Subject: # 14227 Teatro Inglés Siglos XIX y XX Grupo A

Title of the play: Terapias

Author: Christopher Durang

Theater company: La Pavana

Play director: Rafael Calatayud

Actors: Marta Belenguer as Prudencia, Sergio Caballero as Óscar, Rafael Calatayud as Dr. Stefano Martone, Mamen García as Dra. Berta Bornikoff, Juli Disla as Teo, Toni Agustí / Carlos Amador as Andi.

Technique and artistic cast: Juli Disla (version), Carlos Calvo (direction assistant), Rafael Calatayud (stage), Tono Herrero & Aureli Doménech (stage project), José M. Márquez & Rafael Calatayud (lighting design), Rocío Cabedo (dressing room), Reileck (graphic project), Albert Sanz (music arrangements), Mamen García (lyrics composer), Fet d’Encàrreg (carpentry), Nicolai Stefanov (paint), Vicenta Marco, Teresa & Emi Baviera (clothes designers), José M. Márquez / Sergio Vega (lighting), Javier Vega (sound), Aline Rubinato (stage assistant), Transjoma (transport), SAME (technique resources).

In this play, no character can escape from madness, nor the psychoanalists. Óscar, to start with one of them, is a man who wears casually but elegantly, a lawyer in the middle point between the heterosexual stereotype and the homosexual one, a very sensitive man who needs little to cry, as when he cried twice in less than 10 minutes in the restaurant, and has learnt from his psychoanalist to show his feelings, he is searching for the perfect woman in order to satisfy his bisexuality. Prudence, an outlandish woman who sees in everybody and everything lots of defects, searches for the perfect man, too, but later realises she might have been creating false defects and that the problem may be inside of her. Dr. Stefano Martone is even madder than his patient, Prudencia, because he really makes her being mad, contradicting what he has said to her in his treatment, attaching her to him with the two nights in which they had had an intercourse, denying the critics that all of his patients say about him regarding sex. To finish talking about the most important characters, we should mention Dra. Berta Bornikoff, who also dresses herself in a outlandish manner like, acts in a childish way, using a puppet in her treatments. She also wants to be everybody’s psychoanalist, even Dr. Martone’s.

The play takes place with the same scenery all the time, although it is used as a restaurant where nobody goes, as both psychoanalists’ office, and Óscar’s flat.

With respect to the lighting, it was as simple as the differentiation of scenes by turning off and on the lights, and they slightly increased the light above one person to give him/her more importance. But an anecdote happened related to the lights, due to the fact that they turned off the light too much time, the audience started to applaude as if the play had finished, and then the lights were turned on again and the play continued as if nothing had happened.

Finally, we should point out the importance of the songs in the play. The topic of the song was about the will of the singer to be protected by another person. It was a recurrent element which had a childish part, where they stopped singing, but at the end of the play, all the actors sang it completely.

Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr. Vicente Forés López
© Pablo Cristóbal Borillo
pacrisbo@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press