She was the first woman to win the National Dramatic Literature Award, and she did so in 2010 with That infinite air, a work starring a contemporary Ulysses turned into a foreigner, one more emigrant whose particular odyssey was to survive in a world in rapid transformation and that leaves the individual defenseless.
And that poetry and that ethic continue to characterize the theater of Lluïsa Cunillé (Badalona, 1961), whose works have starred in the last decades of Catalan theater –After me, the flood, Barcelona, map of names, Iceland– and they continue to do so: on the one hand, the great closing of Xavier Albertí’s eight years at the head of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya will be his work in May The Empress of the Parallel; and on the other, from today until February 14, the Sala Beckett, in which the author trained in the early nineties with José Sanchis Sinisterra, dedicates a great cycle in which three of his works can be seen as well as dramatized readings, round tables and lectures on his characters and their international reception.
“Cunillé’s theater addresses the difficulty of maintaining an ethical position in an increasingly incomprehensible world”, says Casares
For the director of the Beckett, Toni Casares, Cunillé is the most important playwright on the current Catalan scene, and her works “should help us at this moment to have a more poetic view of the world”. Casares recalled that after the Beckett the company Hongaresa de Teatre together with Paco Zarzoso and his collaborations with Xavier Albertí were key for the author. His works will be seen at the Beckett in the coming weeks The bribes, in which Lurdes Barba directs the actors of the company La Ruta 40, The garden, directed by Albert Arribas, and Stone and crossroads, with Paco Zarzoso.
Sergi Torrecilla in a scene from ‘Els subornats’, by Lluïsa Cunillé
Casares stresses that programming them is important because “Cunillé’s gaze on the world is especially necessary now, a gaze decontaminated with stereotypes, clichés and common places, a brave gaze that speaks about the difficulty of maintaining an ethical position in an increasingly world incomprehensible”. “This poetic and personal look is an invitation to stop for a moment and reflect on our role, our degree of responsibility towards the world and the ways we live it.”
Màrcia Cisteró and Antònia Jaume in a scene from ‘El jardí’, by Lluïsa Cunillé
In that sense, Barba explains that The bribes “He talks about politics, corruption and worlds that are dying at this hectic moment because they have no place, they are made to measure for man and we have surpassed it.” “And at the same time there is the question of responsibility, of making a decision even though you know it will leave you in the lurch. That individual responsibility makes your world tremble, but it also creates an earthquake around us in a universe in which it seems that there are excuses for everything ”, he concludes
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