Beyond the local: Sergi Belbel and Forasters

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Notes

1. A shorter version of this article, written in Catalan, was published as ‘Forasters de Sergi Belbel: contingut i estructura’, in 1 Simposi Internacional sobre teatre català contemporani: de la transició a l'actualitat (Barcelona: Diputació de Barcelona/Institut del Teatre, 2005), pp. 219–234.

2. Belbel is an Associate Director of the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico – the Spanish equivalent to the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Comédie Française, although a much younger company formed only in the 1980s. He has also directed for Spain's de facto National Theatre, the Centro Dramático Nacional.

3. For further details on the translation of Belbel's work into English, including the reception of English-language productions, see John London, ‘Contemporary Catalan Drama in English: Some Aspirations and Limitations’, published on pp. 453–462 of this issue of CTR.

4. Francisco Javier Puchades, ‘Renovación teatral en España entre 1984–1998 desde la escritura dramática: puesta en escena y recepción crítica' (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Valencia, 2005), p. 72.

5. Introduction to José Sanchis Sinisterra, Ñaque/¡Ay, Carmela! (Madrid: Cátedra, 1993), 3rd edn, pp. 11–101 (p. 11).

6. Maria M. Delgado and David George, ‘Sergi Belbel (1963–)’, in Mary Parker (ed.), Modern Spanish Dramatists: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook (Westport: Greenwood, 2002), pp. 75–85 (p. 77).

7. See Puchades, ‘Renovación teatral en España entre 1984–1998 desde la escritura dramática', p. 87.

8. Sergi Belbel, En companyia d'abisme i altres obres, Els Llibres de l'Escorpí: Teatre/El Galliner, 116 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1990), p. 24.

9. Puchades refers to ‘la violencia duplícita de todo acto comunicativo’ (the duplicitous violence of every communicative act). See Puchades, ‘Renovación teatral en España entre 1984–1998 desde la escritura dramática', p. 30.

10. Mòbil, directed by Lluís Pasqual and premiered at Barcelona's Teatre Lliure in January 2007, has been subjected to a more hostile reception by Barcelona critics than probably any other Belbel play. See, for example, Marcos Ordóñez, ‘Sin cobertura: Puro teatro’, El País[Babelia supplement] (20 January 2007), p. 21.

11. This play marks the change in direction from the more abstract earlier period to plays set in a recognizable social milieu; it is what Puchades calls an ‘obra bisagra’ (‘hinge’ play). See Puchades, ‘Renovación teatral en España entre 1984–1998 desde la escritura dramática', p. 13.

12. For further details, see Delgado and George, ‘Sergi Belbel (1963–)’, pp. 84–85.

13. Sergi Belbel, Forasters, Col.lecció TNC (Barcelona: Proa, 2004), p. 27. Subsequent references to the Catalan version of the play are to this edition, and are given in parenthesis after quotations in the main body of the text.

14. Sergi Belbel, Strangers, trans. Sharon G. Feldman, in Sharon Feldman and Marion Peter Holt (eds), Barcelona Plays (New York: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center/Theatre Communications Group 2007). Subsequent references to the English version of the play are to this edition and are given in parenthesis after quotations in the main body of the text. Please note that the page numbers given refer to the manuscript and not to pages in the published edition that was unavailable at the time of preparing this article. A further unpublished English translation of the play, titled Blow-Ins is also in circulation. This is the title of the play given by Buffery in her article, ‘The “Placing of Memory” in Contemporary Catalan Theatre’, on pp. 385–397 of this issue of CTR.

15. Sergi Belbel, Carícies, Els Llibres de l'Escorpí: Teatre/El Galliner, 127 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1992), p. 72. The Catalan film director, Ventura Pons, brilliantly conveys the tenderness of this scene in his film version of the play (1997). For a more detailed comparison of the stage and film versions of the work, see David George, ‘From Stage to Screen: Sergi Belbel and Ventura Pons’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, 27:2 (2002), 89–102. For Pons's adaptations of Catalan dramatic texts, see Phyllis Zatlin's article in this issue of CTR, ‘From Stage to Screen: The Adaptations of Ventura Pons’, 434–445.

