Writing the times: Alfredo Sanzol on the art of theater

Spanish playwright Alfredo Sanzol was in Bucharest to attend two performances of his play La Luna: one at the Cervantes Institute, which was responsible for bringing him to Romania, and the other at the National University of Theater and Film. BR caught up with Sanzol to hear more about his craft, the role of the playwright in modern society and his views on literary movements.

By Anca Ionita

Where do you place yourself among other contemporary Spanish writers? Do you belong to a movement in Spanish writing?

No. When I was studying and people explained movements to me, like surrealism, after I read about and saw each artist, I always saw more differences than similarities. It’s what I was saying before. People always try to look for similarities because we can’t control the differences. And the reality is movements don’t exist. You only have people, who, at many points of their lives, get friends. But the movements finished when people in the movements started arguing. It’s like couples. Movements are an invention of critics; it’s not something that is part of reality. When you spend a lot of time with somebody you laugh at the same things, you love to go to the same places, and you end up doing similar things. And now, in our society, there are more artists than before and cities are bigger than before, so they aren’t always in the same café. In Madrid you don’t have four cafes like before. There are a lot of Madrids. It’s a city of 6 million people. So we are going to write differently.

Do you think of yourself more as a director, a playwright or an actor?

I think I am somebody who writes shows. When I write I’m thinking that what I write will be on a stage. I never think that these works will stay on paper. I finish giving the meaning to what I write in my work as a director. I like to say that I am a director that writes, not a writer that directs.

What is the function of a director that writes in society? Do we need one?

Yes, we need somebody who tells stories. I don’t know why human beings need stories but it’s a basic necessity. It’s like food; it’s essential. We need stories. We need to listen to stories and see them. We need others to tell us what they have done throughout the day. We need stories because without them it is impossible to understand our lives. Stories, the theater, novels, the cinema are the ways we have to understand our lives.

It’s the main way. Of course, we have other ways, like philosophy, or whatever you want. But the main way is stories.

How do you see the role of humor?

Humor for me is a way to get to know reality a bit. It’s like a hammer that I have to penetrate reality.

This particular play [e.n. La Luna] started with very funny parts and ended in a very serious way…

It’s something that Pirandello [e.n. Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello] calls ‘l’umorismo’. He talks about precisely that and he explains perfectly the difference between comedy and humor. And that difference is essentially that, with humor you are affected by the problems of the character, you are not looking at the character indifferently. When you are doing humor you always think you could be that character.

So through l’umorismo you identify yourself with the character, while with comedy and the comic there’s a distance between you and the character.

You were saying in an interview that human beings are attracted to the literal.

Can you elaborate on this?

I think that I have to be very clear when I write. The public must understand everything that’s happened. But, within these exercise of being very clear, I have to show the contradictions and the paradoxes. I must show the things that I feel, and this is when the literal disappears because you are saying something that you are supposed to make understood but you are saying something that you don’t understand.

When you work as a director on a text that is not yours, what is your approach?

I don’t have a problem directing someone else’s text because I’ve been in the same position. At the beginning, when I start directing my play, I read it like a new text. When I am writing I know that a lot of things I write about I am not conscious of. So directing is a way of being conscious about what I write. It’s the same thing that I do with a text that is not mine.

Who are your favorite playwrights?

I have a lot of them. [Samuel] Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a play I always have close to me when I write, the script itself. When I get stuck I look at Waiting for Godot and then the problem disappears. For me Beckett is very important. It is very funny and deep. And this is my dream: to be funny and deep.

I need to be interested in what I write. At the end of the day, when I read what I have written, if I’m not interested, I don’t think it’s going to be very good.

anca.ionita@business-review.ro

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