UNA CASA EN LA MONTAÑA

Madrid theatre fans will remember a show that caused a small commotion 12 years ago. It was Vamos a por Guti and it was performed in sala Tarambana in Madrid's Carabnchel neighbourhood. It was Projecte NISU’s performance project and Albert Boronat was the author. One of the actors in that play, Sergi Torrecilla, returns with Boronat in this other performance gem, which brings them back to the Festival de Otoño. Boronat has been in a cordial and creative entente with Andrés Lima for some years, producing tremendous successes such as the two parts of Shock o Prostitución. What he presents here, however, is not so spectacular, it goes beyond what we call small format. This is much more intimate piece. If reading Boronat and Torrecilla’s names reminded us of Vamos a por Guti, with Una casa en la montaña we go back a couple of years to relive that explosion of intimate theatre.

Let’s come back to today and make sense of nostalgia for this Madrid theatre great. A house in the mountains is the meeting point for the encounter. A meeting between a playwright-director (Boronat), two actors (Torrecilla and Javier Beltrán) and the 20 people who make up an audience, although they could be considered guests who gather at a table to share food, drink, and company and to summon the most essential and ancestral theatrical gesture: storytelling. You could be mistaken for thinking you had been invited to a social gathering rather than going to experience theatrical arts. Since the beginnings of the human species, storytelling has drawn us together to give us community and connection. It bonds us with its magic. Everyone gathered around is an equal in the present, in the comfort of imagining together, both an individual and a communal activity. Una casa en la montaña is nothing more than that, sharing food, drink, and time.

What’s the story that’ll be told? It’s the story of two men who find themselves together in a solitary house in the middle of the mountains. We don’t know anything about them, but there is something that brings these two men together and needs to be resolved. All will depend on their decisions. Boronat explains: “ Una casa en la montaña explodes the universe of expectation, becoming a mechanism in which any event is possible. Each decision opens a gateway to the visibility of different possible worlds that resonate with each other. This house is home to drama, poetry, science fiction, philosophy, crime... and to Wittgenstein".

To speak of Wittgenstein is to speak of language. This work uses language is a special way and incorporates it as one of its central themes. What possibilities do words create? How do we make sense of them in their relation to reality? If language is a theme, silence is a counter-theme. Silence is "that space of exception in which Being can make itself present, revealing the possibility of our desires", says Boronat, showing his love for the philosophy of language. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the play is more a game than philosophical gibberish. It is playful and brings laughter and joy. Poetic and irreverent at the same time, it relies on the audience’s intelligence to get its meaning across, warmly embraced in a shared refuge. Círculo de Bellas Artes is a returning space to this year’s Festival de Otoño, after not hosting any performances for the past couple of years. It is a watchtower over Madrid’s cultural and knowledge landscape and will provide the space for our house in the mountains. It will take place in the Salón de Baile del Círculo, an enclosed space with the backdrop of the large window overlooking Calle Alcalá. It is safe to say this no ordinary theatre space, but rather somewhere quite spectacular.