There was a play that La Perla 29 had wanted to do again for a long time, but always kept putting it off. With the celebration of its 20th anniversary, the theater company has found the moment to revive Els ulls de l'etern germà, the first one they performed, but without overthinking it or giving it too much importance. "We were very surprised to see that the way we do it is very similar. We are just 20 years older," explains its director, Oriol Broggi.
With Els ulls de l'etern germà, the theater company takes the opportunity to tell a story, without great artifice and letting the story fill an almost bare stage. They narrate the life of Virata, an implacable warrior until he unknowingly kills his brother. "It's a very pure work and there's little artifice or you see it a lot when it's built," Broggi indicates, entrusting everything to words, light, and music. Only three actors are needed to tell it, and one is with the guitar accompanying the other two, who alternate the roles of narrator, protagonist, and secondary characters.
"What we like is to tell the story with the minimum of resources and the maximum of emotions," Broggi maintains. The director compares his creative process to Alberto Giacometti's sculptures, in which the Italian would discard excess material until only a lanky essence remained. "In rehearsals, the same thing happens: there are chairs and sofas, and you remove them. Objects should not cover the emotion," he defends, "everything is small, you see the beginning and the end, but not in an industrial way but in an artisanal way."
Broggi thus synthesizes the way La Perla 29 works, which was already materialized the first time they brought Virata to life, when a group of young actors decided to shape their short careers. "We had been doing theater together for a while, but it was in 2003 when we constituted ourselves as a company. We wanted a structure that would allow us to live and be strong enough," he recalls. The original cast of Els ulls de l'etern germà has maintained almost all its pieces, with Marc Serra and Òscar Muñoz, replacing Bruno Oro with Xavier Ripoll.
"We have been going around in circles, but we are where we were," deepens the director, who points to the premieres of Antígona and Incendis as the best moments of all these years, contrasted with the solitude received by the productions of Al nostre gust and Els cors purs. Not only has an aesthetic been built, but also a sustainable way of managing the company, even adding its own space, in the Biblioteca de Catalunya, something unthinkable when they started performing in the Sala Beckett of Gràcia, now disappeared. "We have always done what we liked to do," summarizes the director. Now, having come of age, Broggi encourages new voices to come closer so as not to lose the strength of the first time. After Els ulls de l'etern germà, which will be seen until March 19, they will premiere Coralina. La serventa amorosa in June.