Bazaar E-Book

David Planell

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In an attempt to be famous for a day, Hassan, the owner of a bric-a-brac shop, enlists his neighbour Anton to help make a video for a You've Been Framed-style TV programme. In the process, poisoned undercurrents of racism rise to the surface. Bazaar by young Spanish dramatist David Planell was premiered in this English translation by John Clifford at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1997.

Leseprobe

David Planell

BAZAAR

NICK HERN BOOKSLondonwww.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Foreword

by Elyse Dodgson

Introduction

by Mary Peate

Acknowledgements

Original Production

Characters

Bazaar

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Foreword

The Royal Court Theatre has been involved in an exchange with new writers in Spain over the last six years. In 1993, Andalusian playwright Antonio Onetti took part in the Royal Court International Summer School, our annual residency for emerging playwrights and directors from all parts of the world. He worked on the translation of his new play with directors Roxana Silbert and Mary Peate. In 1995 David Planell and Antonio Álamo joined this new wave of young Spanish playwrights. As Álamo said at the time, ‘The word is becoming respectable again.’

In March 1996, the Spanish newspaper El País published a leading article about the new playwrights proclaiming a new found energy and enthusiasm among young theatre writers. The British Council then funded a research trip for the Royal Court to explore a creative exchange between playwrights in Spain and Britain. Playwrights, directors and artistic directors in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville convinced us we were at the beginning of an important and innovative dialogue about new writing for the theatre.

We returned with over a hundred plays from Spain and formed a reading committee at the Royal Court. We then selected six plays for a week of rehearsed readings of new plays from Spain and commissioned translations of the plays into English from Spanish and Catalan. The plays in this volume were chosen for the ‘Voices from Spain’ week of rehearsed readings at the Royal Court in April 1997. We were looking for new plays from Spain which were original, contemporary, challenging and diverse. Each writer travelled to London for the rehearsal of their play. The translator attended rehearsals with the playwright to work with actors and the director on the first reading of their play in another language.

This project was jointly funded by the European Commission Kaleidoscope Programme and the British Council. The British Council also enabled playwrights and directors from Spain to travel to London for the reading week. The enthusiasm and commitment of all the Spanish practitioners involved made it possible for the reciprocal exchange of British writers in December 1997. Nueva Dramaturgia Britànica was produced at the Sala Beckett in Barcelona, at the Cuarta Pared in Madrid and at the Centro Andaluz de Teatro in Seville with plays by nine Royal Court playwrights translated into Spanish and Catalan:

* Sarah Kane

Reventado (Blasted)

* Phyllis Nagy

Desaparecida (Disappeared)

* Rebecca Prichard

Essex Girls

* David Greig

Europa (Europe)

* Jim Cartwright

Yo Lamí el Desodorante de una Furcia

(I Licked a Slag’s Deodorant)

* Meredith Oakes

Fe (Faith)

* Stephen Jeffreys

El Llibertí (The Libertine)

* Kevin Elyot

Aquella Noche con Luis

(My Night with Reg)

* Jez Butterworth

Mojo

All the writers were invited to Spain to attend the rehearsed readings of their play in either Spanish (Castilian) or Catalan.

The Royal Court Theatre has been the home of new theatre writing in Britain since the English Stage Company under George Devine took up residence there in 1956. The Royal Court’s impressive international repertoire included new plays by writers such as Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Max Frisch, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Miller and Wole Soyinka. Since 1993 the Royal Court has placed a renewed emphasis on the development of new international work and partnerships now exist between innovative theatre writers and practitioners in many different parts of the world. Spain is the most comprehensive programme because it embraces both senior writers emerging through exchange and the development of young playwrights. Enthusiasm from our Spanish partners has allowed many ideas to flourish.

Onetti, Álamo and Planell showed there is energy among new writers in Spain. We are delighted that since they first attended the Royal Court International Residency, other playwrights and directors have taken part: Chiqui Carabante, Beth Escudé i Gallès, Borja Ortiz de Gondra, Mercè Sarrias, Juan Mayorga, José Ortuño, Andrés Lima and Carlota Subirós Bosch.

