“An actor from Cádiz is looking for a director from La Fura as a volunteer to direct my show.” The ad, captured on the Facebook profile of Javier Sánchez Vázquez, known in the artistic world as Monano, went viral in a matter of days and brought to the table a pending debate: to what extent it is legitimate to resort to volunteers to feed shows, regardless of the professionals of the scene.
The Fura of this entry is none other than the Catalan company La Fura dels Baus, which will present the show next Saturday in the capital of Cadiz. Gadir, the resurgence of the Phoeniciansas part of the cycle of Proud events of our Historywhich aims to explore significant moments in the city’s past. To this end, a call has been published to participate in the production, both in its dance aspect – coordinated by the dancer and choreographer Eduardo Guerrero – and in other tasks, for example the formation of a human network.
“It’s something that has become a custom,” Monano explains. “Once I spoke about it to the Cadiz Theatre Commission and I didn’t get any response, so I invented the joke on Facebook. For me it was a joke, a joke, but it seems to have had some impact. And I won’t hide from you that we are a little upset, because I assure you that the one who drives the crane is paid, but not the actors who participate in it. And when I want to prepare a new show, I need directors and I have to pay them.
Have art and be an artist
The actor claims, after a very tough pandemic and an even more difficult post-pandemic, with theaters at 30 percent, “a little sensitivity. It doesn’t seem logical to consider a casting with a casting day, three or four rehearsals and a performance. It’s more like a job with certain hours and certain qualities. And these calls for unpaid projects are something that doesn’t happen in other professions. In our country, many people have had to leave because of precariousness, they are no longer in the cultural industry.
On the other hand, Monano understands that “it’s not about disturbing people who volunteer, because I’m also a volunteer. I’ve worked on Clowns Without Borders and Clowns in Rebellion projects, I’ve been to Sarajevo, Ethiopia… But for vulnerable people. A performance in Europe can’t be the same. Where is the individual’s volunteering? I don’t know. What comes out in the end is that it’s not a job. Of course, we can all have art, but being artists, making a living from it, is more complicated.
The truth is that the subject periodically raises dust on social networks. Without leaving Cádiz, the veteran Ibero-American Theater Festival has organized numerous calls of this type, defending an idea of participatory performing arts. Its manager, Pepe Bablé, comments that the matter “is complicated,” he sighs. “There are people who lend themselves to it out of a desire to do more professional things without being professionals themselves. And on the contrary, there are professionals who do not lend themselves to volunteer work because they have been prepared and trained not to do it. Where does the volunteer end and the professional begin?
“Now, artistic residencies and community shows have become fashionable and I think they are partly responsible for all this confusion, since the only ones who get financial payment are the creators who run them, leaving the work in the hands of people who do not get paid,” he adds. “I can understand voluntarism when it occurs in a show where the participation of the volunteer is accessory and without specific weight in the development of the plot or staging, but when it is, I defend that it be treated in a way as a professional. like that of those who run this show.
Shared experience
Carlus Padrissa, director of La Fura dels Baus, explains to elDiario.es Andalucía that the team that has arrived in Cádiz is made up of 14 people, joined by local music composers, choreographers and volunteers. “We are leading the project, but without the volunteers the proposal could not be successful, because it is the local people who make the show.”
The director also states that “we have 45 years of experience, we learned a lot from others at the Barcelona Olympics and now we teach other people. I understand that professionals want to work, but we are only here for a day, they have all year to do things in Cadiz. I hope there are many projects for everyone.
For his part, Javier Sánchez Vázquez, from Monano, assures that so far he has not received a response from any director who wants to volunteer. “No, I haven’t had that luck,” he laughs. “It seems that volunteering is not a matter of directing the actors, but rather a matter of the link below the chain.”
