Analphabet It has one of the most baroque beginnings of the latest theater. Alberto Cortés appears, with those enormous arms, crying out to heaven, almost crucified and composing a painting typical of the Andalusian tenebrist school of chiaroscuro. The space is reduced to a small circle that leaves the entire stage outside of it black. In the circle we see only, scared by the light, those very long and rampant arms, which hide the body in the black.
The violinist Luz Prado fiercely attacks her instrument while Cortés’s body appears transformed into a ghost. A romantic, queer ghost, who will face the intra-gender violence of the gay universe, wounded and with all the force of fragility. Until now, it has been seen at the TNT in Terrassa and the Ibero-American Festival (FIT) in Cádiz.
Thus, with that powerful image Cortés opens his new piece, a complex work of cryptic and poetic writing that is a hymn to spirituality. Cortés invokes a ghost called Analphabet, a being outside of time who is a dark Peter Pan, a ghost who did not want to grow in the submission of logic where the spirit dies, a specter passed through German romanticism, a young Werther turned into blue flower that is all wounded.
Cortés invokes a ghost exalted in corny transcendence in the face of the desperation of an unhealthy relationship: “I like abuse, daddy, but not the one you gave me,” says the performer paraphrasing Daddy Yankee. But it is an exploited text, where the plot almost completely disappears, we hardly know anything about that history of abuse, only that Cortés calls him “my lendakari.”
José Bergamín and cruising
We see, however, the wounded lover, who gives himself over to the invocation of that specter that makes it easier for him to fly high as the sky. Hyperion by Friedrich Hölderlin and contemplate that entire gay community in perpetual cruising on Iberian beaches, of ephemeral couples summoned to violence and failure: “If each gay is identical to another, is fagging equal to eating oneself?”, Cortés blurts out at one point. This ghost will appear in Genoveses, Monsúl or Gulpiyuri, temples of cruising where Cortés seems to want to retrace a path that smells of putrefaction, which has led to intra-gender violence that is very reminiscent of the heteropatriarchal violence dominant for so long in Spanish society.
Cortés has just published Continta Metienes in the publishing house, I always come at nighta book that collects the text of this work and that contains a third act not present in the stage piece. In the publication, Cortés has also added a workbook on the creation process and some notes that talk about the readings that have influenced the work of authors such as Novalis, Goethe, Anne Carson or Hölderlin himself. But in these notes the inclusion of a reading is striking, The decline of illiteracy by José Bergamin. A text where Bergamín opposes the free spirit of the illiterate child to the world of literate and literary culture that the Basque writer calls a space for the death of the spirit.
That is the ghost invoked in this work, that of an illiterate, that of a faggot who is still a child, people and spirit and with all the strength born of an assumed fragility can confront the faggot turned into a man-eating vermin: “I condemn the “God who made you handsome on the outside and wolf on the inside,” Cortés sings in the piece. But although The burning had something manifest queer and Thomas Bernhard’s harsh verb, the most significant change in this new work is the word. A difficult word in many cases, where Cortés bets everything on poetry, a poetry that can beat through the body and song. A song supported by the incredible work of one of the most accomplished and interesting stage sound engineers in the country, Óscar G. Villegas.
It is that intimate search for a poetic theater, but without a poet, for a poetry without literature, that underlies the entire piece. Analphabet It is not an easy work. Cortés, instead of repeating the formula, what he has done is excavate, strip away his work. His totem poses mislead gay culture where he offers himself seductively. The piece is dark, almost hermetic in some of its parts.
The two previous works of Alberto Cortés, The burning and One night at Golden barmade him the white whale of contemporary theater. Everyone loved Cortés, that force of otherworldly stage presence and words made flesh in love and delivered on stage. Now, everyone has it. The work premiered at the TNT Festival in Terrasa and arrived this weekend at the small venue in Cádiz, La Central Lechera, thanks to the management of the previous stage direction of the festival. The former director Isla Aguilar traced a line of collaboration with Cortés in which, in addition to showing works at the festival, a project was generated that continues today, Escuela del Sur, a meeting space for Cádiz creators that Cortés leads together with the artist. Rosa Romero from Cádiz.
Analphabet He will go to Alicante in November, and then to Seville and Madrid. One of the most important managers in Argentina present at the FIT in Cádiz, impressed with her first encounter with the work and strength of the man from Malaga, told this newspaper after the performance: “In Buenos Aires they are going to adore him.” Cortés presents this month in the Argentine capital One night at Golden bar.
Possibly the function of the FIT, complicated by the narrowness of the space, has opened many doors for this creator who came out like a rampaging animal on stage. Although the piece lost in spatial aesthetics and perspective (it was a shame not to be able to appreciate Benito Jiménez’s great lighting work), the impression of seeing Cortés transforming just a few meters from the audience made strength, energy and presence of the artist. Seeing his possessed body is impressive.
New address at FIT
The festival arrived with the Malaga artist at its meridian and will continue its journey throughout this week. After the dismissal of its previous director, Isla Aguilar, a advisory committee has directed this edition trying to return to the more traditional path that this core festival has taken since it began in 1985. And the truth is that the public of Cádiz has once again filled performances and theaters in a program that has also opted for innovative proposals such as the interesting work of the Bolivian company Klara that they presented Palmasola, a prison towna piece that occupied the warehouses of the Baluarte de la Candelaria to convey to the public the horror of the largest prison in Bolivia where more than 5,000 inmates survive in an inhumane regime and in the face of a total absence of the most basic human rights.
Thus, a black comedy by the Bonobó company could also be seen, which presented Temis, true twist where Chileans delve into a dramaturgy of the absurd to the point of delirium; or an interesting work by the Sevillian David Montero, Son’s timea performance piece that addresses the grief of having to suffer as a loved one, in this case his mother, disappears after an illness like Alzheimer’s. Montero’s ritual was beautiful, after a demanding acting performance and a text that allowed for the poetic, he scattered a few ashes from what was his mother’s body on stage.
These days the festival lives in a continuous buzz about who will be its new director. The projects in the competition have already been submitted, when this edition ends the festival board will have to decide who will be the designated person. Ten projects have been selected and the pools do not stop. Everything indicates that the new person in charge will be known in November.
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