Emma Suárez: “Sharing silence and listening to the viewer has some ritual”

‘The back fourth’ has been adapted by María Folguera; The function directs it Rakel Camacho; Alberto Iglesias and Nora Hernández They are the cast partners of Emma Suárez.

His first work was precisely ‘Memories of Leticia Valle’, cinematographic adaptation of a novel by another of the great Spanish authors of the twentieth century, Rosa Chacel. Is there any connection between both works?

Of course they connect to me. There are other works that have also done so, such as ‘Interior Fragments’, ‘The city of prodigies’, ‘The dog of the gardener’, ‘Lady of Porto Pim’ … in all of them the literature is present. I was fortunate to meet Rosa Chacel during the filming of ‘Memories of Leticia Valle’. I remember it perfectly. She was very young but I confess that I feel her now present at the moment.

Rakel Camacho says that the public must be carried away by the function, that he does not try to understand everything. It would be said that the work is a nebula …

Nebulosa is a good word to define it, because it presents a writer, C, on an insomnia night while trying to write, and they come to your memory of the past, childhood, their friends; of fear of disorder, vertigo, confusion. There is a lot of need to speak, to count, to share, to dialogue. That is also one of the keys to this function: the search for the interlocutor, the need to talk and share. She was a great conversation.

And how is the work addressed, is it more difficult to reach the character?

Right now I am already so involved, so involved in C., that the only thing I can tell you is that it is being a fantastic process and that, literally making ‘the back fourth’ has become a refuge for me. I am impregnated with the poetics of the text, of its atmosphere.

And what does the theater suppose for you? Ten years ago he does not take the stage …

A ritual. Sharing silence and listening to the viewer in a space has some ritual, something very special; It is ephemeral, it happens every afternoon and every afternoon it is different. It is also the need to continue working on the text. The function ends but the next day you have the opportunity to do another again and return to work again. One of the things that cost me the most when I started to do theater was to go on stage after a year doing a function and feel that it was the first time. In fact, I went to an interpretation school and asked the teacher how it was possible to maintain the freshness of the first day. Right now I answer it every day, doing the function. And every day is different.

All characters end in one way or another soaking the actors. How are this influencing you? Is it aware?

I am aware that I am enjoying a lot and I am very grateful. I am absolutely convinced that what we are doing is different, it is original and is fine. I really like it, and that’s why it’s worth doing. But beyond all that, the fact of investigating, to read Carmen Martín Gaite, is enriching me a lot. There is a lot of depth in his literature. I am facing a brilliant woman, before a great thinker, before a woman who broke many schemes in her time, spoke of her time with intelligence and lucidity; With his personality he broke all patriarchal education and did it in a brave and admirable way. He did not have an easy life, he lived painful moments and, despite that, he always remained in the light; She was a cheerful, communicator woman, who was always surrounded by young people, a very vitalist woman.

You met Carmen Martín Gaite, what do you remember about her?

I met her on a shooting day of ‘Interior Fragments’ in El Boalo; His father’s office became a decoration of the series. One day he came to greet us to shoot. It was peculiar, with a lot of personality, a very intelligent look and some mischief in the smile.

Rakel Camacho has also said that there came a time when he told them not to read Martín Gaite anymore …

It is that in the essay process we lent ourselves books, we recommended others. We were eager to read this woman, to meet her more. And Rakel told us that we would not read anymore and focus on ‘The Fourth Back’

When such a project is prepared, is it inevitable to go beyond the text itself?

Of course, but, for example, in ‘Notebooks of everything’ or in ‘Notebooks of Never Finish’, other works of his, there are references to ‘The rear room’, there are chapters dedicated to the moment she is trying to conceive this book, which she wants to shape. There is a key book as a starting point for ‘The Fourth Back’, which is ‘Introduction to Fantastic Literature’, by Todorov. Carmen Martín Gaite read that book and also serves as inspiration to talk about childhood, about war and postwar period, about that moment when time unlocks as if playing English hide and hiding place; But he wants to rescue that memory in a poetic way. He wants to rescue the poetics of those moments, that shelter; There was bombing outside, in the square, but she was in the back room cutting cards.