En un lugar de la Mancha

The idea is a simple one: to bring theatre to the places it seldom reaches or, at worst, simply never reaches. The thought that this production may be many people’s first contact with theatre makes your hair stand on end — but you also think that audiences have changed a great deal in recent years, that their cultural habits bear no resemblance to those of the past, that news travels fast out here, that the train goes by at full speed and the roads carry us in no time at all to sprawling shopping centres, bargain-basement cinemas and virtual paradises that blind our senses and lull, when they do not offend, our drowsy intellect.

Villages are no longer what they were. The audience, like it or not, has changed. We have changed.

The result, in the spirit of Lorca and his La Barraca, travels to those places where the roads narrow and you have to pull onto the verge. A lorry works its way through the winding geography of Castilla-La Mancha and settles for a few hours in the square, on the threshing floors, or simply at the entrance to the village because it cannot get through between one street and the next. In twenty minutes a set of hydraulics raises the roof and the side panels, turning this lorry into a stage — a corral de comedias, to be precise — with everything needed to give a performance.

The article about the production, published in the journal ADE Teatro (no. 107, November-December 2005, dossier “El Quijote a escena”), can be read in full in the notebook.

Credits

Texts: Miguel de Cervantes. “La guarda cuidadosa”, “El viejo celoso” and “La cueva de Salamanca”

Performers: Carmen Arribas, Cristina Penco, Mª Ángeles González, Rosa María Herrera, Alfredo Martínez and Chete Guzmán

Music composition: Mariano Lozano

Mask design: Engracia Cruz

Set design: Ciro

Costume design: Liv Ortiz

Costume making: Mónica Ramos

Lighting design: Iñigo Benítez

Production: UTE Armar Teatro (Toledo) & Falsaria de Indias (Albacete), with Fundación IV Centenario

Dramaturgy and direction: Andrés Beladiez