One good day, playwright Iván Morales stumbled upon an evangelical mass. He was directing Stefan Zweig's La partida d'escacs at the Romea. On Sundays, they had to do it later because the theater was occupied during its usual schedule. One day, he arrived early and saw the stalls packed to the brim. Electric guitars were playing as if it were a concert, with the audience completely devoted, vibrating, much more animated than those attending his performance. "It made me very envious, they really filled the theater," he says. That was the spark he found to tackle the mammoth adaptation of El día del Watusi (Anagrama), the acclaimed novel about the Barcelona of the nameless during the transition by Francisco Casavella. A reference title for "all those who lacked a generational novel that explained to them where their city came from," which has given birth to great watusianos like Enrique Vila-Matas or Carlos Zanón, all of them, with every August 15th marked in red on their calendar.
So Morales wanted to turn the complicated performance into almost a religious act, like all those masses he began to frequent since he saw the first one at the Romea, attending as an infiltrator, although no one said anything to him because "it is the house of God." In his case, the Bible was replaced by Casavella's novel, with a copy parading across the stage of the Lliure de Gràcia during the almost four hours the play lasts. It is none other than the one that has accompanied Morales during the six years he has dedicated to bringing the project to life, completely handled and marked as can be seen from the seat, passing through the different hands of a choral cast made up of Enric Auquer, Guillem Balart, David Climent, Bruna Cusí, Raquel Ferri, Vicenta Ndongo, and Xavi Sáez. Special mention for Enric Auquer and Guillem Balart in the first act, where Auquer shows one of his many faces, as he has already done in titles as different as Vida perfecta and El maestro que prometió el mar. Also for the Machiavellian Xavi Saéz in the second act and the intense and decisive Raquel Ferri in the third.
The playwright was captivated by the story of Fernando Atienza, a kid who grows up and survives among delinquents in the shacks of Montjuïc, banished with the promise of social ascent from the former Francoist leaders who had to find new masks to continue ruling, a deception like any other in the pre-Olympic city, followed by the collective frustration of magazine dreams. "When I got to El día del Watusi, Francis's ambition to articulate the story of a Barcelona that had hardly been represented, that of those who had not been able to write history but had been part of it, even if they had been treated as extras, never as protagonists, ended up infecting me," recalls Morales, who had discovered the author with El secreto de las fiestas (Anagrama) and, when he was an actor, by reading some of his scripts for which he auditioned.
As an act of militancy with which to "make the collective narrative more diverse," the director began the long journey of bringing a novel of almost 900 pages to the stage and being the first to do so. Half of the time was spent on the adaptation, in which he had to overcome the fear of betraying Casavella to be able to assemble a theatrical text, merging those characters that allowed it, discarding what was not necessary, as well as reading the text with the actors, especially with the protagonist, Enric Auquer, and extending the rehearsals to finish polishing it. In addition, live music becomes a fundamental piece to make the text flow better, recalling that shepherdess Morales once heard who said "here we come to pray with our hands, feet, head, and whole body" and wanting to make the spectators mentally dance even if they remained in their seats. For this, some actors have learned to play instruments, such as Cusí the keyboard and Climent the cajón.
All "to avoid doing a two-day work" that ended up lasting almost four hours, with two breaks included, something unusual in the billboard that worries spectators when they sit for the first time in their seats, thinking if they will endure so long, calculating if they will have time to go to the bathroom, have something to drink or go out for some air, but they end up mimicking the cast, perhaps because they have no other option, but, yes, then they end up having the strength to get up and applaud. "There's a point of madness," Morales acknowledges, knowing that this has meant being very demanding in rehearsals, measuring every word and movement, also thinking that the actors had to stand for a long time.
Now that there are few days left to see El día del Watusi, until next Sunday, May 5, Morales does not know if they will go on tour or repeat next season, considering that they sold out all tickets before the curtain went up for the first time. "If we find an easy way to do it, I will be delighted," remarks the director, who is already satisfied with "having hunted the white whale" and having come as far as they have, encountering many difficulties and reticence over the years that he battled to bring his adaptation forward. What is contemplated more easily is to turn it into a series, with the audiovisual world being a field he has already touched as a screenwriter in Juanjo Sáez's Heavies tendres.