Szpunberg. Szpunberg. Szpunberg. Remember: the “Z” goes between the initial “S” and the “P”, and it is not pronounced. Neither “spunberg” nor “spunzberg” or “spunbergz”. Szpunberg. The paternal surname is the first and inescapable sign of identity of an author who is experiencing a very sweet period. And completely deserved. The playwright, director and teacher Victoria Szpunberg is the second Catalan Viva author who premieres a text in the Gran Room of the National Theater of Catalonia, after Lluïsa Cunillé. She is also the first Catalan Viva author who directs her own text in the TNC Gran Room. It should be remembered that, right now, the two public theaters in Barcelona host, in their respective large rooms, two productions written and directed by women:, at the Teatre Lliure, and The third leak by Victoria Szpunberg, at TNC. Catalonia, always at the forefront.
Szpunberg has been teaching, teaching for years and workshops, signs dramaturgies and releases texts of all kinds. In the classrooms of the Beckett Room Dramaturgy Obrador is one of the most claimed teachers, and his initiation workshops in writing are already a classic. Like Juliet, the (partial) protagonist of The third leakSzpunberg is not defined as an artist or an intellectual, but as a worker. After years and work locks, its fruits have been more colorful in recent times: The weight of a body In the Small Room of the TNC, the booklet of Ready the perduda of high school, Heartbreak In the TNC Workshops Room, in the Free, Volcano to the national dramatic center … and ara, The third leak. In the temporary frame of one year, Szpunberg has seen how The categorical imperative It premiered, exhausted all entries and, in the following months, won a stack of awards: among others, the City of Barcelona Award, the Bachelor’s Best Text Award, the Critics’ Prize for Best Text and the Best Actress for Agata Roca, who at the same time won the Margarida Xirgu Memorial Award for this interpretation. Since we are there: The categorical imperative He will tour Catalonia this spring, and from June 4 he will be performing again at the Teatre Lliure de Gràcia. Notice for sailors: Tickets are already sold out. Here is the drama of contemporary Catalan theater (public).
I talk to Victoria Szpunberg: These are holidays (schoolchildren), but she and her team spend the hours in the dark of the TNC’s big room, finishing the rehearsals. “This room is a transatlantic,” he confesses to me, “but the technicians tell me they see me quite calm.” His colleague Jordi Prat i Coll told him that when they made the leap from the rehearsal room on stage, it was completely essential for them to have the show ready, because the technique crushes everything. At the flags and buses in Barcelona we see the advertising of The third leak With an image of moving: fleeing, running, moving. This is the most ambitious text Szpunberg has ever written: Thirteen performers in a two -hour show. Like a current movie movie in the cinema, on the other hand. The three leaks of the title are based on the family history of the Szpunberg, and are divided into three acts with very specific geographical and temporal frameworks: Ukraine during the 1920’s, Buenos Aires in the seventies and Barcelona of the present. Clara Segura may seem like the main protagonist of this montage, but we are facing a very choral work: all the actors play various roles, and La Segura is one more of this extensive cast of names that may not be family familiar to the general public.
“When the TNC gave me the yes, the first I called were Clara and Carles Pedragosa,” Victoria specifies me. This second, musician and actor, is one of the performers who can surprise all those who do not yet know him. Pedragosa has performed many shows with the Indian Gest (The thrust, Europa Bull, The bad diction…), and last season showed us that he is an excellent actor with the monologue Sisyphus does not do. He has also been involved in the essential Christmas carols of Maldà for a long time, accompanied by the poet Josep Pedrals and the director Iban Beltran. The latter, at the same time, is the assistant director of Szpunberg to The third leakand the author claims his role, a must -see (and often invisible) in such large and complex assemblies.
‘The Third Fuga’ starts from its family history, but here we are in the field of fiction
Asked about the cast, he says he does not know if he has had “good luck or a lot of view”, but he acknowledges that they did many auditions and saw many people. In the Great Room we will see thirteen performers, including three musicians. “They all do everything,” says Szpunberg. “To direct is to surround themselves with powerful people,” continues, and the artistic sheet of The third leak It is the witness. It is also revealing to see how, in recent years, the author has worked with the best actresses of her generation: Laia Marull a The weight of a bodyAgata Roca in The categorical imperative And now, Clara Segura. In this show there are text, music and dances, and many languages are spoken: Ukrainian, Argentine, Hebrew, Russian, idix, French, Portuguese … and Catalan, of course.
