'Ensayo sobre la Ceguera', premiere in III Festival Nacional de Teatro Universitario

Last weekend III Festival Nacional de Teatro Universitario (III University Theatre National Festival) took place in Toledo, organized another year by Federación Española de Teatro Universitario (University Theatre Spanish Federation). La Coquera attended to this festival to premiere its most recent play, 'Ensayo sobre la Ceguera' (under the alias 'Blindness'), an adaptation of Jose Saramago's novel Blindness represented on Sunday the 29th of April in La Tahona y el Pintor. An immersive theatre play where audiences are members of the actions and can become first person witnesses of the white pest blighting the city, being participants of an experience leaving no one untouched.

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What it this play about?

An incomprehensible blindness plage blights the city, and the first patients are promptly isolated in an abandoned installation while the pertinent measures are taken in order to understand the disease and bring some response. Contention is needed, civilization must prevail at all means. But, what happens with all those first patients? Who will help a blinded person if the condition itself was contagious? Is it all permitted to protect the rest of humanity, even abandoning to their own fate? Live first hand the pandemic, feel the horror of seeing how human beings lose, minute after minute, all kinds of decency, of empathy. Such an opportunity to take part on the acclaimed novel by José Saramago in an immersive theatre approach by La Coquera.

Poster of the play

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Prior to the play's premiere, on Saturday the 28th morning, a press conference took place in Centro Cultural San Marcos with specialized media in the city which served as a starting point for III Festival Nacional de Teatro Universitario. La Coquera Teatro's members attended this event as visitors and our director, Alberto Rizzo, acted with Toledo's Youth Councilman Diego Mejías as a speaker on an interview where, for another year, the importance of university theatre was claimed as a way to enhance the theatrical health of Spanish cities. Here you have some pictures of the day and also a press article you can read by clicking here.

With different theatre troupes in the press conference

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The highlighted date arrived at the following day, the premiere of our play. Approximately at 17h the lights in La Tahona y el Pintor turned off and peoples from Toledo and some student from other places around the Iberian Peninsula were participants of our adaptation of José Saramago's novel. Besides having tried already this play with open rehearses to reduced audiences in some places in Barcelona, this was our trial by fire, so we had to pull out all the stops. Sunday's performance was, under my humble point of view, the best gig of the play so far, an atmosphere where both actors and the audience enjoyed was created and even there were some moments that will hardly be forgotten. I remember now that at the end of the play, a magical and intimate moment was created where the actors, in the middle of the street and backwards to the audience, we started to look at the infinite and feelings started flourishing in some of us.

I must confess I was one of them, many feelings came across my head on that moment, feelings of what I had lived during that hour performing, feelings of joy and pride for my partners and the well performed job that cast into tears and sobs while I looked to the infinite in a sepulchral silence only broken when the audience started clapping. A moment inked by fire on my partner's memories and mine already, something which started as an improvisation, but now I can only be grateful of that moment, because it acted as a needed catharsis after the gig. Thanks for making me achieve that, there are no words to thank this! For more shows and moments like this one!

Different promotional pictures of the play

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Thanks very much to all the assisting ones who were there. Though I couldn't exchange many opinions with them after the show because we had to pick up our things and take the road back home, I was able to see on their sight that they had enjoyed the play so much and something inside them had changed. Feelings like that one are the ones that make theatre worth. A million thanks for sharing with us this piece of our project and showing me again why immersive theatre is something that worth it!

Some special mention deserves the rest of my co-stars for carrying on with this play day after day, congratulations to our two covers too (Kenya González and Cristina Pérez), since this was the first performance with us. There are several experiences lived during this weekend in Toledo, including the outward and return journeys, experiences that now belong to my sweet remembrances of this trip. After this weekend, a lot of rapport and fellowship has been created among us, a result of sharing more time together. To sum up, I must say that it's a pleasure to have partners like that, the ones who ease your work when facing the stage, and they're also good and great friends (almost like a family) outside the stage. Let's keep on like this, congratulations and high spirits!

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On Monday the 30th of April, the award ceremony of III Festival Nacional de Teatro Universitario took place, though many of us were back home in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the remaining ones were able to see how our play won the prizes of Best Misé en Scene and Best Sounding Creation in addition to a second prize to Best Play, so it could be said that our play has a big potential technically speaking, and it was highly acclaimed by the audiences. Well done, and let's see if we can get more awards!

If you want to see the full list of awards of the festival, you can do it via this article.

Different assisting theatre troupes in the awards ceremony

This has been a brief summary of what I live this weekend in the premiere 'Ensayo sobre la ceguera'. Stay tuned, more shows are programmed for this May, as usual, I will inform you about the news. With nothing else to say, see you in the next post.