Ten years ago, Clara Sanchis and María Ruiz had an idea: to bring Virginia Woolf's voice to the stage. But they wanted to do it as faithfully as possible to the text, with its irony, with the humor that transcends words, and with the powerful message that stirs consciences. Since then, A Room of One's Own has been programmed in different theaters in Madrid and, five years ago, even sold out at the Sala Beckett because, as Clara rightly says, "It's a play that sells out."
I meet her at the Teatre Raval bar. She arrives with her suitcase, commuting between Madrid and Barcelona, to continue bringing Woolf's voice to today's audience. We sit down, look at each other, smile, and start talking.
— You premiered A Room of One's Own ten years ago. When you put the show together, did you imagine it would have this journey?
— Not at all. The story of this performance is beautiful; it's the chronicle of a small (or great) success. It's now celebrating a decade, which is why we've returned to it. In fact, we're performing it simultaneously in Madrid and Barcelona; last Sunday I didn't have a performance here because I was acting at the Teatro del Barrio.
Although we were at the Beckett in Barcelona five years ago, we premiered it ten years ago. In Madrid, we've already been through six theaters and have toured. María Ruiz (director and adapter) and I ventured alone into the danger of bringing to the stage a text we admired and that had changed our lives. I had just left the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico, and we were looking for a project together. One morning I had a revelation: A Room of One's Own had not been adapted for the theater. We saw that it had an intrinsic theatricality because, at its core, it's a lecture that Virginia Woolf fabricates giving to the first British university women.
We launched without production, which gave us enormous freedom. Miguel del Arco welcomed us to the Ambigú del Pavón Kamikaze, a very small space. We started with few performances at strange times, but tickets quickly sold out. The show has continued to fill theaters ever since, to our great surprise. Since we had no commitment other than artistic, we decided to keep Virginia Woolf's text almost pure, respecting its initial complexity. We reduced the six chapters of the book to four, but we respected the essence.
I thought: "If this book caused me a sleepless night, if we manage to convey its words well on stage, it has to work." If something moves you and you transmit it truthfully, the same effect occurs in the audience. And so it was. From Kamikaze we went to Teatro Español, then we went to La Beckett —where everything sold out before it even started— and this demand is what has brought us back.
The story of this play is beautiful, it is the chronicle of a small (or great) success.
— You mentioned that first nocturnal reading. What impacted you the most?
— I had abandoned the book several times, as happens to many people, because its first thirty pages are complex. But it attracted me. One night on tour in a hotel, with no other book at hand and with insomnia, I crossed that barrier. Suddenly everything made sense and I understood why it hurt me so much: you realize that every human being carries the marks of the past in their psyche and in their body.
These marks of historical mistreatment of women are there, both in the unconscious and in everyday life. Reading the book after thirty, I understood a doubt that haunted me in my adolescence as a pianist: "Why do I never play a female composer? Why wasn't there a Brahms or a Beethoven?" When I got to the chapter about Shakespeare's sister, I understood everything. If Shakespeare had had a sister with his same talent, she wouldn't even have been able to leave the house or take care of the horses at the theater door. It was revealing.
I was also struck by her audacity in linking women and money, something key to independence. And, of course, how she explains the mechanisms of inequality through her sense of humor and her famous law of the mirror: "Women have served for centuries as mirrors endowed with the magical and vicious power of reflecting the figure of man by doubling his natural size."
— In adapting the work, you reduced the six chapters to four. What criteria did you follow to prune the text?
— It was a goldsmith's work by María Ruiz. There is not a single word that is not by Virginia Woolf. We maintained the difficulty of the first 20 minutes, where the audience struggles to get their bearings, because if we removed it, we would eliminate the delicacy of the text and turn it into a pamphlet.
You realize that every human being carries the marks of the past in their psyche and in their body.
— How do you manage to captivate the spectator from the beginning?
— Dissecting very well what she explains. Virginia starts from the infinitesimal detail (like the difference between the menu of a male faculty and a female one, or calling all women "Mary") to reach the universal. We try to illuminate these details and lean on the irony of the text. María Ruiz had the lucidity to focus on Woolf's sense of humor, a radical humor that sometimes goes unnoticed.
— Was it hard for you to act with irony when dealing with such tough topics?
— The sense of humor does not exclude harshness; on the contrary, we need it to address the most difficult. As Vicky Peña said in a colloquium, the laughter in this play celebrates Virginia Woolf's intelligence. Humor has been a subtle tool for women to expose the barbarities of history with the utmost realism.
The sense of humor does not exclude harshness; on the contrary.
— Do "Shakespeare's sisters" still exist today without the opportunity to shine?
— Of course. Centuries of history are not reversed in a hundred years. To think that we have overturned something so inoculated in such a short time is unrealistic. There are millions of women in the world without basic rights; we are among the first generations with access to education and economic independence. Inequality is a poison for everyone. Although there is a lack of role models and economic power continues to be overwhelmingly masculine, we are beginning to tell our own story.
Inequality is a poison for everyone.
— After ten years of performing the play, has your vision of Virginia Woolf changed?
It is such a rich text that you never stop discovering nuances. Over time, María and I have gained maturity and acting technique. In this re-stage, we have dared to further enhance its sense of humor. The situations it narrates are already tragic in themselves, there is no need to emphasize the drama.
— The absolute respect you have for the original stands out.
— This is the secret to the success of this production: fidelity and admiration for Virginia Woolf. We only intend to transmit her thought with the greatest possible truth.
— The press release talks about the "encounter of Virginia Woolf with the 21st-century audience." What does it consist of?
— It arises naturally. The interesting thing is not to update the text, but to confront a thought from 1928 with today's spectator. This clash stimulates the mind and gives the spectator freedom to analyze what resonates today in their body and in their life.
— Does a male audience attend the play?
— Yes. Although the theater audience is usually predominantly female, many young women and also many men, including young men, come to this performance, which is vital because theater needs generational renewal.
— The book states that woman is "the most discussed animal in the universe." What do you think this is due to?
— To the fact that the vision of women has historically been formulated by men. They discussed us because they spoke in our place; they lacked the essential data: the female voice.
— In the production, you also play the piano and interpret Bach. What does his music bring to Woolf's words?
— We needed to separate the four chapters. We tried Romanticism or Impressionism, but they took the performance to a too dense or sentimental territory. Bach's baroque is exciting but transparent, crystalline, and mathematical. It accompanies without overwhelming and allows the emotions of the text to breathe without falling into melodrama.
— Is there any audience reaction that you particularly remember?
— Many women stay to wait for me at the end to give me a hug. It's not for me, but for the commotion of having understood things about their own lives. Despite its harshness, the performance has a lot of light: Virginia Woolf spurs you on, encourages you, and reminds you of the impact you can have in the future.
Virginia Woolf spurs you on, encourages you, and reminds you of the impact you can have in the future.
— If you could have coffee with Virginia Woolf, what would you tell her?
— First, I would try to hide from her how bad many things are in the world, although she would know it perfectly well... But, I would simply thank her and invite her to coffee to show her that I understood the importance of economic independence.
— And where do you find your "room of one's own" today?
In nature. It was a fundamental refuge for Virginia Woolf and it is for me. In a hyperconnected world full of artifice, nature brings me back to reality and puts me in my place.