Pablo Rosal, a few months ago, came to the conclusion that theater and politics were the same. They were, in the past, because according to the playwright, excessive egos, personal ambitions and vested interests corrupted the second part of the binomial. In its origins, back in the mid-20th century and at the hands of Bertolt Brecht (who said that “everyone calls the river that overflows its banks violent but not the bed that oppresses it”), the community essence prevailed in every performance, in every play. “Both theater and politics are reflections on the community, and they arrive at them through the same procedure. Actors who represent things gather, with their tensions, conflicts, doubts and transformations”, the artist begins to explain.
He is the author of “Castroponce, 2015”, a performance that can be seen at Madrid’s Teatro del Barrio on June 12 and 26. In it, Rosal represents a symposium in the Valladolid region; all a fiction that solidifies according to the passage of the characters, all of them represented by the author of the work. The meeting is precisely about the political theater. Therefore, this luck of political metadramaturgy Aware of its magnitude and importance, it becomes a small window, which opens little by little, to let in a renewed, fresh, scandalous air.
“Theatre and politics are different forums to try to reach the same conclusion: how do we live well in community”, he says. Concepts that originally linked each other like pieces filed to the millimeter, are now dismembered: “The problem is when politics ceases to be community and becomes a personal interesta question of sides where others are despised, and is personalized in any individual capricious, ridiculous, clinging to his delusions personal, as you politicians demonstrate every day”, says Rosal.
The roots of the origin
The best way to find answers from this former high school teacher who recently settled in the capital looking for luck has been to go back to the roots. In short: who we are and where we come from in order to discern where we want to go. “My work is political theater because I reflect on the origin of the communitybecause it is a space for reflection and thesis, not drama or confrontation”, simplifies the playwright.
Its integrating game intrudes the spectator and spectator in the plot. Through theatrical tools and humor, Rosal recreates a staggered argument between each of the five characters who take the floor in the fictitious symposium. Complementary and versatile, they constitute a corollary that defines the author: the form, as well as the content of his expressions, constitute what he means the political theater of the 21st century. He thus completes it: “And most importantly, it is done by a single actor. There I speak of the power of theater, the suggestion and allusionthe ability to suggest many things just with words and gestures”.
Untying the politics of individuality is the challenge that the author confers on himself in the work. The text leaves no room for doubt. Although the paper bears everything, always, the stage also does it in this case. “We have to go back to the origin of politics, it must be a meeting to think, dream a beautiful community, and not the particular thought of someone about that community”, he says. Therefore, the depersonalization that author and actor suffer here slides towards a critique that looks suspiciously at the institutional, a tangible critique that can be seen and cut.
The possibility of the political
“If we continue to believe in the personalist politics we will start wars for the wounded pride of a single person”, he manages to comment on Rosal himself. You know well that buying in a neighborhood store rather than in a large platform is also political, just like stopping an eviction or joining the ranks of a class union. “Politics is everything, you just have to know how to see it, because it does respond to each of our movements. Then, Is all theater political? The answer falls like a lunge: “What any artistic expression always does to start and be able to express itself is clean everything, clear the ground. Art does not start affirming, it is built”.
Therefore, a certain amalgamation of factors is necessary for it to have the desired effect. “I have considered, after thinking it over, that not all theater is politicsbut if the theatrical expression is good and sensible and ethical and well done, at the end of the play a political place is built”, reflects this playwright. However, politics and his reflection should flood the daily life of the citizenry, but above all that anyone should have access to that political space that is created after the theatrical performance under equal conditions. Castroponce is a region within the so-called emptied Spain. Will Castroponce see the play? “That’s the big question. I hope so, because also as part of my personal politics and vindication, I build my texts with very austere decorations, so that it is not difficult to move it from one place to another”, answers Rosal.
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