This initiative has also inspired a new generation of Spanish translators of new British plays. Playwright Antonio Onetti translated Meredith Oakes’ Faith, Antonio Álamo translated Sarah Kane’s Blasted, David Planell translated Rebecca Prichard’s Essex Girls and Borja Ortiz de Gondra translated Phyllis Nagy’s Disappeared.

I am thrilled at how much has been achieved since the project began. The Royal Court produced the English premiere of David Planell’s Bazaar in the Theatre Upstairs in November 1997. In Spain, Phyllis Nagy’s Disappeared opened at Cuarta Pared in Madrid in April 1998 and My Night with Reg opened in Valencia in November 1998. The Royal Court and the British Council are planning a future programme in Spain of some of the Royal Court plays in Spanish and Catalan and the next `New Voices from Spain’ is scheduled for 2000 in London.

In autumn 1998, playwright Sarah Kane, director Mary Peate and I had the opportunity to work with some of the most promising new playwrights in Spain, finalists in the recently created Miguel Romero Esteo Prize for young Andalusian playwrights. The young writers were particularly inspired by working with Sarah Kane. Tragically, Sarah Kane died on 20 February 1999. The following month the group presented readings of the plays they began with her as a special tribute. They continue to work together.

Young playwrights in Spain have been very impressed by the new British plays they have read in the Spanish translations. We hope the plays in this volume will be treated with similar enthusiasm.

Elyse Dodgson

Royal Court Theatre, London

This is the Foreword from Spanish Plays; the collection in which this play first appears.

Introduction

The six playwrights in this volume contributed to a resurgence of new writing for the theatre in Spain from the mid 1980s onwards. The previous generation had championed physical theatre and visual spectacle, but by the late 1980s there was a renewed interest in plays, both twentieth-century Spanish classics and plays by living writers. By the mid 1990s, there was enough interest in new plays for a new generation of playwrights to have emerged across Spain, produced mostly in smaller theatres.

Spain produced more new plays in the 1990s than in previous decades. The first reason for this was a reaction against pioneering physical theatre companies who had dominated the Spanish theatre scene in the late eighties. Second, there was a reaction against auteur directors which was happening across Europe. Third, there was exposure to innovative European playwrights through international festivals. Finally, there was simply curiosity about what a new text-based theatre might be; Ernesto Caballero, playwright and teacher, expressed this as ‘a need to discover what is theatrical in the word’. In 1993 playwright José Sanchis Sinisterra (then artistic director of La Sala Beckett in Barcelona) stated: ‘It seems to me that theatre writing is going through an interesting, hopeful time. After the imperialism of directors and the apogee of gesture, image and group theatre, we’re going through a period of questioning theatricality through writing. Today it is the author who is beginning to show the way ahead in theatre’.1

Incentives to young playwrights included prizes for new writers, such as the prestigious Marqués de Bradomín, set up in 1985 (first won by Sergi Belbel), and the Calderón de la Barca prize. Artistic directors started to produce new plays despite a perceived financial risk. José Sanchis Sinisterra at La Sala Beckett in Barcelona and Guillermo Heras of Centro Nacional de Nuevas Tendencias in Madrid produced new plays by young playwrights and both set up writers’ groups to help develop their work. Through the 1990s playwrights placed themselves at the centre of theatre production. Some writers began to direct or produce their own plays. Of the writers in this volume, Antonio Onetti, Sergi Belbel and Paloma Pedrero are also directors, and there are other examples of writers who directed their own work in the face of a lack of interest from directors. Playwright Juan Mayorga is a member of El Astillero, a group of four writers who help each other develop, produce and publish their own plays.

These plays were selected by a group of readers on behalf of the Royal Court Theatre to reflect something of the diversity of contemporary theatre writing in Spain but from the perspective of British theatre. We searched for plays by men and women from different parts of the country. We were looking for the best and most diverse group of young writers emerging in Spain.