Sara, a 35-year-old woman, enters the scene covered in blood, disheveled and with her dress torn. He enters the scene carrying the decapitated head of a man, and after lovingly kissing it like Salome with the Baptist, he puts it in the refrigerator. He then kneels before a crucifix. This is how ‘The Other Beast’ begins, a play based on the book of the same name by Ana Rujas, whose dramaturgy has been created by Pedro Ayose and José Martret, who also direct the show. The cast is headed by the author herself, who is accompanied on stage by Joan Solé and Teo Planell (who will alternate in her role with Itzan Escamilla). It premieres on Friday the 9th in Nave 10 of Matadero. Both the birth of the original book and the show were induced. That one by two editors, Cristina Lomba and Carlos Vergara, after watching ‘The ugliest woman in the world’, a play that Ana Rujas wrote and performed at the Teatro Pavón in Madrid a couple of seasons ago. The theatrical performance was an initiative of Luis Luque, director of Nave 10. «It was he who thought of Pedro Ayose and José Martret, and it seemed like a wonderful mix; Furthermore, both of them have known me for a long time. “That beast, says the actress, is something that we all have inside of us. «It has to do with logic and illogic, with reason; The piece is a fight between logic and wildness, between conventionality and the search for authenticity, to fill oneself with something. There is so much emptiness in it that things get into it that I don’t know… Or yes, what does it matter, life is about that, having a beast inside that you keep silent about or not, that you feed or not, for which you later regret and ask for forgiveness or not… About guilt… The work has everything. The beast is the darkness that for me is also part of the luminosity. Because from a fall the resurrection begins. It is not possible to resurrect if you do not fall first. When one truly falls, the path towards the spiritual or the elevated begins, at least that is what I believe. Sara, her character, has not fallen – “maybe she will at the end,” she reveals -, “and when you don’t fall you are looking for something to hold on to and how to survive. Sara does it, just like the rest of the characters.” Ana Rujas defines ‘The Other Beast’ as “an existentialist story, the story of the search of a person who is empty and wants to fill himself, find the essence and who he is, and It is a search for oneself. “The book – completes José Martret – are reflections, very poetic thoughts, with this very particular voice that Ana has, with passion, with heartbreak.” The work presents Sara, the protagonist, immersed in a life and relationship crisis, who She becomes the central vertex of a love triangle that involves her husband Marc (Joan Solé), a wealthy architect, and a young lover. The author and interpreter denies that she is Sara. «I made it clear from the beginning that I did not want to do a monologue or anything that had to do with me; I wanted to play a character, and Sara has nothing to do with me or my life. There are texts that are from ‘The Other Beast’, but I have also worked in the book, as I always do, from a place that is artistic. I didn’t want to make an autofiction with ‘The Other Beast’; It was not my intention nor has it ever interested me. With life you make art and that’s it, you put it at the service of something more artistic, and in any case it is poetic. But no, the play has nothing to do with my life. “Although I did not have the theatrical adaptation in mind when writing ‘The Other Beast’, the book, adds the actress, “is made to be said, I have always thought so. . I also write to say it, I would like to recite all the texts and also have others recite them. And he anticipates that the last part of the book is part of his new project, ‘El disenchantment’. «They are texts that have to do with this creative process. And I’m talking about Michi Panero, Leopoldo, the Panero family, and it has to do with the next project. The one who doesn’t want to talk anymore. «Now all my attention is on ‘The Other Beast’. I have given the keys to my house to these two people [por Pedro Ayose y José Martret] and to the Matadero.” José Martret intervenes to try to define ‘The Other Beast’: “The book is a book of reflections, of very poetic thoughts with this very particular voice of Ana, with that passion, with that heartbreak, with all that thought. The text – agrees with Pedro Ayose – is powerful and painful at the same time; a poetic text about the reflections of a contemporary woman who tries to survive her wound. It is an existential work in constant search for meaning. The adaptation, he acknowledges, has not been easy, “because it is not a novel with a beginning, a middle, an end…”. The dramaturgy has emerged from many meetings between the two directors and the author and from talking a lot between the three. «Ana has been the axis of everything; “We wanted something that Ana wanted to do, something that she liked.” «It’s exciting – Ana Rujas intervenes –; It was very complicated to make this adaptation, honestly, and I am very happy with what we have achieved. They have known how to adapt a book that I didn’t know very well how to do… When you have been with a material for so long, the moment comes when another person comes in and provides a vision from the outside. Nothing conventional. “It is not a conventional work,” warns José Martret, who describes it as an “existentialist thriller.” «The spectators find themselves with a mystery that they have to reveal as the performance develops. It is difficult to explain what the work is about, but it is difficult to explain what Ana’s book is about. It deals with so many things… The first thing Pedro and I did was dissect the work and write down all the topics that were discussed there. A notebook wasn’t enough for us! There is the search for oneself that Ana has referred to, the betrayal of oneself, the emptiness that human beings can feel in the face of existence, the seduction that exists due to the intellectual, the seduction that exists due to the intellectual… » «…belonging – the author herself helps you with the list:, love, desire, the search for beauty, for the superficial, for the non-superficial… Also for the darkness that we, the human beings, and how to deal with it and take charge of your darkness or what is not beauty of each person and put it at the service of doing something artistic… There is also something of the search for faith, for spirituality.” Related News standard No Beautiful and devastating Julio BravoThe staging combines – just as Martret did in ‘Infamy’ – the stage and the audiovisual. There is a camera operator who follows the characters and projects their images live, with “a different, poetic language.” The reason for this formula is to show the foreground. The work is set, says Pedro Ayose, “in a house that represents a kind of cage where the characters are locked up but from which they enter and leave, always in search of what they need.” Set in the eighties – the directors were looking for a domestic environment but did not want current references such as cell phones or computers -, it has references to filmmakers such as John Cassavetes, Andrzej Zulawski or Ingmar Bergman.
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