'Gente Nocturna', a premiere's chronicle.
- Iggy Planas
- Mar 23, 2019
- 5 min read
Last Thursday the final countdown for 'Gente Nocturna's (Nocturnals) premiere came to an end and audiences enjoyed this play inside the Independent Section of festival MUTIS. At 21:30h on the Thursday 21st of March, light's in Cafè-Teatre Llantiol turned on, and we finally showed the product of our effort and rehearsals of these last months before an audience who "almost" filled the theatre's seats.
What is 'Gente Nocturna' (Nocturnals) about?
Once upon a Saturday night in a gloomy and silent bar…
Max y Otto are two bohemian drunkards who waste their cold Saturday nights drinking, maybe to forget or maybe to remember. Max is an unsuccessful writer who has quit writing, but not drinking. Otto is a pianist in love who wants to quit drinking, bars, and his cynical friend.
As a modern-day Falstaff, Max fears that now that Otto has fallen in love, he might abandon him on their Saturday rituals. When everything seems lost for Max, the woman who once gave a sense to his life will return, the singer Cora, whose trace was lost five years ago...
With Thursday's premiere, we'd put the final touch to a strange procedure, a procedure that has taken us several months of rehearsals, sweats and efforts. Although, above all, it's been a self-discovery task, especially during the last few weeks. Being a project whose essential basis is the already existing friendship bond between Misael Sanroque and I took on stage through our respective characters (Max & Otto), this has become a quite personal project for both of us and, besides the friendship shown on stage is not more than fictional, sometimes during the creation process, it was quite complicated to discern between reality and fiction, creating thus a new level on our friendship outside the stage.
On a personal level, I must say that after the show I left the theatre feeling overwhelmed, it took me a couple of hours to come back into myself, though in a different version as if I had been abducted. My character, Otto, had invaded every single part of my essence, and he has fully shown on scene and I consider that, in today's day, he has left something latent on me during this strange symbiosis procedure between actor and character.
I also consider that the procedure lived after the play itself has also influenced this feeling I have. After around five minutes of final applauses with a standing hall, after taking the curtain down and entering the dressing room, a sour-sweet sensation was felt on the air. Many of the objectives had been fulfilled and there were some others who hadn't, so we had encountered feelings, especially Misael and I who had to sit down for some minutes of silence to think about what we had lived. Personally, I felt that Otto was still there on me, latent, but it was such the indentation he has caused on me, such a notable blow, that I wasn't able to discern about him and me.
After commenting briefly about the situation with my mates and dressing in my regular clothes, I decided to carry on and go to take the rest of my belongings to save them in the dressing room, crossing a hall filled with an audience who didn't want to leave the theatre yet. What supposedly might take around thirty seconds just to cross the hall to go to the adjacent room where my stuff was; actually turned into around fifteen minutes of congratulations, hugs, and kisses. Once I put my feet outside the stage, I passed through a strange round of greetings and compliments where I wasn't able to advance just some meters without receiving some more tokens of affection from someone in the crowd, in fact, it became hard to arrive where my relatives were whom I greeted and hugged warmly. I remember that, when I arrived in the room where my belongings were after being immersed in that world of people, I really felt terribly overwhelmed; my encountered feelings about the play were there still, but after receiving the audience's verdict and knowing about their acceptation of the play was such a thrill. A feeling I dragged during the following hours turned into a halfway zombie between Iggy and Otto.
I would like to thank personally each one of the one hundred people who filled Cafè-Teatre Llantiol in this premiere, if I wasn't able to do it last Thursday, it was because I was incapable of assimilating what was going on. But I was able to feel their support, love on stage and after the curtain went don't I was still feeling it with their congratulations, even the ones of some friends and ex-classmates I haven't seen for a while and which was their first time watching me on stage, so I want to thank them for their attendance. I also want to acknowledge to my relative, many of the critiques I received from them were about an 'almost' blind support on what I do on stage and on how they see me improving through time, but especially I want to thank my mother who came from Gran Canaria for this premiere. To all of them: friends, relatives and unknown people who had some words with me, a billion thanks, without you theatre wouldn't exist!
I also want to thank Cafè-Teatre Llantiol staff for offering their space to us in this premiere and Yuri (the theatre's owner), whose compliments on a personal level after my performance I appreciate greatly. I also want to acknowledge for this premiere's opportunity to festival MUTIS, both the assisting volunteers and to Alberto Rizzo, who also helped us as a light technician and designing the aligning design. See you at X Festival MUTIS Awards Ceremony!
Finally, I would like to thank all the team who belong to this project so personal and loved: all the hours, efforts, and headaches we had during this adventure have led us here. To Nia Patón (Cora/Nina) and Cristian Fernández (The Barman, but not Waiter) for their talent, dedication, and for knowing how to cope with the circumstances. It's such a pleasure to share the stage with you, fellas! To Marina Prats for her unstoppable work in the costume and scenery tasks, for her invaluable help and suggestions during the rehearsals, and for her wonderful artistic design in the play's poster and figurines. To Tamara Gahonna and Ástrid Albornoz (director's assistants) for their incredible direction work, their wise advice, and for being able that this play took some weight and dimension unimaginable at first, you had made me rediscover acting and what it means to be a 24h actor! Finally, I would like to thank Misael Sanroque (director, dramatist, and Max in fiction) for deeply trusting in me since minute one, for his interest in my advice and suggestions regarding the text, and for being brave enough to take our real friendship on stage that, though with its fictional parts, it has some other ones based on our shared reality, it's impressive to share your friendship both inside and outside a stage! To all of them, there are no words to express thank you for all your love and trust I've been gifted during this procedure; I know there is much to improve, but now I'm counting the hours to see you again on stage ad keep with this work!
In the dressing room before going into stage
This is roughly what I can tell you about the premiere of 'Gente Nocturna' (Nocturnals), memories are still recent, and it will take a while for them to settle down in my brain, but to sum up, I must define this experience as something weird, but nurturing at the same time. For the time being, we must evaluate all this and there is still the festival jury's verdict about the play, so there is no more news I can tell you about the play's future. Without anything else to say, see you in the next post!
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