Two keys had a key role in the beginnings of Chevere, the historic Galician company that won the National Theater Award in 2014. The first, a “clandestine” that passed from hand to hand among the restless young people of the Santiago of the 80s: it was that of the Simeon house, some old warehouses abandoned in the historic center of the city and in which the same thing rehearsed a group of music that a group of music. There, Chevere set up their first show, Discretionary servicea set of Sketches with a common denominator: the journey of the capital of Galicia to the beach of Baroña (Porto do Son).
The other key did not appear. It was that of the old merchant, today Granell Foundation, in the Praza do Toural. The company was about to represent O Bad non overviewa crazy street parody over the world of superheroes, which had as stages the balconies of the building. As it was Sunday, there was no one who could open. It did not matter: they climbed the balconies with a ladder and set a plank between them so that the actors could pass from one to another. At the end, The Argentine Martín Adjéniam “Federico Luppi and professor of that incipient generation,” you are approaching terrified: “You are crazy, you have to do very daring theater but you don’t have to put life at risk!” The first part of the phrase took it to the letter.
Those are only two of the huge mural scenes that covers one of the walls of the Chévere offices in the Mallou neighborhood, north of Compostela, and that on an urban geography “free” shows the relationship between the company and the city since 1987. On this World Theater Day, Chévere decided to open the doors of what is his house for almost a five years to show the machine room NASA, the scenic space they left in 2011 in full confrontation with Mayor Gerardo Conde Roa, shortly before he had to resign, charged with fiscal fraud.
“We are garage garage,” summarizes Xesús Ron, one of the founders of Chévere and today part of his hard core with the actors Patricia de Lorenzo and Miguel de Lira. The two, by the way, have just shared filming in the last season of Rapathe series of the Coira brothers, in which another of the company’s founders, Vicente Mohedano, also acted. Before NASA, its first home was a “fantastic” ship in the Meixonfrío neighborhood – even more north -, which considers that they close a circle and have their own home again.
The ‘black box’ that could not be
The current space is still a consolation prize before the dream project, an “ambition”, born just before the pandemic, for which they saved and searched both ships built and soil where to lift them. “We even proposed a mixed formula to the City Council to set up a kind of Black box “. They proposed to contribute their own teams and part of the investment, “but with a vocation that it could be municipal after a certain time” and allowed “the great lack of theater in Galicia and Santiago: that we have no work spaces so that the productions are better.”
Before, their war with Count Roa had taken them from Santiago to the neighboring town of Teo, where they became a resident company. He ruled Martiño Noriega, who would later be mayor of Santiago after a popular legislature in which the command cane changed three times hands. With him, they would return through the big door: first in the Grande Sala of the Auditorium of Galicia and then in a praza of A Quintana crowded during the Festas do Apostolo. That scene is also in the mural, drawn like a kind of Where is Wally? For Ron’s son, Tristan.
But there are much more on that wall: the viewer can discover the mechanical stairs of EUROZONE “I am like.” Reservoir dogs meets the troika– Integrated in those of the Praza de Platerías; to the villains of Rio Bravothe evil Flanagan, terrorizing the pedestrians; The protagonists of Eroski Paraíso devouring a snack before the emblematic friz of the toural or fragasaurius – a kind of Godzilla inspired by the then president of the Xunta – of Radio Universo“A radiovela that we wanted to turn into a show, but that was our greatest failure: we premiered and canceled because it was so unpresentable that it gave us vergúenza.”
That mural, which focuses Ron’s guided tour, represents “the ties” between the company and a city that not only saw them born, growing and returning, but attended as a privileged spectator to the “theatrical intervention” in many of its spaces. As ACIBECHEthe alleged filming of a soap opera, in full fury of the soap operas, which began “early with very little public” and ended up “crowded” in its last scene. Or the projects in the neighborhood of Vite, focus of drugs and marginality in the 80 Dramaowalkera sound walk collecting stories from neighbors. Or the First International Congress of Monstersin which Franco’s mummy inaugurated a swamp that, in reality, would be the auditorium lake. And thus, almost to infinity …
The importance of legacy
Ron sees that chaotic map as a “small solution” to memory loss. “Our past began to weigh us” and the concern for its legacy, because “the theater is very ephemeral and this will not be left.” That’s why, Legacyit is what is the name of the collection of books that co -edit with the Kalandraka publishing house and in which they are already saved, black on white, texts such as Rio Bravo, Annus Horribilis either So brave fillas.
