Sunday evening, after our visit to the Reina Sofía museum and a bit of shopping and free time in Madrid, our group reconvened at the Teatro Español to see a show. The Teatro Español was founded in the 1500s and was originally called the Corral del Príncipe. At this time, theatres were typically building courtyards, or corrales, with a stage and some benches set up for the performers and audiences. The area would have no roof over the audience, although the buildings around the courtyard would often sell seats at their windows to see the shows. Today, the Teatro Español is a fully enclosed building, redesigned by the same architect who designed the Prado museum after having burned down in 1802. Though there is a typical European proscenium stage with traditional pit, box, and gallery seating, the show we saw was in a smaller, more intimate "black box" theatre space inside the same building. Furnished only with a desk, a chair, and a piano, the space was perfect for a one-woman show.
The show we
saw was an adaptation for theatre of an essay by Virginia Woolf called “A Room
of One’s Own” or, in Spanish, “Una habitación propia.” This essay, written in Virginia Woolf’s
signature stream-of-consciousness style, deals with the issues surrounding
women and literature, especially why women don’t write as much literature as
men, or at least haven’t done so, historically.
In this performance, actress Clara Sanchis, in the role of the essayist-character
who is not Virginia Woolf but rather an invention of the author to best convey
her ideas, brings to life the scattered thoughts and exciting quest for truth
(or at least for a well-formed opinion) that ultimately leads, however
windingly, to the conclusion that in order to write fiction of any sort, one
needs a steady income and a room of one’s own, two things that women, historically,
have lacked. Though one might think an
hour and fifteen minutes of a single monologue might be boring even in English,
when all of the words could be understood, Sanchis’s performance was so engaging
even us students struggling to understand the language could follow the emotion
and stay focused throughout. Additionally,
the live music that was added, performed by Sanchis as well, and the staging
under the direction of María Ruiz completed the characterization and kept the
pacing of the performance fluid in a show that skips from from one fictional men's college, to a fictional women's college, to a library, to the essayist-character's house in the search for answers about women and literature.
The show we
saw was an adaptation for theatre of an essay by Virginia Woolf called “A Room
of One’s Own” or, in Spanish, “Una habitación propia.” This essay, written in Virginia Woolf’s
signature stream-of-consciousness style, deals with the issues surrounding
women and literature, especially why women don’t write as much literature as
men, or at least haven’t done so, historically.
In this performance, actress Clara Sanchis, in the role of the essayist-character
who is not Virginia Woolf but rather an invention of the author to best convey
her ideas, brings to life the scattered thoughts and exciting quest for truth
(or at least for a well-formed opinion) that ultimately leads, however
windingly, to the conclusion that in order to write fiction of any sort, one
needs a steady income and a room of one’s own, two things that women, historically,
have lacked. Though one might think an
hour and fifteen minutes of a single monologue might be boring even in English,
when all of the words could be understood, Sanchis’s performance was so engaging
even us students struggling to understand the language could follow the emotion
and stay focused throughout. Additionally,
the live music that was added, performed by Sanchis as well, and the staging
under the direction of María Ruiz completed the characterization and kept the
pacing of the performance fluid in a show that skips from from one fictional men's college, to a fictional women's college, to a library, to the essayist-character's house in the search for answers about women and literature.
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