The disturbing theater of Víctor Català at the La Luna en Verso festival

Palm"The first thing you should know is that Víctor Català – pseudonym of Caterina Albert – wanted to be a playwright." This is what Albert Arribas, the director of the play, says. Verbagalia, a piece that puts into dialogue two of the most representative monologues of Catalan theatre: The aunt and VerbagaliaThe production can be seen this Saturday, August 23, in the courtyard of the Llorenç Villalonga house in Binissalem as part of the La Luna en Verso festival of the Mallorca Literary Foundation. This is an opportunity to discover the plays Català wrote before becoming a narrator, short story writer, and novelist, popularly known for titles such as Loneliness and Rural dramas. In fact, Caterina Albert's plays, explains the play's director, "were never performed," despite being "of the highest quality." The reason? "They didn't understand him," Arribas points out.

In fact, the director explains that Víctor Català's plays are surprisingly modern: "It's not surprising that they didn't understand them at the time. His acting and theatrical model is much closer to Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard, and to authors from the second half of the 20th century, than others from his own." In fact, the play caused a scandal. The infanticide, a monologue with which Caterina Albert won the Olot Floral Games in 1898. "When the jury saw that there was a woman behind that disturbing work, they were shocked. This was the trigger that made Caterina Albert write under the pseudonym of Víctor Català," she says.

'Disturbing' is the adjective with which the director of Verbagalia She talks about Català's plays. As she explains, "they open up an abyss about the decision of what to do with one's life when one realizes that one is not living well, that one is failing ethically." She is a playwright who asks "very existential questions," with characters "at the limits of their circumstances."

The great challenge of directing and performing Víctor Català's plays, Arribas comments, is finding the dimension of the space of consciousness that the acting requires: "It is not naturalistic or situational theater, it is a theater of consciousness, closer to Lluïsa Cunillé than one works in Rusiñol and Guimerà. And, at the same time, they speak to their ghosts."

Paula Blanco and Oriol Genís are the performers in charge of bringing to life the characters of Caterina Albert, a first-rate playwright with magnetic, heartbreaking, and disturbing pieces. A theater that everyone "with a good command of the language" will enjoy, a theater of popular theater that dialogues with the farce. It's very tragic and very comic. It's theater for the general public, but very small: monologues, short plays, without great fanfare or stagecraft. Víctor Català praises the small form in theater, these theatrical spaces that don't last two hours but rather a short, lively moment."

Furthermore, Arribas believes that Víctor Català's theater is unnerving: "It relocates the audience to each performance. One of the main problems we have as a society, in relation to the immediate reality that surrounds us, is that we tend to disconnect, because we are swept away by priorities that aren't priority. And relocating has to do with reconnecting." Verbagalia It will be a good opportunity for that.