Pedro Casablanc stars The play “Don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán” premieres this Thursday in Ourense. And show based on Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s portrait of the Galician author. It is through the words of the first that the work flows, highlighting the life, work and soul of the second. Although on stage it is Casablanc, through a monologuewho personifies words.
What does it mean to you to perform this work in Ourense?
My connection with Valle-Inclán began when I practically started doing theatre. I think the first play I saw was “Luces de Bohemia” when I was 17 or 18. And from then on I have been very connected to the figure of Don Ramón, although I am not Galician at all, and Galicia too, which I like a lot. Curiously, one of my pending subjects is to go to Valle-Inclán’s grave, but I have never been there. And I have done “Retablo de la avaricia, la lujuria y la muerte”, “Tirano a banderas”, “Comedias bárbaras”, and I have even directed a short film based on a work by Valle, which is “Sacrilegio”, one of the short works that make up the retablo.
Have you encountered any challenges with the character while developing this work?
Yes, of course. Firstly, because it is a monologue in which I play Gómez de la Serna, who is also a character that I greatly admire, both him and his literature. Secondly, because I would say that this is a musical show, because I am accompanied by Mario Molina, the pianist, throughout the performance. The challenge of adapting the text to music with a narrated word, which I had never done in theatre, is very satisfying. I think that if I had not been an actor I would have liked to have been a singer, I like it a lot.
What audience has this work managed to attract?
This work has no kind of adaptation, it is the language of Gómez de la Serna, just as he wrote this text in the 40s, and with that baroque language. I think that the public receives it very gratefully and likes it a lot, because we live in an era in which oral communication is in crisis, we hardly speak.
What is it like to work with this baroque language at an interpretive level?
This is not a typical theatre performance, it is not a monologue where I am recounting personal experiences, it is a recreation of a beautiful literary language that is no longer used. It is about giving it value and paying homage to that type of literature and that type of language. So, the work has been to make it my own, to explain it and to embody it in my person so that it comes out naturally. I think that is what is most attractive, that this difficult, beautiful and at the same time language comes out naturally and that it seems that this man always speaks naturally like this. Gómez de la Serna really expressed himself like this and Valle-Inclán’s way of speaking also appears when he comes on stage.