Just in front of the mural, is the office space. A large table with computers in front of a large library where the company’s archive is saved … and its awards. The journalist seeks, of course, the National Prize. “If you see a Spanish flag, that is.” There is, a reddish bond that closes a kind of folder, supported by one of the many heads of María Casares – the Galician Theater Awards – which stand out among the trophies.
“All theater awards are porcelain or wooden pieces, because they are normally honorable. Interestingly, the only one that is not accompanied by that is the national. It is an envelope with a kind of diploma because it is the only one that has an economic endowment … they do not need to give you a figurine so you can remember and have love,” Ron ironizes. Inside the envelope follows the diploma, but the check spent it, and not on them. They created Berberecheira, a factoring to “sow” projects from which three autobiographical works of people close to Chevere were born but that were not part of the company: Free Goldithe experience of César Goldi as an insumiso imprisoned in the prisons of Felipe González; Savior (2017), a story by Borja Fernández about the recovery of his grandfather emigrated in Brazil and the impact of absences and Dunha Serea Anatomy (2018), a piece in which Iria Pinheiro treated her experience in childbirth and obstetric violence
After the office, we found the warehouse, where the pallets that served as a tier in NASA live a new life holding memories such as the iconic barrel of Rio Bravothat keep by sentimentality or the huge box in which the Total machine that the painter Lucense Quique Bordel designed them for the show of the same name. “We were sorry to get rid of her because it is a unique piece.” Of course, he admits that he does not know how it will be because years ago they do not open a boxed box almost inaccessible. “Most of the scenographies have to destroy them, because they can’t fit.” The one that is normally there is that of the last show, Helen Keller, Muller Marabilla? It didn’t happen like this this Thursday. First thing in the morning, part of the company had taken it with it to Seville, where two functions await them this weekend.
Before accessing the trial room, it is going through the closet. “We dare not call him differently.” Anyone would say that locker room either dressing room It is great as a definition of all the garments that are stored there “and that will be perfectly identifiable for any faithful spectator of the Ultranoites”, The political cabarets with whom Chevere reappears a couple of times per year. In which he took them to the Quintana, the Ultranoite No Country Two AnanosThey used all that costume as a backdrop. Today, for a simple issue of space, they do not even keep half.
Franco’s justice, a theater
The rehearsal room is a space of eight meters per eight in which Chevere’s works can take their first steps. On the black canvas, in the background, there is the “trigger” of his next assembly: Castelao’s painting A Derradeira leition do mestre – also a provisional completion of the work – showing the murder of the Galeguista Alexandre vault in the first weeks of the civil war. It is popularly known as “the Gernika Gallego.” He was painted in Argentina by an almost blind castelao and his fleeting passage through Galicia – nucleged an exhibition organized by the Xunta de Feijóo in the Cidade da Cultura – took a form of “exhumation”, an “attempt to recontextualization”, which serves Chevere as a starting point to face memory, the traumas – individual and collective – and the pacts of silence.
“To vault – a myth of Galeguismo and for whose death the day is commemorated, it gave a martyr – they made one of the first summary judgments. In August, fifteen days after the coup, the judicial framework was already mounted, which was a theatricalization of justice, a script with principle, development and final.” For Ron, “those who participated already knew how they were going to end.” “Everyone was acting, even vault!
That “theatricalization of justice” happened first in Galicia, where the victory of the rebels was rapid and overwhelming, and from there “it extended to the rest of Spain.” “They say that the theater is not worth anything but, for years, the military military used it to legitimize violence.” Therefore, that judgment will allow them to explain things that were not only at that time. “The prosecutor, for example, ended up being awarded with a position in the Supreme Court and from there there are threads that lead us to the present and how the Spanish justice works, where it comes from.” Another very different theatrical legacy and, by the way, nothing ephemeral.
A Derradeira leition do mestre “If it ends up this way,” it will be released on February 20, only three days before the anniversary of another coup d’etat that had a very different end, but of which it is still unknown how much it could have of theater.
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