16. Sergi Belbel, Caresses, trans. John London, in Elyse Dodgson and Mary Peate (eds), Spanish Plays: New Spanish and Catalan Drama (London: Nick Hern, 1999), pp. 1–54 (p. 54).

17. ‘Con un determinismo a la manera de Zola […] Belbel despliega dos épocas y escenarios’ (With a Zolaesque determinism […] Belbel unfolds two epochs and two stages). See S. Doria, ‘Los espejos de Belbel y la ley de la herencia’, ABC (24 September, 2004), p. 82.

18. Maria M. Delgado, ‘Forum 2004 Barcelona: A Summer of Stagings in Spain's Theatrical Capital’, Western European Stages, 16:3 (2004), 71–84 (p. 83).

19. A more detailed study of this feature in recent Catalan theatre is Helena Buffery's article in this issue of CTR, ‘The “Placing of Memory” in Contemporary Catalan Theatre’, 385–397.

20. T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’, in Four Quartets, 3rd edn (London: Faber & Faber, 1968), p. 13.

21. ‘The two works are, however, quite different in their presentation of different time frames. Belbel juxtaposes events separated by forty years in remarkably fluid alternating scenes, while each of the three acts of Buero's work represents a different time in the history of the neighbours on one floor of a Madrid residential building. Also, Buero set his drama in the space outside the apartments, with the stair landing providing on occasion a more intimate locale; Forasters is set in a single apartment, where noises intrude from the apartment above and its inhabitants (the immigrants of the city) enter when the plot requires'. Marion P. Holt, ‘Three New Productions at Barcelona's TNC and a Theme in Common’, Western European Stages, 17:1 (2005), 15–18 (p. 16). Another critic who has mentioned the Buero play in connection with Forasters is Delgado, ‘Forum 2004 Barcelona’, p. 83.

22. Maria M. Delgado has noted this similarity. She also detects parallels between Forasters and Ibsen's Ghosts, the plays of Eugene O'Neill and, above all, Le Retour au désert, by Bernard-Marie Koltès; see Delgado, ‘Forum 2004 Barcelona’, p. 83.

23. For further details on this latter production, see David George, ‘A Young Lad in the Arms of an Old Man – Sergi Belbel Directs [Agrave]ngel Guimerà's La filla del mar (The Daughter of the Sea)’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 7:4 (1998), 45–64.

24. Two useful studies of Koltès are David Bradby, ‘Introduction’, in Bernard-Marie Koltès, Plays: 1, ed. David Bradby (London: Methuen 1997), pp. xv–xlvi, and David Bradby and Maria M. Delgado, ‘Introduction’, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Plays: 2, eds David Bradby and Maria M. Delgado (London: Methuen 2004), pp. xv–liv.

25. Carles Batlle, ‘Contemporary Catalan Drama: Between the Desert and the Promised Land’, in this issue of CTR, 416–424 (p. 423).

26. Belbel himself is from a family of Andalusians who emigrated to Catalonia, and is very much aware of the dynamics of the immigrant situation.

27. Delgado and Bradby's observation on Belbel's 2002 production of Koltès's Quai ouest seems equally applicable to Forasters: ‘Belbel never tried to fix the ambiguities of Koltès's play, and while the suggestion may have been that these were immigrants to Catalonia, Cécile's recourse to Quechua at the end of the play presented a more complex scenario’. Bradby and Delgado, ‘Introduction’ to Plays II, p. xlvii).

28. This is a familiar theme in Bernard-Marie Koltès's plays, for instance in Dans la solitude des champs de coton, which Belbel translated and directed in 1995.

29. The theory is developed by Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, in The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001). Sykes claims that there are seven mitochondrial lineages for modern Europeans, deriving from what he calls seven ‘clan mothers’, each of which corresponds to one (or more) human mitochondrial haplogroups, and all sharing a common ancestor, the so-called Mitochondrial Eve. Belbel explained to me that he had the Seven Daughters of Eve theory in mind for the three generations of female characters in Forasters (interview with the author in April 2005).

30. The play may be read in an English translation by Sharon G. Feldman in John London and David George (eds), Modern Catalan Plays (London: Methuen, 2000), pp. 175–238.

31. See, for example, Gonzalo Pérez de Olaguer, ‘Un Belbel social y de alta precisión’, Guía del Ocio (24 September 2004).