THEATRE AND THE PAST

As part of the programme at La Salita, playwright Juan Mayorga is giving a masterclass entitled El teatro frente al pasado (‘Theatre and the Past’). This event with the actor and director is expected to last about 2 hours and will include a Q&A session with the audience. This lecture and talk will explore several strands of the ‘theatre of memory’ by an author who has reflected on 15^th century Spain through ‘La lengua en pedazos’ and the Spanish Civil War through ‘Siete hombres buenos’, ‘El jardín quemado’, ‘El hombre de oro’ and other topics like Stalinism —’Cartas de amor a Stalin’—, Nazism —’El traductor de Blumberg, Himmelweg, and El cartógrafo’— and the Cold War —‘Reikiavik’—. In ‘La gran cacería’ the playwright offers a reflection on European colonialism and on the Mediterranean as a space—both past and present—of culture and violence.

The play La gran cacería (The Great Hunt) explores one of the recurring themes in Juan Mayorga’s theatre: memory as a central pillar. For this playwright, director, academic, philosopher and mathematician, his work is, to a large extent, a theatre of memory: Many of his works, though rooted in the present day, prompt us to question our collective memory. Mayorga argues that “by opening up the stage to one past rather than another, by viewing it from one perspective rather than another, theatre plays a role in the present”, because it helps to shape the self-understanding of its era and, therefore, “pushes the future of its era in a particular direction”. In this way, Mayorga blends historical theatre with political theatre.

This lecture will be held in Spanish.