The Threepenny Opera is a work by the playwright Bertolt Brecht. Anyone who goes to the TNT international theater research center in Seville, national award for the discipline in 2008comes across the central question of the work: “What is more dangerous: the robbery of a bank or the founding of a bank?” The text is written on a canvas on the facade of the theater.
It is there, in that search, in the attempt to answer the questions that theater raises, where there is always a path, a path along which to travel and perhaps a “floating island” with a “k-ecosystem” own. This is what the playwright Ricardo Iniesta has achieved in the 30 years of the center’s existence: this Sunday TNT dresses up and celebrates its anniversary.
The trip began first, not in the place where it is located today, very close to Vacie, one of the oldest shanty towns in the country, but in a small enclave, in Curtidurías street, in the center of Seville. “In ’94, what we did was plant a seed, develop the group, have an environment,” says Iniesta.
A decade later, the former Culture delegate in Seville, Juan Carlos Marset“posed the crazy idea of creating spaces in the city’s districts,” recalls Iniesta in conversation with Public. “They gave us to choose a space, in Los Remedios [zona pudiente de la ciudad]but we said not there, and they proposed another one. You’re not going to like it, it’s close to the Vaciethey told me. That one, that’s the one we’re interested in.we said. We receive the space, we ask for credits, we get help from the administrations. And the TNT was built,” summarizes Iniesta.
social heartbeat
What exists today is part of the answer to a question, that of what to do with Atalaya, the company founded by Iniesta 40 years ago, ten years before TNT. The original idea was to “create a place”, a workspace for Atalaya, a “floating island”. Iniesta says: “People like Eugenio Barba have made this possible. Eugenio Barba He is my teacher. This week he turned 88 years old. Eugene says that theater is people. A floating island to live on. As long as you don’t have a floating island… Throughout these 30 years there have been many fashions, trends and we have continued.”
From there, once the wings took root, the empty space was filled: training, hosting great international masters, research, creation and a fundamental leg of what TNT is and has been, the “social heartbeat”: community theater. Bernarda Alba’s housethe work of Federido García Lorca, who was performed by the women of Vaciewas a turning point.
“It changed their lives and the Vacie. It has changed TNT. In Europe they were interested [incluso]. They saw the miserable conditions and said to themselves: This has to be changed“Today the Vacie is still standing, but it is true that the eradication of slums, which has been, even without success, on the agenda of all the mayors of Seville, both from the PSOE and the PP.”Social theater gives meaning to our work“, summarizes Iniesta.
“We walk on two wings at TNT” explains Iniesta. On the one hand, “research with the great masters. 143 teachers from 36 different countries have come, 88 of them from outside Spain and all theatrical traditions. This is the research wing.” And, on the other hand: “Social and community theater is the foundation.”
TNT never stops. It is a place that is alive. The programming is constant, plays, competitions, festivals… It is a focus of culture in Seville. And it is in the periphery, which also has its value. In these 30 years this ecosystem has been created step by step, with kwhich Iniesta talks about. “Right now, we have almost 100 people in the ecosystem,” says the playwright. There are ten resident companies.
“It has been a very intense 30 years,” he says. Iniesta. Where is the essence of the journey: in curiosity? It is an idea “very fashionable now with the mindfulness“Iniesta jokes.”It’s that idea of the here and nowto be in the here and now of research, to be present and to change everything around you,” he responds.
Money and future
Economically, the trip has been “an odyssey.” The floating island, which has plans to expand – “they have given us 8,000 more square meters and the idea is to create spaces for community theater and schools” – could, however, sink, depending on sea conditions. As nothing guaranteed its survival in the past, neither does it now. In recent times, there has been a 40% cut in the public aid that TNT receives.
Iniesta trusts that the change made by the president of the Board, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla (PP), in response to complaints from the sector, at the head of the Ministry of Culture, now in the hands again of Patricia del Pozo (PP), serve to clear the dark clouds. “I requested a meeting and I am convinced that Patricia has a different disposition.”
“A place like this, with all the social and artistic results it offers, receives less aid, for example, than two music venues in the city, which also have their own drinks business. In Catalonia they wouldn’t do it,” reflects Iniesta.
On the horizon, in addition to expansion plans, there are European projects. “We are with the seventh EU project, the trees [árboles]”says Iniesta. It has just started on TNT and seeks to promote environmental awareness through the performing arts. “They come from six countries—Greece, Ireland, Germany, Serbia, Norway and Holland—to present their shows with the common denominator of trees. The problem in Ireland is not the same as it is here,” explains the playwright.
Iniesta also looks to the future from another perspective. The playwright exposes the idea of creating a quarry. “Like Barcelona’s Masía”he jokes. At Atalaya, Iniesta’s company, “some young people are entering”: “We are passing on that legacy.”
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