New Spanish Playwriting Season II

We are thrilled to be able to show you the best New Spanish Playwrights in both Spanish and English in the heart of London. Join us for exciting performances and celebrate Spanish speaking culture!

Supported by Acción Cultural Española.

A Body Somewhere / Un Cuerpo en Algún Lugar 

29th May 2018  in Spanish
30th May 2018  in English

PLAYWRIGHT – Gon Ramos

Translated by Kate Eaton

Cast and Creative Team

Spanish: Fran Cantos, Luis Sorrolla
English: Jaime Menéndez, Josh Hull

Director: Gon Ramos
Costume Designer: Panamá Diáz
Lighting Designer: Fernando Benito

The play is about a search for love, one love, a restless search over the years, through cities, fires, and trains. Nowadays where everything demands to be instant, this play suggests a break with these rules and questions the time needed to find the inevitable. It takes us into the mind and encounters with “He”, who starts a journey in search of “that person”. We do not talk about Penelope, waiting such a long time, we do not talk about Ulysses, returning home, we speak only of a search heading forwards and only of that one body that we feel has the ability to save us.

Gon Ramos

Playwright
Currently splits his professional activity between Madrid and Buenos Aires. Has been trained as an actor first at the “Laboratorio William Layton” followed by Claudio Tolcachir’s Timbre 4 whilst as a playwright he trained with, amongst others, Alberto Conejero, Paco Bezerra, Maria Velasco and Mauricio Kartún. He has directed various creative performances at both sides of the Atlantic, acting as assistant director in various works in Buenos Aires. As a teacher, he runs Actor Training and Creative courses in both cities. As an author and director, his debut work was ‘Yogur/Piano”, which won the prize for best playwright (Premio Godoff) and was shown at the Corral de Comedias de Alcalá and the Centro Dramático Nacional. At the same time, ‘Un cuerpo en algún lugar’ was shown at the Pavón Teatro Kamikaze. He was playwright of ‘La Última Noche de Don Juan” (director Carlos Tuñón) at the Festival Clásicos de Alcalá 2017 whilst, with Maria Velasco, cowrote and codirected Petite Morte and Festival Surge.

The Reality / La Realidad

1st June 2018  in Spanish
2nd June 2018 in English

PLAYWRIGHT – Denise Despeyroux

Translated by Sarah Maitland

Cast and Creative Team

Spanish: Maite Jáuregui
English: Beth Lockhart
Director: Raymi Renee
Assistant Director: Imogen Hudson Clayton
Costume Designer: Panamá Diáz
Lighting Designer: Fernando Benito
Video: Elena Molina
Set: STC Production Team

Twin sisters attempt an awkward exercise of pretending to be someone else, taking them close to the line that separates good and evil; the love of life and destruction; lucidity and madness. What do you do to pose as someone inside of you? Can you love the living in the same way that you have love for the dead? Is darkness hindered by light?

Denise Despeyroux

Playwright
Playwright, stage director and graduate in Philosophy. Denise Despeyroux has had more than ten works premiered in theatrical venues in Madrid, Barcelona, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, including Cuarta Pared, Teatro Fernán Gómez, Sala Beckett, Teatro San Martín and Teatro Solís. She has won several awards and recognitions, such as the 2005 Federico García Lorca Award for her first adaptation. Her work La Realidad was a finalist for the 2013 Max Revelation Prize and she won two nominations for the 2014 Max Awards: Best Playwright and Best Actress (Fernanda Orazi). In 2015, she was yet again a candidate for Best Playwright for Carne viva, which was selected as Best Work in the Off circuit according to El Mundo and has had a two year run.

An American Life / Una Vida Americana

4th June 2018 in Spanish
5th June 2018  in English

PLAYWRIGHT – Lucía Carballal

Translated by William Gregory

Cast and Creative Team

Spanish: Gledys Ibarra, Candela Gómez, Sandra Fergadi, Joan Carles Suau
English: Moir Leslie, Becky Black, Adela Leiro, Michael Timney

Director: Lilac Yosiphon
Costume Designer: Panamá Diáz
Lighting Designer: Fernando Benito
Set: STC Production Team

The action takes place in the present day on a camping site outside Minneapolis. Linda can be seen there standing next to a rented caravan, accompanied by her mother, Paloma, and her little sister Robin Rose. They have travelled all the way to the USA for a re-encounter with Warren, an American, who Paloma fell in love with in the 80s, and who is father to the two daughters. Warren promised them the American life but abandoned them without leaving a trace of his existence.

Lucía Carballal

Playwright
Note from the playwright: I have been writing ever since I can remember. At the age of 18 I wrote my first play for a theatre group while at University and things started to get serious from there. I left my course in Hispanic Philology and Political Sciences to study Dramaturgy at the Royal School of Dramatic Arts in Madrid (RESAD). My professor there, Juan Mayorga, set the bar very high. Then I started traveling. I wanted to feel foreign and to discover theatre elsewhere. I moved to Barcelona, lived like a Catalan for three years, and finished my degree there at the Institut del Teatre. Then I went to Berlin and I continued studying at the University of the Arts. In 2013 I returned to my home city of Madrid from where I also write feature films as well as plays. I’ve had great writing masters, but the ones I’ve learned from the most have been the actors and directors I’ve worked with.