Teatro Español y Naves del Español
Living Arts International Gathering Africa Moment'21 celebrates this year its 5th edition in the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, an unprecedented edition with a double itinerary, which presents proposals of great innovation and artistic quality by leading figures on the...
Tuesday to Sunday / 7.30pm
Two porcelain figures come back to life for one night. Two fragile and forgotten bodies in a room where nothing happens but time itself, where life goes on all around them, yet their lot is merely to be impassive spectators.
In the Spain of 1892, El encanto de una hora was one of the short plays published as part of Jacinto Benavente's "Fantastic Theatre", a dialogue between two porcelain figures who come back to life for one night.
To revisit Benavente’s early theatre is to explore in depth what happened at the end of the 19th century in Spain, it is to return to a twilight Madrid, one of radical change, it is to enter into the struggle between naturalist and modernist theatre, it is to return to Benavente’s roots and his youthful infatuation with French authors, to his love for the circus, for symbolist figures, it is to go back to a time before Los intereses creados and La malquerida, before the costumbrist, modern and incisive comedy of characters, before irony, before his reaction to Echegaray and his excessive attitude, before bourgeois theatre, before Lorca, before the Nobel Prize for Literature, before his love for a forgotten Spain, before all that.
The first elusive Benavente, the Benavente that is never performed, the Benavente that remains as an early period. El encanto de una hora is a return to the original spirit of a fundamental author for anyone who wants to understand Spain, or at least a Spain yearning for renewal, in dispute, a hotbed of opinions and opposing positions, yet also a naïve and wounded Spain.
By: Jacinto Benavente
Directed by: Carlos Tuñón
With: Patricia Ruz and Jesús Barranco
Scenic space design and costumes: Antiel Jiménez
Lighting design: Miguel Ruz Velasco
Sound and projection design: JUMI
A production of [los números imaginarios] with the participation of Bella Batalla and Teatro de La Abadía
Iconos de accesibilidad proporcionados por Teatro Accesible
Viernes 28 de octubre