Last week, I heard that a new stage -or perhaps it was an old one remodelled- has just been opened to public in Madrid, in Prosperidad, and the premier is a series of comic plays (sainetes) by Alvarez Quintero brothers.
The production of this couple, today well-forgotten and underrated, is prolific and terrific (their Complete Works amount over 40 volumes), tremendously popular. Their works were translated into dozens of languages and staged everywhere, I heard. I guess that such entrepreneurs or any of the type could lift up the stage and cinema production in Spain today: a production mainly national liked it by people... A good start to make money. Well, it's true, this business in on TV, but at the expense of art. It is pure crap and people don't like it that much. You go home and what do you do, here and in Sebastopol? Well, watch TV.
My point of discussion is that commercial activities help creating art; conversely, art must be sold, as opposed as what it is normally understood. Why not? It is a beautiful challenge, double-bladed, to conquer the consumer and to find ways to show your art through conventional paths that everybody can appreciate and not just hate. It is an utterly stupidity to ask people to behave as you wish. Well, people is people, and the mission of the artist is not to change the world, but to CREATE art. I am scared of artists with a self-superimposed conscience of changing the world.
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In a great deal I am in debt to Alvarez Quintero brothers, long back the times we were doing Puebla de las Mujeres and El Genio Alegre. I remember those days with gratitude. The human group was unsurpassed; the human experience, indelible. You know, I was the youngest in the group and the average of the rest was about 30 years my senior! Each show was heart-panicking, as people keep changing lines, swapping paragraphs or even streams of action: X enters in 3 pages in advance and speaks the dialogue 2 pages ahead. It was a healthy, invigorating craziness! Will never forget a couple of performances on Sunday evening in windy, dusty villages outside Salamanca, on 3ft-times-3ft stages and bare curtains for everything -door gate, bathroom, etc.- of Miguel Mihura's Melocoton en Almibar. Years later, I learned that this is exactly what theatre is about and how actors and comics should be made.
I was going to say: if I could rewind my life back, I will certainly change the tape, but it stinks... It sound terrible... Anyhow, I would not mind to go back and try harder that road.
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In Puebla de las Mujeres, a bored and boring village in Andalucia, women are gossiping -or making up, getting things all tied up and entangled- about the fictitious romance between one of them and a young lawyer who arrived from the big city to do some errands. But women, as well as men, abide by the social conventions. All are gathered but for a moment, none of them are to talk about it, and thus do chit-chat conversation. One is: "what day is it today?"; "I don't know, what day is today?"; "Today is Thursday"; "Ah, yes, yesterday was Wednesday"; "So, today it is Thursday".
Out of the embarrassing sitcom that Miley Cyrus is turning her life into, the last episode is about the veiled messaged she conveyed to new stars, Rebecca Black and Justin Bieber. For the sake of curiosity, I have listened to Rebecca's Friday song. Everything I have written above has come to my mind after watching the lyrics: "Yesterday was Thursday; Today it is Friday; We we we so excited; We so excited; We gonna have a ball today; Tomorrow is Saturday; Sunday comes afterwards (...)"... The whole video is horrible... Catchy, but pure vacuum, sweet to sickness, don't you think? Well, shear envy is worse, no doubt... And very tough to be redeemed from. Oh, God, have mercy on Miley.
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