work of adapting the novel The Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard for performance will be based on the most scrupulous respect for the author's text and the translation of Miguel Sáenz.
Juan Navarro and Gonzalo Cunill met in Madrid in 2001, after a performance of "Ronald, the McDonalds' Clown" by Rodrigo García and the Carnicería Teatro, in which Juan was taking part. Gonzalo has worked with Rodrigo García since his early pieces, such as "The Three Little Pigs" or "Kitchen Notes". This meeting between Juan and Gonzalo led to a long friendship and working relationship. The two share a common vision of the stage and both worked throughout the 1990s in creative contemporary theatre in Europe, with a long list of creative artists, work reflected in their biographies as they developed parallel languages in different countries. Their first piece together, directed by Juan, was the 2005 show "Fiestas populares" (Folk Festivals), produced by the Mercat de les Flors. From then on they have worked constantly together on different projects as well as coinciding on projects by Rodrigo García, most recently "Gòlgota Picnic" (Golgotha Picnic), which opened at the Centro Dramático Nacional on 7th January 2011.
A show by Gonzalo Cunill and Juan Navarro based on the novel The Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard, opening at the 2011 Festival Temporada Alta (High Season Festival) in Gerona.
The idea of holding a residency at L'animal a l'esquena in Spring 2011 is for a first encounter with the results of theatrical adaptation work already carried out by Gonzalo and Juan in collaboration with Antonio Fernández Lera. The length and complexity of the novel The Woodcutters means that the text must be cut meticulously in order to make the performance piece possible. The first phase of the project will consist precisely in discovering the dimensions of the literary work on stage and so forming a more organic opinion of the presence of the words.
The second phase planned for the residency will be to take a more performance-based approach to the imagery of the book, distancing ourselves from the words as an element on stage and developing the contextual evocations suggested by Thomas Bernhard, perhaps from a more conceptual point of view, involving the body, images, action. In this second phase we shall also have guests working on the music. The book contains strong musical references which act directly to increase the dramatic tension of the story, so that we need to experiment with this musical presence in order to include it in the grammar of the performance piece and give it the same dramatic weight as Bernhard does in his narrative.
Stage design will be a third focus of this creative process. Making use of the infrastructure offered by L'animal a l'esquena, we shall spend some time considering the creation of a context, the set, and the possible inclusion of audiovisual material in the piece. Fernando Esparza, lighting designer for this piece and a regular collaborator on all technical aspects of our work, will be there to help with this aspect.
Translating a novel like The Woodcutters into performance involves our undertaking a long process of experimentation. The work we propose for this residency at L'animal a l'esquena is a moment of reflection, a turning point, vital for the rehearsals to follow.
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