Poetics of the visible and the invisible. Paco Azorín, director and scenographer.

Transcription

1 Poetics of the visible and the invisible. Paco Azorín, director and scenographer. Text by Nieves Pérez-Abad Theatre is an external ally of the spiritual way, and it exists to offer glimpses, inevitably of short duration, of an invisible world that interpenetrates the daily world and is normally ignored by our senses. (Peter Brook from: There Are No Secrets ) Make visible the invisible. To give form to a magnificent new world. Generate. Build in order to shatter preconceptions, that which is already done, already seen and heard. Strip bare. Get right down to the marrow, the core that underpins and permeates an opera or play and from there give birth to a new organism whose nervous system consists of the visible lines of a body that materialises in the scenic space. Play in order to create. Create in order to play. Design, direct, give rise to a form of life. Communicate in the deepest sense of the term. And work, labour, work. Never stifle curiosity. These are the poetics, and the ethics, of Paco Azorín (1974), scenographer and director, but also lighting designer, administrator, producer, professor as well as costume designer and actor at the dawn of hs career. The expression man of the theatre does not entirely include his biography or his completed projects, neither does it include opera, which is substantial for this hyperactive, or rather, hyperproductive creator, as his demeanor is that of a calm and composed man. He retains the self-possession of the creator who knows what he is doing, exploring and living by what he knows and does best. Sharing it with his team. Sharing it with the audience. Communicating. Rigorous and thorough in an enthusiastic self-discipline of work while able to

2 transmit this to his collaborators, making it just as pleasurable for them, in as much as it becomes a stimulating experience for all concerned and a challenge: for the actor, the singer, but also the producer, even the journalist, the stage manager, the carpenter, the box office employee or any other person who is in any way involved in his projects. The work is intense, moreover, in the most noble, profound and liberating sense of the word play. Nothing is taken for granted, nor the groundwork completed. He himself points to the source of this inexhaustible energy: The formidable force of the scenario, this no-man s land where anything is possible. He states that he is much more interested in what takes place within the scenario in respect to what happens beyond that space. He confesses that when designing for the stage I feel that I am free, I can take flight, I can travel through time. If I didn t have a set design near me, I would suffocate and die. He has often quoted a phrase etched on a marble bas-relief by Josep Maria Subirachs: What you see is a glimpse of the invisible. He was deeply struck the first time he read it in the airport that houses this sculpture. He affirms that, with the passing of time, this heretical phrase has come to exert influence on his vision of theatre and the space in which it is contained: The scenic space is, by definition, a no-man s land. Everything that we put within it ends up being the materialisation of an infinitely greater world, which remains hidden from the spectators' view, and that it is the authentic universe that we want to reveal and demystify. From this we can deduce the metonymic nature of the scenic arts in general and of scenography, as I intend it, in particular. His age and youthfulness are surprising when confronted with the number of completed projects: over two hundred and fifty stage designs for opera, theatre, dance and musical productions. Since 2007, the staging of drama and opera in scenarios of the highest level are to be added, in Spain and beyond, even though he started out and continues in the role of director for over two decades. Paco Azorín s period of training took place at the Istitut del Teatre, in Barcelona where he studied Scenography and Stage Directing. Long before this, an inclination for opera inherited from his grandfather, who played the clarinet and owned countless recordings of operas and Spanish operettas (zarzuelas), crystallized in child s play that was to be the source of his future profession: building with Maria biscuit tins scale models for opera sets. Another childhood penchant: not seeing but rather devouring, the broadcasting of operas from the Liceu de Barcelona high school on the old Channel 2 of Televisión Española. At the age of five or six he already knew that he wanted to devote himself to this profession; at twelve he had already formed his first theatre groups and at sixteen he was already directing. When he arrived at the Istitut del Teatre, one of its most distinguished professors, the Catalan stage designer Fabià Puigserver passed away, yet in that same period his figure and his teachings remained very much alive. In fact, there are many who consider Paco Azorín, in some way, his heir. While at the Istitut he met another of its greatest maestros: Iago Pericot, also a scenographer and director. After completing his studies at the Istitut in 1996, the next step was direct access to the profession, prior to and over the course of twenty years as a scenographer and lighting designer and, for the last ten, also as a stage manager. But spanning these two decades, to this list are included other activities that revolve around the scenic arts: director, producer, professor, artistic director of events or set designer for television. Paco Azorín is convinced that vocational training never ends, that one improves day by day in the undertaking and with every project. Research is unflagging, inexhaustible, never-ending. He says: The Schools of Dramatic Arts where we learn the basics are another path to tread, though not the only one and almost always they form the launch pad for a complex training that will last equally as long as our restlessness towards everything that surrounds us. He affirms that he is aware that behind all that he does there is exploration, and he finds almost nothing. It s difficult to say the same when looking at the images of his numerous projects. His entry into the profession came about together with those of whom he considers his mentors: Iago Pericot, Lluis Pasqual and Carme Portaceli, primarily. In 2003, he founded the Festival Shakespeare, in Santa Susanna (Catalonia), there not having been an event with similar characteristics in Spain. He is the director of the first four editions, with the

