Walking through Tabasco street in the Roma Norte neighborhood, or taking a few minutes to sit on the bench in front of the Teatrería between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on weekends, you may be surprised by some of the works by the sideboard theatera project that José Manuel López Velarde devised since he decided to install the forum in this old instrument factory to look for treasures.
“It’s a sideboard that faces the street like in stores, but in La Teatrería it offers a theater program that takes place inside that sideboard, for all the people who pass by, it’s a free show,” says the author of works likeIf they let us!, The last theater in the world and Lies.
“Before being La Teatrería, this was a building where they manufactured and rented devices to search for treasures, they had just a sideboard with chests and those devices, and I thought it would be cool to make a sideboard theater, redoing the one that already existed. It is this space that presents short works, everyone can see it for free, because we have support (from the Support System for Creation and Cultural Projects in the Project Promotion and Co-investment program for Independent Spaces) that allows us to relaunch the project. The theater was closed and we began with a program that we were able to put together for a full year of these showcase theater pieces.”
During March there will be Sometime in Sevillea montage inspired by the context of the Spanish Golden Age; Rawin which a troubled couple works as a metaphor to reveal the cruel reality of animals before reaching a plate; Palimpsest short works for the heart, about grief from different perspectives, ages and settings; and communist zombiesin which a group of academics who decided to become zombies to generate an apocalypse that would end the capitalist production system, offer a virtual interview after ten years of house arrest.
This project also seeks to generate social meaning in the Roma neighborhood, where the playwright has lived for more than 20 years and, although it is the first time that it has a continuous program, in reality it is not something unknown to the residents. “There have been performances since 2016 as we have been able, but this time we already have the program, La Teatrería is producing, it has a resource for those works with different groups, with different characteristics, which will give more than 200 performances this year”, López details. Velarde.
For the playwright, almost any form of theater diffusion is valid. “On The last theater in the world one of the lyrics of the songs says that furniture, boards or walls are not needed for the theater to exist and I think so, in reality what is needed is that there is a person, or a group of people who want to tell something and are in front of another group of people who want to listen to them; then that magic arises, which is the theater”.
And the fact is that the stage has been his primary form of expression since he was a child, when he did pastorales with his cousins, “and of course I also have a commitment to theater, because to the extent that it is promoted and diversified, that it is accessible, we can continue doing it”, says the person who directed his first play in high school, with friends with whom he has collaborated professionally, such as the actress Paola Gómez, or Jorge Ramos, “who is now staging the voices of joseph the dreamer and the new LiesIrene Azuela, went to the same school as me and we did a music project there.”
resumption Lies
The new season of Lies and the concerts at the Total Play Forum will be announced this Monday, so he does not advance details in this regard, although he does tell part of the experience prior to this start, from the hand of producer Alejandro Gou.
“Just before the pandemic was the legal battle for Lies”, which allowed him to keep the rights to his work. “They managed to perform some functions of Lies in streaming with which I did not agree very much, I agreed as a matter of solidarity with the company that had the rights (Best Theater) and with the actors, but I did not participate very closely in that, nor in any theatrical event, beyond imagine things. I did not write anything, I imagined projects, I made notes and others, I was tired, the last projects I did were very difficult”.
In the months of an obligatory break, but also necessary for him, he managed “to define many conditions on which I want to work, of times, of budgets, of people with whom it is worth doing it, I have never done anything that I did not want to do I have raised practically all the projects and I intend to keep it that way”.
–
