La Rambla Sunday afternoon

I think I’ve reached that stage where I’m just about sick of the play. (English phrases become more interesting when you spend most of your life speaking Spanish). I want it to open now, not in another ten days. The actors know what they’re doing. I don’t want to alter things much because I don’t want to upset their rhythm, but at the same time I do want to alter it, because otherwise the process of discovery, the work, dries up. Running the play is necessary, but we don’t have sufficient time to do a run and then work later. Maybe we shall next week. And it’s now that my lack of practice as a director seems to feel more of a handicap. I’m not used to this stage, the final part of the process when you have to ready the ship before launching it.

Actors-wise, it seems to me that what all three need now is an audience, the oxygen of the moment. There was talk the other day of getting a group of 30 people or so to come and watch a preview, but I’m not keen on the idea, which seems like neither one thing nor another. The actors want to run the play and run it again, but this seems in part a symptom of cautiousness, wanting to feel secure. I don’t know. I’m hungover and a bit jaded today. It’s beautiful, the sky sheer blue, the temperature in the mid twenties. As I write I’m looking out at the Rio Plata, a queue of ships lined up on the horizon, waiting to come into port. People promenading, sun-bathing, generally chilling out. Claudia is rigging lights in the theatre, and I am due to go back there in an hour or so.

Yesterday we did a run mid-afternoon, with most of the technical team in attendance. I’m going to get fed up of writing ‘the run was OK’. It was, but it gave me little pleasure. Or rather, I can barely remember it now, 24 hours later. It was a run. Es todo.

Earlier in the day I gave the last of the four workshops. We improvised three playlets from the Anglo-Uruguayan theatre of cruelty. The last of the three, a sordid tale of familial disintegration, was great.

On which note, I went last night to see Ramiro’s play, Mi Munequita (My Little Doll) at the Solis. Written again by Gabriel Calderon, who was also acting in it. It’s a high tempo, vividly theatrical tale, also dealing with familial disintegration. Ramiro’s direction was assured, precise, and so full of life the play was almost bursting at the seams. The play itself, only an hour long, had a wicked sense of humour and a chaotic dexterity.

Afterwards I joined Ramiro and his cast at Santa Catalina, my favourite bar, seated outside, the sea a block away, the place itself a sea of energetic sociability, attended to by two middle aged but hyperactive mozos. (The night Anibal and I went there, the two mozos, one of whom wears black, the other white, got into a fight.) I spoke to Gabriel, who has been invited by the Royal Court to write a play for them in July. He told me about his dealings with their literary department. The play he wants to write mixes up Extra Terrestrials with the dictatorship, a premise which appealed to me. The Court are all for the Dictatorship, but less keen on the aliens. Gabriel pointed out to them that there have been at least 20 Uruguayan plays dealing solely with the Dictatorship, and it’s no longer the most exciting topic for a young writer. Someone at the Court expressed surprise there had been so many, and that none had come to their attention, so he sent them a list of 20 plays for their information. He is the prodigy of Uruguayan drama, and acted beautifully in his play to boot.

The night passed by with actors telling me about their film scripts, a young sociologist with an American accent talking to me about life in Denver, and a host of actors, writers etc coming and going. It gradually disintegrated a process enhanced by Ramiro and I, for the second night running, moving on to grappa and limon at some undefined moment. Most of the crowd had left by 3, although the bar was still heaving, but Ramiro and I ploughed on until 5. These things happen. When you get past three in the morning, five comes round before you’ve barely had time to blink.



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