María Folguera: “I am fascinated by the vitality of Carmen Martín Gaite”

When I ask María Folguera what represents for her the figure of Carmen Martín Gaiteconfesses to me that he admires him: “ For his insatiable curiosity, for being someone who never abandoned the topics that were passionate about him, because he tried different genres, formats, styles … because he never settled in a closed way, but he also evolved over the years.In addition, he was very restless: he was also a translator, poet, storyteller, a novelist, a felt, a novelist, a novelist … This is what inspires me most. “

María Folguera

Like Gaite, María Folguera is also an inexhaustible source of curiosity. She is a writer, stage director, playwright and cultural manager. He has experimented with various genres, formats and styles: he has written novels, theater, theatrical adaptations, rehearsals; She has participated in research projects and has been the director of the Teatro Circo Price in Madrid. As in the case of Gaite, there is also a deep passion for the living arts.

The restlessness of the He continues to tour the State and, after exhausting tickets at the Teatro Abadía in Madrid, arrives from July 9 to 27 at the Goya Theater, within the framework of the Grec Festival in Barcelona. The adaptation, signed by María Folguera, has the direction of Rakel Camacho and with Emma Suárez, Alberto Iglesias and Nora Hernández As performers. We talk to the creator of the process of adapting this novel and the charismatic figure of one of the most important writers in our literature.

Barcelona Theater: Adapt The restlessness of the In the theater it seems an overwhelming task for the depth and complexity of the text. Where did you start? How did you focus on it?

María Folguera: The restlessness of the It has a very large theatricality. Gaite itself indicated it to its notes, notes and drafts … It speaks of theatrical characters, decorated, even at some point of stage, and it is true that there is a unit of time and space typical of classical theater. We also find a character, the man of black, who bursts in a conflict: that of questioning the narrator in his shelters.

When it comes to adapting the text, I found myself very fluent. For me it has been like a gardening job: pruning the branches of a tree. The text is very leafy, full of memories, memories, references … and to take it on stage, it is necessary to lighten it, to stay with the essence that the actors can incarnate. The greatest intervention has been with the characters played by Nora Hernández, the women who are mentioned throughout the book: the childhood friend, the daughter, a stranger who calls on the phone … This gallery of female characters that we perceive dispersed in the novel, almost like a ghost presence. The rest has been to look for the essence, to reach the trunk of the tree.

How do you distinguish the trunk of this novel?

For me, the great topics are the memory, the privacy, the evolution of writing and the author’s personal evolution, the desire to flee and the desire to protect himself-very present in all Gaite’s work-, the desire to explore the world and, at the same time, the fear of doing so, the fear of losing itself. There are key passages in the novel, as when reminiscent of the Salamanca of the 1940’s, with the weight of Francoism, social hypervigilation, control over young women. Is also very significant when you see on television the burial of Franco And he has a kind of epiphany: he understands that the dictator had hijacked his time and that he now begins a new one. This awakens the desire to write about that time, but feels blocked. And of course, there is the memory of the background room. A space in his home, when he played, read, imagined … It was a refuge in front of a gray reality. But this space was slowly invaded by adult life.

“The text talks about the fear of returning home, but also how to lose yourself transforms and helps you evolve.”

What role does the imagination play in understanding experiences or emotions that we have not assimilated?

It is essential. The character of the black man says this: it helps us to lose ourselves and to appear in a place we could not imagine. Refers to the tale of Inch: Thanks to losing, it has the opportunity to grow and, above all, not to return to the starting point, which was a poor and oppressive place. The novel talks a lot about this story. From the fear of returning home, but also how to lose yourself transforms and helps you evolve. And the need to lose the fear of fear. This feeling is repeated a lot, and the man in black tries to make him see that he does not have to be so afraid, that he must trust his own imagination.

How important do you think, for a person, have this “man dressed in black” as a witness or interlocutor of the internal life and the historical moment he lives?

Martín Gaite wrote the essay The Interlocutor’s searcha great contribution to the thought. He argues that we write for someone, that there is no knowledge without communication and that we need someone to ask us, to be disturbed, to do not settle for the answers … Destined the sociability by convention, the relations maintained only by protocol. He believed they had to be alive and lead us to unknown or feared places. Over time, in his work, he expanded this idea of ​​an interlocutor. Into The restlessness of the There is still this male weight, a man who indoctrinates, but also validated. Later the figure of the friend also appears, or even the interlocution between living and dead: missing people who are still references.

Into The restlessness of the We often talk about the therapeutic power of writing. What did the adaptation of this work contribute personally?

The gaite universe is so vast that I still discover it. What inspires me most is his vitality. Despite the passage of time and the great pains of life – such as the death of his daughter Marta – I admire how he made the commitment to writing a way of responding to these pains. This ability to evolve by Martín Gaite is very inspiring to the future.

In recent seasons we have seen many novels adapted to the theater. What do you think the theater brings to these literary plays?

As I said Italo Calvino into Why read the classicsa classic is one that we will never read. When we see it transformed, as in a theatrical adaptation, we find new textures, new meanings. In addition, theater is a shared ritual. This validity manifests itself in how the public connects with a book that he believed to know. In the case ofThe restlessness of thewhich has been on tour for some time, we have seen that it is not such a regular reading. But after seeing the play, many people are curious to read it. For me, she is one of her masterpieces, and I always recommend her when asked where to start with Gaite.

“Martín Gaite was a pioneer in vindicating the popular, the child, what is considered smaller”

What would you say was Carmen Martín Gaite pioneer?

She was a pioneer in the state in vindicating the popular, childish, which is often considered smaller since cultural prestige. When you look at the small one: the altar, the children’s games, the songs, the tales of fairy … and from this to build thought, rehearsals, hybrid novels, collages, notebooks … She was a writer very open to forms and genres, and without prejudice. There is often too important to prestige, there is a lot of fear of ridicule, sentimentality. In the cultural world, we are often afraid to be called cheesy, and she was brave in this regard. And of course, I find it a pioneer of self -fiction – although it is a problematic term, because I think that almost all literature is self -fiction. He was almost never explicitly autobiographical, but he did transform personal experiences into fiction.

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