La cantante calva

The twenty-first century dawns: the age of communications, of information superhighways, of teleworking, teleshopping, trash TV, millionaire game shows and zapping. Society, little by little, is coming of age.

Confusion takes hold of each of us. So does fear. Fear of failure, of helplessness, of loneliness, of unemployment…

Advertising waits just around the corner, stalks its prey and pounces at the precise moment, striking it down. Newspapers seduce thousands of people the world over. Radio and television stations fight tooth and nail for the biggest audience. The Internet struts before our astonished gaze. Virtual reality promises us earthly paradises…

We inhabit a world of fake smiles, of anonymous friendships, of forgotten dreams. Feeling is pushed aside, banished from a society that has no room for it, and cynicism slips in furtively, quietly, transforming us without our noticing. We no longer know how to be happy. Now we perform happiness. And everything is fine, or everything is wrong… after all, what does it matter? But children no longer play in the street, the volume in the fashionable bars keeps rising, lovers’ caresses flee in terror from the frantic pace of contemporary life, and feeling is muffled in perfumed cotton wool.

I believe that now, more than ever, Eugène Ionesco’s “La cantante calva” lays claim to a place that is its own, that belongs to it by direct allusion. The present.

“La cantante calva” is a place for reflection, a proposal that weaves together, on different planes, dance, contemporary music and dramatic play. To say more about the production would be to betray it. A show explains itself where it is born and dies: the stage.

— Andrés Beladiez

Credits

Author: Eugène Ionesco

Company: Vértigo Teatro

Performers: Javier Mejía (Mr Smith), Aránzazu Orellana (Mrs Smith), Alfredo Sanzol (Mr Martin), Natalia Álvarez (Mrs Martin), Marta Marco (Mary) and Alejandro Hernández (Fireman)

Music composition: Francisco de Borja Ramos

Choreography: Esther Acevedo

Set design: Covadonga Mejía

Lighting design: Andrés Beladiez

Production: Mara Blanco

Distribution and management: Aránzazu Orellana

Direction: Andrés Beladiez