No t’enamoris de mi

No t’enamoris de mi

Charlie, after leaving work, arrives home and prepares dinner while telling Dani how the day has gone: work, the neighbourhood dinner, the unexpected sex, the worried friends, the unanswered calls… Glass of wine in hand, they talk every evening in this increasingly undefined space, while we discover the reason for these encounters and the need –or imposition– that Charlie feels to start afresh after his last relationship.

An intimate and raw look at memory and nostalgia passing through loneliness, addiction to work, appearances, grief and the irrefutable passage of time. 

Cesc Colomina (Barcelona, 1996) 

 Playwright and set designer. Graduate in Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) with a Master’s degree in Set Design for theatre, television and film (ELISAVA). As a playwright he trained with Marc Angelet and Estela Santos.

In 2018, he wrote and directed the short film D’hom, a runner-up for the VOC awards and awarded at festivals around the world. He has also provided dramaturgical assistance for short films such as Cuatro Trienta. 

In 2020, he won the award for narrative from publishing company Autografia with Confi(n)ados. Subsequently a book will be published with the collection of awarded tales. In the same year he created the company La Tercera de Newton, presenting Gulab Jamun at Can Clariana, where he was both playwright and director. 

In 2023, he directed and took charge of the dramaturgy and stage set of Isacco, within the ESMUC Bottega d’Òpera season, premiered at the Palau de la Música. That same year he gave a staged reading of Com em recordes?, his first play, with a cast of eleven.  

He is currently a member of Els Malnascuts, a workshop led by playwright Helena Tornero at the Sala Beckett in the context of Fabulamundi. Playwriting Europe. 

As stage set designer he has worked on La cadena premiered at the Auditorium of Murcia, Ratas, BFF and Exquisit at the Teatre Tantarantana, Salir antes de entrar and OPERA at the Sala Beckett and Nunca digas de este culo no comeré at the Teatre Margarida Xirgu in Badalona, among others. He was also a member of the design team for the floats for the Twelfth Night Procession of Madrid 2022. 

He has worked with set designers such as Paco Azorín, Sebastià Brosa and Paula Bosch, and with directors such as Mario Gas, Josep Maria Mestres, Pau Carrió and Àgata Casanovas. He has premiered plays at theatres such as La Villarroel, Teatre Romea, Teatre Akadèmia, Sala Beckett, Teatre Goya, Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, and Las Naves del Teatro Español (Matadero) in Madrid. 

Being able to talk to one of the best contemporary playwrights like Davide Carnevali about one of my plays was one of the best things that could happen to me.

The meeting began with a brief presentation, especially on my behalf, since I am not known at all, and we immediately began to comment on the text. Adapting a play where the city (Barcelona) is very present and where the cultural references are so marked would not be easy at all. You would have to be very careful that the play worked perfectly and be aware that it would not be easy to adapt it to the region where it would be performed.

Once this reflection was made, we exchanged opinions about the way of writing. We talked about form, composition, how my play plays with identities and genres and about daily language, youthful and fresh. And then we finally talked about the content, perhaps the most compelling part and the one I more appreciated Davide’s opinion on. Perhaps it is the most difficult part of being a playwright, being very clear about what you want to communicate with the play and whether you really achieve it. And also, getting rid of the starting point or the event that led you to create a play and build the characters, perhaps because it has led to something else much more interesting.

I don’t know if, after this conversation, I will really introduce any big changes to the text, but what it is clear to me is that Davide’s opinion and words opened for me new visions and bridges in the play and, above all, provided me with a learning that I will keep for future creations. It was a huge pleasure that someone like him commented on my play.

– Cesc Colomina

Colomina’s play has two great qualities: an everyday, brilliant and lively language, which keeps the reader attentive and active; and an attractive formal treatment, in which two characters are performed by four actors, who mix up in couples assorted differently in terms of sexual orientation and gender identity. From this point of view, the formal choice clearly and pertinently reflects a fundamental thematic issue: gender fluidity and the extreme freedom of definition in emotional and sexual relationships between twenty-year-old people.

These are the strengths that make this text attractive and which – in my opinion – can determine its success on the stage.

However, the strong bond with everyday reality represents one of the limits of the play, difficult to imagine it outside the Barcelona context, if not through a radical rewriting; which makes its translation and reception complex for a non-Catalan audience.

On a formal level, it is difficult to understand the gap between the “scenes” and the “entr’actes” that precede them: while the scenes are built around a mimetic-representative dialogue, which works very well, the “entr’actes” that precede each scene as a sort of prologue present themselves as linguistic fragments and textual materials of a sort of stream of consciousness. This further complicates unnecessarily the understanding of the identity-exchange between characters and interpreters.

Lastly, the final double twist that emerges from the respective revelations of the two characters seems counterproductive to me: I think it would be more appropriate to keep only one and give up the other.

– Davide Carnevali