Analphabet It presents one of the most baroque beginnings of recent theater. Alberto Cortés appears, with these enormous arms, shouting towards the sky, almost crucified and composing a typical painting of the Andalusian tenebrist school of chiaroscuro. The space is reduced to a small circle which leaves the entire exterior scene black. In the circle, we only see, frightened by the light, these very long and crawling arms which hide the body in the dark.
Violinist Luz Prado violently attacks her instrument while Cortés’ body appears transformed into a ghost. A romantic and queer ghost, who will confront the intra-gender violence of the gay universe, wounded and with all the strength of fragility. So far it has been seen at the Alta Station (Girona) and at the Ibero-American Festival (FIT) in Cádiz.
So, with this powerful image, Cortés opens his new piece, a complex work of enigmatic and poetic writing that is a hymn to spirituality. Cortés invokes a ghost called Analphabet, a being outside of time who is a dark Peter Pan, a ghost who did not want to grow up in the submission of logic where the spirit dies, a specter passed through German romanticism, a young Werther turned blue, all wounded.
Cortés invokes a ghost exalted in corny transcendence in the face of the despair of an unhealthy relationship: “I like abuse, Dad, but not the one you gave me,” says the interpreter paraphrasing Daddy Yankee. But it is an exploited text, where the plot disappears almost completely, we know almost nothing about this story of abuse, only that Cortés calls it “my lendakari”.
José Bergamín and the cruise
However, we see the wounded lover, who indulges in the invocation of this specter which allows him to fly higher than the sky. Hyperion by Friedrich Hölderlin and contemplate this entire gay community in perpetual cruise on Iberian beaches, of ephemeral couples summoned to violence and failure: “If each gay is identical to another, is smoking equivalent to eating each other? », blurts Cortés at one point. This ghost will appear in Genoveses, Monsúl or Gulpiyuri, temples of the cruise where Cortés seems to want to retrace a path which smells of putrefaction, which has led to intra-gender violence which is reminiscent of the heteropatriarchal violence dominant for so long in Spanish. Company.
Cortés has just published Continta Metienes by Éditions, I always come at nighta book which brings together the text of this work and which contains a third act not present in the stage play. In the publication, Cortés also added a workbook on the creative process and some notes that talk about the readings that influenced the work of authors such as Novalis, Goethe, Anne Carson or Hölderlin himself. But in these notes the inclusion of a reading is striking, The decline of illiteracy by José Bergamin. A text where Bergamín opposes the free spirit of the illiterate child to the world of literate and literary culture that the Basque writer calls a space of death of the spirit.
It is the ghost invoked in this work, that of an illiterate man, that of a fag who is still a child, a people and a spirit and who, with all the strength born from an assumed fragility, can face the fag turned into a man-eater. vermin: “I condemn the “God who made you beautiful on the outside and a wolf on the inside,” Cortés sings in the play. But even if The burn there was something obvious weird and the harsh verb of Thomas Bernhard, the most significant change in this new work is the word. A difficult word in many cases, where Cortés bets everything on poetry, poetry that can beat through the body and song. A song backed by the incredible work of one of the country’s most accomplished and interesting stage sound engineers, Óscar G. Villegas.
It is this intimate search for a poetic theater, but without a poet, for a poetry without literature, which underlies the entire piece. Analphabet It’s not an easy job. Cortés, instead of repeating the formula, what he did was to excavate and strip away his work. His totem poses a deceptive gay culture where he offers himself seductively. The room is dark, almost airtight in some of its parts.
The two previous works of Alberto Cortés, The burn And A night at the Golden barmade him the white whale of contemporary theater. Everyone loved Cortés, this force of supernatural stage presence and these words embodied by love and delivered on stage. Now everyone has it. The work was premiered at the TNT Festival in Terrasa and arrived this weekend in the small venue in Cádiz, La Central Lechera, thanks to the direction of the previous stage direction of the festival. The former director Isla Aguilar traced a line of collaboration with Cortés in which, in addition to showing works at the festival, a project was generated that continues today, the Escuela del Sur, a meeting space for creators of Cádiz that Cortés directs with the artist. Rosa Romero of Cádiz.
Analphabet He will travel to Alicante in November, then to Seville and Madrid. One of the most important managers in Argentina present at the FIT in Cádiz, impressed by her first encounter with the work and strength of the man from Malaga, told this newspaper after the performance: “In Buenos Aires they will adore him.” Cortés presents this month in the Argentine capital A night at the Golden bar.
It is possible that the function of the FIT, complicated by the narrowness of the space, opened many doors for this creator who appeared on stage like a unleashed animal. Even if the work lost spatial aesthetics and perspective (it was a shame not to be able to appreciate the great lighting work of Benito Jiménez), the impression of seeing Cortés transform a few meters from the audience was the strength, the energy and presence of the artist. Seeing his body possessed is impressive.
New address at FIT
The festival has arrived with the Malaga artist at its meridian and will continue its journey throughout this week. After the departure of its previous director, Isla Aguilar, an advisory committee has led this edition trying to return to the more traditional path that this flagship festival has followed since its beginnings in 1985. And the truth is that the public of Cádiz has returned to fill shows and theaters in a programming that also opted for innovative proposals like the interesting work of the Bolivian company Klara that they presented Palmasola, a prison towna piece that occupied the warehouses of the Baluarte de la Candelaria to convey to the public the horror of the largest prison in Bolivia where more than 5,000 inmates survive under an inhumane regime and facing a total absence of the most fundamental human rights.
Thus, we could also see a black comedy from the Bonobó company, which presented Témis, a real twist where the Chileans immerse themselves in a dramaturgy of the absurd to the point of delirium; or an interesting work by the Sevillian David Montero, Son’s timea performance that addresses the heartbreak of having to suffer as a loved one, in this case one’s mother, who passes away after an illness such as Alzheimer’s. Montero’s ritual was magnificent, after demanding acting and a text that included poetry, he scattered on stage some ashes from what was his mother’s body.
These days, the festival lives in a continuous buzz regarding the choice of the new director. The competing projects have already been submitted, at the end of this edition the festival committee will have to decide who will be the designated person. Ten projects have been selected and the chickens are not stopping. Everything indicates that the new manager will be known in November.
