say that Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) is the mother of contemporary American theater (Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller…) is sufficient endorsement for a playwright who, however, has barely been represented in Spain. Who gives it that importance is Eduardo Vascodirector of the Spanish Theater, who wants to make up for that absence with the staging of ‘Bernice’, one of the works written by Susan Glaspell.
The work is presented from October 29 to December 8 in the Sala Margarita Xirgu. The version is signed by Ignacio García May and the function is directed Paula Pazwho has returned to work in Spain after her stay in London at the head of the Cervantes Theatre, which she founded together with Jorge de Juan in 2016. The cast includes Eva Rufo, Jesús Noguero, Esperanza Elipe, Javier Lago and Rebecca Hernando.
“Susan Glaspell’s is a very particular, sharp, unique voice,” says the director. It is a great responsibility to approach this author, who deals with topics with depth and great complexity, who does not shy away from addressing issues that generated controversy in her time and that continue to be relevant today. Those themes, she adds, are freedom, the rights of women and workers, and love. “Of the different ways of giving and receiving it.”
Ignacio García May refers to Susan Glaspell as “a prodigious talent.” With her husband, George Cram Cook, she founded the company Provincetown Players«literally amateur –continues the playwright-; Their idea was not to be professionals (in fact their problems arose because some members did want to be and others did not)». Their mirror was the Moscow Art Theater, the European theater, “and that allowed them to take risks.”
García May continues that her status as a precursor is what makes Susan Glaspell’s theater familiar to us. «For example, ‘Bernice’ has a structure that we have seen a lot in North American theater: the idea of the decisive night, that moment when everything has to happen – in fact, a character says it almost literally: ‘it’s tonight.’ or never’-. We have become accustomed to this dramaturgical structure, but it was born in Susan Glaspell.
“She is the one at the beginning of this thread, and she also shows us her influences,” continues the playwright. For example, there are very powerful shadows in this text by Ibsen, which at that time was like the most modern of the moderns; For her, he is not an ancient gentleman with sideburns, but the great playwright whose influence comes from Europe.
The author of the version and the director agree in defining the text as “very subtle.” “It has nothing to do with other types of broad-brush dramaturgies, where everything is understood the first time.” «In ‘Bernice’ the audience has to be listening all the time. The author leaves clues from the beginning -there is something almost police-like-, she leaves drops of information, so that in the end, when everything is over, the viewer says: ‘ah, okay, but if she has been telling me all the time, but I haven’t been able to see it.’ Dramaturgically, I take my hat off. That subtlety is that of great authors,” concludes García May.
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