An Innovative Name from the New Wave Catalan Theatre: Carles Batlle in Istanbul on 13-15 December within the context of the “New Text New Theatre” project.
The play “TEMPTATION” by Carles Batlle will reach the audience as a reading theatre in Istanbul. The play is telling about the significant inequality between the enriched North and impoverished South through the axis of intersecting human lives. Relations under the shadows of selfishness get the characters face to face with darkest instincts.
Reading of the play “TEMPTATION” will be performed in Pera Museum on Sunday, December 13th at 18:00. Apart from the reading, Carles Batlle will hold a playwright workshop on 13 and 15 December with the participation of playwrights from the “New Text New Theatre” project.
About “Temptation”
This is a dramatic tension despite the fact that four of the five scenes are monologues. The first is by Hassan, a middle-aged Moroccan man who has entered Spain illegally and hopes for assistance from Guilem, the son of a Spaniard he had known decades before during the filming of Lawrence of Arabia in Morocco. The monologue is addressed to Guilem, who is in the next room and may or may not be listening. It turns out he was taking a shower at least part of the time.
A young woman, Aixa, has two monologues which she addresses to a video camera, presumably for later viewing by Guilem. She is projected part of the time onto a gauze in front of the stage, so she is visible sometimes live, sometimes projected and often both at the same time. It gradually develops that Aixa is Hassan’s daughter. She is also in Spain illegally, having fled a forced marriage in Morocco. Hassan then turns out to have died in some mysterious way, perhaps an accident or perhaps murder. Aixa feels guilty, in any case. Her dilemma, in addition to being in the clutches of the increasingly unscrupulous Guilem, is that she wants to give her father a decent burial (shades of Antigone), but if she does she will blow her own cover as an illegal immigrant and risk deportation.
Guilem has the last monologue. It is addressed to Aixa, but she is gagged and chained by her wrists to the bed frame, so she cannot respond, at least not verbally.
Destinies of Guillem, Aixa and Hasan would be intersected hopelessly. A significant inequality between the enriched North and impoverished South gets to appear through the axis of intersecting human lives; and the relations under the shadows of selfishness get the characters face to face with darkest instincts.
About Carles Batlle
An innovative and experimentalist playwright of the New Wave Catalan Theatre, Carles Batlle is a professor in Barcelona Autònoma University. His first work was a monograph “Adrià Gual” and won the ‘Serra d’Or Prize’ for the best critic.
Carles Batlle is a playwright, together with Sergi Belbel, Lluïsa Cunillé, Pau Miró and Josep Pere Peyró at Sala Beckett, one of the most prestigious alternative theaters of Barcelona.
Among his works are “Temptacio” (2004), “Combat” (1995–98); “Suite” the winner of the 1999 Societat General d’Autors d’Espana prize and “Oasis” the winner of best >German Translation prize at 2004 Bremen Stadt Theater Festival.
Carles Batlle constantly explores for a modern language and form in his plays which feature themes like memory, amnesia, immigration, cultural conflicts and war.
For more you can check İstanbul 2010 website or Galata Perform website.
Sat, Dec 5, 2009
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