3 central aim of giving the festival a dual dimension: not only to broaden the public s knowledge of plays by the Bard in Spain, but also to focus primarily on the drama and contemporary production starting from Shakespeare s body of work. That was the riskiest decision which nonetheless turned out to be the most successful. His career and his growing number of projects continue without interruption, as do the occasions in which he is the recipient of an award or a finalist in major scenic arts awards in Spain. In 2012, with Pedro Chamizo, he founded the Metaproducciones theatre company, together with whom he takes on the risk as independent producer and produces Shakespeare s Julius Caesar as it couldn t be otherwise staged at the emblematic scenario of the Festival de Mérida and inaugurated at the Teatro Circo Murcia. With Mario Gas in the role of Julius Caesar, the production really took off in the season in Spain: 120 stagings and over 98,000 spectators nationwide, where it was performed at 18 theatre festivals. These figures become more significant if we consider that the socio-economic crisis, with the Spanish theatre sector particularly hard hit, spiked in that same period. These numbers are very high for an independent producer in times of economic downturn. Theatre critics and audiences alike praised the show. Paco Azorín authored this version as well as the stage design and direction. The company recently embarked on a new high-impact project, Escuadra hacia la muerte (Condemned Squad) byalfonso Sastre, this time co-produced with the Centro Dramático Nacional where it was brought to the stage in Presenting this text with a new and personal vision of the twentieth century proved a challenge, and was again staged to critical and public acclaim. The Metaproducciones theatre company is defined by its mission to generate scenic and musical projects with a clear audiovisual and documentary component. In coherence with the artistic and scenic ideas of both Paco Azorín and its co-founder, Pedro Chimizo, it s all about focussing attention on scenic genres from the perspective of the image, exploiting its capacity to transform reality and as a generator of fiction, exploring the limits between the two. As an opera director and scenographer, his career is solid and sustained. One project generates another. Of special mention are his Tosca at Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and at Teatre de la Maestranza in Seville; Otello at the Festival de Peralada and at the Macerata Opera Festival; Poulenc s La Voix Humaine, with Maria Bayo as the sole performer, at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona; or the immense Salomè, by Richard Strauss, staged to commemorate the fiftieth edition of the legendary Festival de Mérida in The stage design and direction are all by Azorín, as with the premiere of the contemporary opera Maria Moliner by Antoni Parera Fons, performed at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in This was a project by a group of innovators who, together with Paco Azorín, felt the need to vindicate and acknowledge the figure and the work of the creator of the Diccionario de uso del español, a woman in post-war Spain who had to contend with relentless prejudice and a string of power hierachies. After years of gestation and a formidable debut, the project was awarded with the Premio Nacional de la Música for the composer Antoni Parera. It s difficult to imagine a production different from that designed by Paco Azorín, full of energy, superb in its equilibrium and visual impact, universally acclaimed by critics and enthusiastically applauded by audiences. Rather than following a timeline, his output is best grouped either into genres, into the directors with whom he often works as a scenographer or into performance sites in which he has directed, as well as other criteria in order to give structure to his prolific output. So let s set out on this artistic path: For César Oliva and the Teatro Universitario de Murcia he produced various set design sketches and costumes, especially during his period of training at the Institut del Teatre. Years later, working on projects with international reach, he continued to produce a number of stage designs for the group, with the conviction that anyone who is a seasoned professional is duty-bound to help novices. In Barcelona he realized his first professional stage designs, while also designing for fringe theatre, where he focussed on experimentation. Among these projects we count Chicago by Bob Fosse, J.Kander and F.Ebb, directed by Coco Comìn and Marc Monserrat at Teatre Arnau and at

