The Watusi myth returns to explain the Barcelona of the margins
After a few years combining own projects with commissions, the director and playwright Ivan Moralesraised in 2024 an idea he had for years. The challenge is not simple: to adapt to the theater The day of the Watusia monumental and complex novel of a thousand pages that Francisco Casavella had conceived as a single book (although it was published in three volumes). This great novel of the transition, from the 1970s to the early 1990s, shook the Barcelona literary landscape by revealing what was hidden under the carpet of the triumphalist account of prosperity.
The adaptation, which has received the Critics’ Awards 2024 for best show, best drama and best direction for Ivan Moralesreturns to the Billboard with a cast consisting of Anna Alarcón Juan, Eduard Alves, Guillem Balart, Artur Busquets, David Climent, Raquel Ferri i Vanessa Segura.
the protagonist, Fernando Atienzais a survivor who seeks life from the social margins. For Morales, this character “is a modern version ofthe roguehe’s too stunned to know what’s going on, he’s an outcast who reads the world from the only fable he’s ever believed in: the Watusi fable.” The character of the neighborhood prankster who wants to climb social positions has been compared to the pijoaparte of Juan Marséand Morales emphasizes that al Watusi “there is the pijoaparte but also dragon ballthe history of the Transition, pop culture, Somorrostro, manga, Brighton 64, Pujol, Sisa, the assault on the Central Bank, the punks or José Feliciano”. Marsé, not fond of praise, let it be said that Casavellawho died of a heart attack at the age of 45, was one of the most talented fiction writers of his generation and, above all, he had a universe of his own.
Francisco Casavella, year 2008. Image: Lisbeth Salas (El País)
“For some time I felt the need to articulate a collective scenic account of our recent history from a non-hegemonic perspective,” explains Morales. “I had been in love with Casavella’s work for some time and reading this particular book infected me with his feverish ambition”. The director has tried to be as faithful as possible to the soul of the book, being aware that every adaptation involves some betrayal. “This is ours Watusiwe dialogue with him from who we are now and from the scenic and dramaturgical language,” he says. “There are so many possible theatrical adaptations of Watusi as readers the book has had.” Morales has worked with the commitment to bring the novel to the stage with as sincere a perspective as possible.
“There are as many possible theatrical adaptations of ‘Watusi’ as the book has had readers”
In the novel, music and dance act as avenues of intoxication and mystical research, and this dimension is also key to the show. “The music is constantly present,” explains the director, “either to accompany the characters emotionally, to define the scenic artefact itself, to provide rhythm, to turn the theatrical ritual into a party, or even to help deepen the more religious dimension of the characters’ journey.” The adaptation features live music from Los Bravos, The Surfing Sirles, ABBA, Bob Dylan, Radio Futuraamong others.
Bringing to the theater a cult novel that has influenced an entire generation of readers and writers is risky, but the director’s greatest fear would be to make a work “very faithful, but very boring… The novel is unsurpassed, the play must be something else, I don’t like reverential theater at all.” The main theme of the adaptation is the protagonist’s search for roots and the attempt to understand the traumatic episode that obsessed him.
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