The ideas of forgiveness, reconciliation and love permeate a world-renowned novel now turned into a theatre production. Its director delves into the world of magic realism with a series of female characters.
Isabel Allende’s novel The House of Spirits was published in 1982 and at the time few people expected it to be such an outstanding success. Readers across the globe have eagerly followed the adventures and misadventures of four generations of the Trueba family, the main characters in a plot which, at the same time, looks back at the social and political movements that accompanied Chile’s post-colonial history and end dramatically with a coup imposing a military dictatorship. A granddaughter who finds her grandmother’s newspapers and starts to write the family’s history reveals the plot, featuring various women. All of them have names linked with light: Nívea, Clara, Blanca and Alba. It is the latter who has the task of pulling the thread of the story. As Carme Portaceli points out, she does so by emphasising reconciliation, applied as much to a country as the family at the centre of the story. Forgiveness and love go hand in hand in this story of reconciliation and everything takes place in a dream setting, an example of magical realism which, nevertheless, is not short of references to political life, reminding us that it often influences and conditions our lives, even if we have nothing to do with it.
This is a new theatrical adaptation of a novel that had already reached the cinema thanks to Billie August, and theatre thanks to the North American playwright Caridad Svich. Now it is the turn of Carme Portaceli, a woman of the theatre who is the artistic director of the FEI - Factoria Escènica Internacional and who directed the Teatro Español in Madrid between 2016 and 2019. She is a Barcelona Grec Festival regular, where she has directed productions such as Prometeu which opened the 2010 festival, among many others. She has received numerous award, including two Max awards in 2017 for Només són dones.
A 2020 Barcelona Grec Festival, Spanish Theatre and Focus co-production.
Creator: Isabel Allende Version/adaptation: Anna Maria Ricart Play script: Ana Maria Ricart, Carme Portaceli Director: Carme Portaceli Performed by: To be decided Music: Jordi Collet Scenography: Paco Azorín Movement: Ferran Carvajal Costumes: Carlota Ferrer Lighting design: David Picazo Video design: Miquel Àngel Raió Assistant director: Judith Pujol