4 Teatre Principal (1997), or Dramático by Albert Mestres, directed by Joan Castells at the Espai Escènic Joan Brossa theatre (2001). Subsequently, numerous projects for stage design, and frequently lighting design too, were completed for several directors. These collaborations continue today, and Azorín refers to some of these creators by giving them each a kind of nickname: Iago Pericot, my grand maestro, Lluís Pasqual, a great maestro, Carme Portaceli, my fetish director, and other directors, such as Sergi Belbel, Josep María Pou, Salva Bolta, Helena Pimenta or Mario Gas, with whom he experienced a tardy encounter. These productions include: Mozartnu, created and directed by Iago Pericot (Mercat de les Flors, 2008); García Lorca s La casa de Bernarda Alba, directed by Lluís Pasqual (Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 2009; Teatro Español in Madrid, 2010, Napoli Teatro Festival, 2011); Ante la jubilaciòn, by Thomas Bernhard, directed by Carme Portaceli (Centro Dramático Nacional, 2008), or El veneno del teatro (The Theatre s Poison), by Rodolf Sirera, directed by Mario Gas (Teatros del Canal, 2012, and Festival Barcelona Grec, 2013). If we group these into genres, Paco Azorín links a series of opera projects as director and scenographer. He refers to opera as my great passion. A few of his titles rank at a higher level and one which falls into this category is, for instance, Mozart s Don Giovanni (Teatro Comunale di Sassari, Sardinia, 2015). In theatre too he practises the profession of director and scenographer. He says that due to this dual condition he feels the most scenographer-inclined of directors, and the most director-inclined of scenographers. Some titles: Hamlet, el día de los asesinatos, by Bernard-Marie Koltès (Festival Shakespeare de Santa Susana, 2007) or the above-mentioned Julius Caesar, by Shakespeare (Teatro Romano de Mérida, Teatro Circo Murcia, 2013). Another genre is dance, with the sets and lighting that he designed for Víctor Ullate s choreographies, such as El amor brujo, by Manuel de Falla (Opéra de Vichy, France, 2014; Teatro Real de Madrid, 2015), and Pastoral, set to Beethoven s symphony (Teatro Albéniz, Madrid, 2008). Paco Azorín tags this group of projects as danza y luz (dance and light). Spaces and institutions in which he habitually works as a scenographer are the Teatre Lliure, where he says he finds la sombra de Fabià [the spirit of Fabià Puigserver, scenographer, theatre director and founder of Teatre Lliure] - (Peter Handke s Quitt, directed by Lluís Pasqual, 2012); the Centro Dramático Nacional (Eugène Ionesco s Rhinoceros, directed by Ernesto Caballer, and at Teatro María Guerrero, 2014); the Teatro Circo Murcia (Alfonso Sastre s Escuadra hacia la muerte [Condemned Squad] directed by Azorín himself, 2016); Teatres de la Generalitat Valenciana (Enrico IV, [Henry IV], by Luigi Pirandello, directed by Rodolfo Sancho; Teatro Principal de Valencia, 2008), and the Teatro Romano de Mérida (Prometeo, liberally based on Aeschylus Prometheus Bound, directed by Carme Portaceli, 2010). His entire work rests on a personal concept of the creative process, similar to an investigation, where you have to find leads or clues, essentially a reconstruction of what the author wanted to express with the opera and present it anew, but from a different perspective. If we gaze upon each individual image of his numerous works we begin to see a pattern emerge of a multiform network which, free and malleable, appears to be hidden beneath them, suggestive of an inaccessible and mutable negative from old photography. From this perspective we can approach the style and the basic concepts of his stage designs and productions. As regards the first, he specifies: The space contains the action. It s about escaping from the descriptive or free space in order to enter into a deeper level of meaning where the contained visual can help us to create further levels of meaning previously unthinkable. This spatial concept we also come to find and it could not be otherwise in his productions, in which with difficulty the idea of staging and the idea of the space which contains it can be disconnected or separated. He confesses that this perpetual tandem fascinates him. He elucidates on the process of designing for the scenic space: Once the idea or the concept is decided upon I try to create a spatial continent that makes the idea possible, that allows it to materialise, without ever reducing it to illustration, seeking alternative solutions to visual excess,

5 that work more for contrast than for analogy. Moreover, he considers that the space and the light are indivisible and that in an idea of scenic space there is always included an idea of light and vice versa. As for his methods for staging, he admits that what intrigues and fascinates him the most is the human angle: To help the actor or the singer to intimately identify themselves with the scenario and that it is a unique and unrepeatable vehicle for emotion. We can therefore speak of his most diverse characteristics of style. The first is the use and development of the structures, frequently of metal and left bare, but also cladded with different materials, which mutate into a kind of physical, organic skeleton which contains and makes possible the action. The second consists in maintaining constant the passing of time through the transformation of the scenic space during the performance. In this process they are submitted to the concepts of movement, organicity and duration, which dialogue remotely with the clairvoyance of the contributions of a certain Adolphe Appia, ever original. Another characteristic of Paco Azorín s style is the inclusion of audiovisual content that contributes to or co-creates the development of the conceivable world devised for the performance, beyond carrying out other multiple and evocative functions, like that of multiplying the visual references to a dramatic solution. Two additional characteristics are the unconventional use of objects or furniture, and the presence of recurrent visual elements, such as the moon, the marker of time in the form of a large chronometer, or the projection of words or phrases that interweave with the dramatic and scenic action. We have spoken of a type of composite photographic negative created by inserting all these key characteristics into this kind of magic lantern that we see visually approaching, image after image, the works of Paco Azorín. If we substituted the words, we would see that this magic lantern is a signature language that spans a range of genres and formats that shape his body of work. And all this to bring about the most important thing: to generate communication. By his definition the director or the scenographer must guarantee that all the right conditions exist in order that the miracle of communication be accomplished by connecting the two worlds separated by a canvas cloth. Meanwhile and for this very reason, he continues by working playing working and working. The Scenographer 2017