Comedy has a bad press, but I love it. I consider myself an obsessive observer of everyday reality. I am curious regarding social behaviors, individual and group functioning. My own emotional drives overwhelmed by situations that, a priori, might be insignificant.
Writing the play The Red Room I learned to give value to that observation, which was already part of my life. I learned, especially to play with her. To put a magnifying glass on it and exacerbate it to the point of forcing its limits, taking it to hilarious areas, but also disturbing in relation to our behavior in society.
The red room is the first of those three plays that I made and that focus on our functioning as individuals, within a social framework that frames us between rules and institutions. The school is one of them and that is where this work is located.
The characters in The Red Room make up a palette of different archetypes that are quickly identifiable within our groups, but that also have a singularity where they expose their absolutely particular desires, feelings, and needs. Perhaps that is one of the findings of this work, which on the one hand generates a lot of identification, but on the other exposes areas that we usually try to hide or disguise so that they are not seen.
The red room is a small society. There you must agree, vote, decide and live in the midst of differences. And, as in our society, that sometimes happens in peace and sometimes in chaos.
This work shows us the society we are, or the one we might be. And he does it with a lot of humor, because I am certain that through humor, it can penetrate deeply. You can challenge, question and show dark faces. Although, apparently, we are just laughing.
The red room began in an independent theater in 2013. Quickly, word of mouth made the play grow, add performances, move to a larger room, tour Spain and visit festivals.
The surprise was that from various countries they began to ask me for the material and thus made versions in Paraguay, Panama, Brazil and Uruguay. Of course the cultural difference was intriguing. However, precisely with its different views, the work was creating its versions in different parts of the world where these social frictions are also apparently at stake. It is that The Red Room is like a Pandora’s box in which, when the floodgate is opened, the wild side of these characters that might be harmless appears. But they are not. And it seems that we all have that wild side, the point is that we learn to tame it.
With The Red Room, I had the perfect excuse for that to get out of control. It is that “pretending the best” for our sons and daughters we can become capable of anything. That is one of the questions that the play asks: do we want the best for whom? For our little ones or for ourselves?
Celebrating 10 years with La sala roja gives us great joy, emotion and satisfaction for the task accomplished. Undoubtedly, the material has been sustained throughout all this time for its strength, humor and originality. But it has also been sustained by the group that we are. We have worked many times with the wind in favor, but others with the wind once morest. We have gone through good times and also a pandemic; and it was the network that managed to continue supporting a project that belongs to each one of us. The red room is a party in each function, because it overflows with laughter but also overflows with love.
*Director, author and actress of The Red Room.
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