“at The end of the wars only make the young. The lost to us for who can win them.” The sorry part of a guy’s French, but the same could have come out of the mouth of any German. On a side, and in another, in the mud of the trenches, the feelings are shared. The hell of ice and death that they suffered thousands of young europeans, in the early years of the TWENTIETH century, without knowing the horror to which they were heading, they live these days in the black chamber of the Teatros del Canal, Madrid. The Young Company is immersed with Mud in the front of the First World War to recount the endless months of pain and hate of five young people, two germans and three frenchmen, in a race massive in that shot without seeing the enemy. First play of the tetralogy, Map of the ruins of Europe, Mud, written at four hands by Guillem Clua and Nando Lopez, and directed by José Luis Arellano, is represented from the Thursday until the 23rd of December. Victor of the Source, Jose, Cover, Alvaro Quintana, Jack Hague, Alejandro Chaparro, Samy Khalil and Matthew Rubinstein attend this function next to Mary Romero, Cristina Varona and Maria Valero.
The bluntness and coldness of the scenery, five large metal fans and a panel of aluminum, so a map of Europe, contrasted with the humanity and the realism of the characters that will be shelling in front of the public of their illusions early, also their doubts, and the discouragement heinous that life in front of them was carrying. A shared scenario for the mud of the trenches, the field hospital, the loves hidden, the night light or the bloodcurdling confessions of these soldiers in letters sent to their parents or grandparents. After the first trial in the black chamber of the Channel, José Luis Arellano explains that Mud arises from the reflection installed in the Young Company, that with this work signed his thirteenth production in six seasons, about who we are, where come our fears and ideologies prevailing in Europe, in a work collective, which brought together playwrights, stage directors and actors of the company. “In this first book of the tetralogy, so to speak, through the First World War, the degradation of the morality of individuals and the creation of the first currents of thought, the birth of nazism, the rise of Betsidney nationalisms, populisms, or the radicalismos,” says Arellano, to whom the text of Nando Lopez, and Guillem Clua is a work intimate on how is the european society. “A society of intellectual, creative ideas, but also of hatred, that has lived the drama of two world wars but also the abolition of borders, although it all seems to falter with the arrival of Brexit and the rise of nationalisms,” laments the director.
a Tool for education
Six seasons, thirteen productions, and more than 200,000 spectators since its birth in 2012, has made The Young Company a of the proposed theatre more interesting and aimed at students and young people. The functions of the morning that are organized with the institutes are filled to the brim and with tickets sold months in advance. “The theatre becomes the best tool of education on values,” says David R. Peralto, director of the project.
there are Three productions that have been prepared by the company this year. In addition to Mud, will be released in march, also in the Theatres of the Canal, Federico towards Lorca, a work written from texts by the poet from granada and that will direct Michael the Arc. There are already reserved for this function, 8,000 of the 10,000 available tickets. The other mounting arrived in the Center Conde Duque in April. This is Gazoline, a work starring six black performers, all of them born in Spain.
Nando Lopez, and Guillem Clua, two playwrights that are closely linked to The Young Company, are witnesses also of this first essay of the work, which proposed to knock down their borders author to narrate as the youth was the first victim of this first global conflict, as these students soldiers were manipulated and used as weapons live. “The first thing in what we agreed was the focus that I had to have the story, which was that of narrating the war through the eyes of these five soldiers of both sides, without manichaeism, and focusing on telling the truth about what this conflict meant for them,” says Clua, who adds that, although this is a fictional story, the work is very documented with letters, newspaper articles, and literature of letters.
“We wanted to make a function intimate, away from the great historical fact and focusing on the experience of the characters, such as the ideas of these guys are going to evolve as it evolves the conflict, and also check the evolution of the different countries involved. We see the beginning of the rise of fascism in Germany, compared to other ideas more pacifist and pro-european, and we are witnesses of the culture of the Second World War,” adds Lopez. Without forgetting that also in the horror of the day-to-day, there is room for poetry. “We were very clear that the tone is poetic and could not miss in this work, because the culture is part of what defines Europe, our great link”.
And so, in the midst of suffering and hate –“the more we suffer the more grows our hatred”- and splashing about in the filthy mud, listening to the voice of a French student, that could also have been that of a German. “What I am as a child of Balzac as Goethe?”.