From the joy of Klezmer music to the melancholy of tango, from the violin strings to the buttons of the bandoneon, dances and songs also help to tell this “story with a lower case”, as Szpunberg claims. The author has never combined with the one, who has been soaked for years. The third leak It starts from its family history, okay, but here we are in the field of fiction, as the João, the narrator of this epic of forced leaks and exiles, is in charge. Precisely for this reason, while the original idea and direction are Szpunberg, the writing of the text is signed four hands with the writer, playwright and translator. The author of Tsunami o The great replacement (The two published by Angle) is a friend and confidant of the author, and the first person to read his texts. Szpunberg needed an external look at the material he had in his hands, and Pijuan brought him the humor and irony he needed to distance himself from the facts. “In some rehearsals I have cried,” he tells me, as he can’t help but see his grandparents or parents reflected in the stories that appear in The third leak.
The director wants to claim the absolute involvement of her entire team and the enormous generosity of an actress like Clara Segura. The TNC’s big room is not afraid of it: it acknowledges that what costs you the most is to deal with the topics related to light (“I am a little myopic”), but it tells me that he has taken a lighting course with Raimon Rius and attended, as a listener, the first set course of the Institut del Teatre. You will tell me how many “great directors” of Catalan theater have done this (as they signed and charged stage and illuminations). I ask Marc Rosich, playwright, colleague and friend of Szpunberg, to define me in a nutshell. He is very clear: he emphasizes the absolute foul of fear and “the total anarchy” that he practices when it comes to “dramaturgical wins”. “She says she does not make self -fiction, but she always writes from what life offers.” It also did not make him anguish with the genre, “or the parody of the genre”, and is a very instinctive author, who heeds his inner voice. Rosich knows what he is talking The talking machine (Sala Beckett 2007 and 2022, Maldà 2017). “Others believe themselves very modern, but the true modernity of Victoria is that it is thoroughly immersed in theatricality. It has a glance of augmented magnifying glass, while it is carried away by the chaotic instinct of life.” I couldn’t have said better.
Despite the variety of dramas that appear in The third leak “Pogromes, dictatorships, exiles and wars,” the author defends the celebration of life and the practice of humor: “I get even when I don’t want to.” The work has a blatant, beloved impurity, and the mixture of languages is one of its most colorful samples: without going any further, the second act is written and interpreted in Argentine. But you don’t need to worry: a coach In phonetics, he will expressly come from Buenos Aires, he will teach us that the key is always to speak “with an anticipation of eructo”. Only Szpunberg is able to write works where Hannah Arendt is cited (Mundi love) o Immanuel Hundred (The categorical imperative) and at the same time premiere philosophical comedies or dystopias of science fiction. The numerous releases that the author has been linking lately make him evaluate the place he occupies right now in our stage ecosystem, but he also does not fall into the trap of thinking “My God, where I am! Forgiveness to exist!”. After years of military man in alternative and self-managed theater, “counting each entry sold”, Szpunberg is very grateful to find himself turned around the TNC machinery.
The third leak It is dedicated to the exiles of this world, to all those who are forced to leave their countries of origin due to the war, hunger or dictatorships, and to begin again on the other hand. “It is not important here if I explain my life or not,” he says, thanking me for not asking him what is true or lies in this text. The reflections he makes about identity or language are questioning us all, we are Catalans, Argentinians, Jews or human in general. “We are all Afro -descendants,” after all. In these times we live, in which the Catalan right and far right claim an ideal of non-existent purity and reject the immigration that has always defined us, Victoria Szpunberg is planted on the most important stage in Catalonia to say: “Hey, I am also Catalan”. The Szpunberg, our Catalan playwright living with the most cool surname. Remember: the “Z” goes between the initial “S” and the “P”, and it is not pronounced.
