I write plays because it is my way of knowing reality. It is my way of trying to discover the real nature of human beings. Why we do certain things, why we don’t do others, how conflicts are solved or not solved, how wishes are achieved, how characters shorten the distances between reality and desire.
I am also interested in structures, the order in which things happen, the nexuses of causality that are created by the imagination, the nexuses that remain hidden for the audience and are then revealed by the action itself, the way in which mystery can be created by putting all the cards on the table, the absurd sensation produced by hyperrealism, and the real sensation produced by metaphors.
My characters are my voices, fighting. And their adventures serve me as training for life. For deciding on how to live, on what to do. There is an ongoing ethical discussion in my characters, who try to discover the best way of living in order to be happy, to find harmony.
I like to hide behind feminine characters. Perhaps they play out my deepest conflicts.
I like to create worlds where my characters live, worlds that I visit through them. I like to feel as though I am inside the scene, inside the space.
For me it is very important to write knowing that I am going to direct what I write, because directing is a continuation of writing. I write as an excuse to play with the actors, to enjoy the meeting between the audience and the actors.
Madrid, 1972
Alfredo Sanzol is an author and a theatre director. Among his most prominent productions are La Calma Mágica (2014 Tanttaka and Centro Dramático Nacional), Esperando a Godot (2013 Centro Dramático Nacional), Aventura! (2012 T de Teatre and Teatre Lliure), La importancia de llamarse Ernesto (2012 Teatro Gayarre), En la Luna (2011 Teatro de la Abadía. Max Prize for the Best Show 2013 and Ceres Prize of the Festival of Mérida), Días Estupendos (2010 Lazona and Centro Dramático Nacional, Max Prize for the Best Author), Delicadas (2009 T de Teatre and Festival Grec, Max Prize for the Best Author), La cabeza del Bautista (2009 Centro Dramático Nacional), Sí, pero no lo soy (2008 Centro Dramático Nacional), Risas y Destrucción (2007 Producciones del Callao) and Como los griegos (1999 RESAD and Producciones del Callao). He has taught courses and workshops at La Casa de América, La Casa Encendida, El Teatro Nacional de Bogotá, Matadero-Madrid, La Sala Beckett, La Térmica, La Escuela Navarra de Teatro, the Sociedad General de Autores, the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Olite and the Centro Dramático Nacional.
La Calma Mágica
Oliver is a man who wants to change his life. During a work interview, his future boss offers him some hallucinogenic mushrooms to try and Oliver starts seeing a vision according to which in the future he will end up asleep behind a computer and a client will record him on his mobile phone, nodding off. Oliver will want the client to wipe that video off his mobile, but the client will not want to.
Born of this fight between two hard-headed men is this story of the search for dignity and for the meaning of life. A journey of initiation that will take us to Africa, to pink elephants, to love, to obsession, to hunters’ rifles, to alcohol, to betrayal, to stolen dreams and to the springs from which the water of life emerges.
En la luna
En la luna is a journey to the first memories. Those recollections that live in the very depths of the memory, and that reappear from time to time like lightning flashes that explain who we are and where we come from. They are memories that are created when we are three, four, five years old and we do not know if they are real, or they were told to us, or we have dreamt them, only that for us they are the pillars on which we build the rest of our memory. These recollections, because of their special quality, and scarce quantity, are kept as something highly prized and intimate, which we talk about with a certain reverence, as if they were a gift, or a sentence from which we cannot detach ourselves.
Delicadas
My grandmother and her sisters belong to the generation that was twenty-something when the Spanish Civil War broke out. Of course this is a generation that was broken, pulled apart in affective terms, that witnessed and participated in the unexplainable fight to the death between brothers. The memory of all that, they buried it under silence. For me it has always been a mystery to imagine them as young women. To imagine what they were like when they became pregnant, when they dreamed of the future, when they protected each other, when they were in love, when they fought and when they forgave.
Delicadas is formed by fragments, bits, elements that on the surface appear to have no relation but that configure a universe in which a rose tree that was dead suddenly revives. In which a seamstress sticks a crucifix to the wall with cement to avoid the militias removing it. Sisters say goodbye to their brother as he goes off to the war. Two friends, who like to take walks together in silence, are accused of being homosexual, and they search for a mute girl who will act as their chaperone. A couple who watch, powerless, as a train runs over their dog and then…
Delicadas is a story of death and of resurrection. A story of spring in which life fights with all its strength to remain alive. A story in which living is more important than how to live.
