Prove and error

The company of Unbearably long hugs has started rehearsing in Local 3, the rehearsal space of Teatre La Biblioteca. It is a relatively small space, with a low ceiling and a single window that overlooks Plaça de la Gardunya. It's cold there, despite the stoves. At any other time, it would be a difficult space to rehearse, but in this case, it is an ideal setting for this oppressive, strange play, where the characters want to escape from a life that does not satisfy them. Viripayev's text gives many indications of what the characters do, but says nothing about how the space should be. You will have to imagine everything, you will have to fill this empty space.

Paula Malia is Monica. Monica feels the impulse and falls to the floor. "So, pretend the impulse is so strong that you fall", says Ferran and falls to the ground with her. Alba Pujol, Martí Salvat and Joan Solé are still standing.

The actors and actresses in this text speak from three voices. Their character, the actor-narrator and a voice that speaks to them from beyond. What or who this entity is is something we will have to find out throughout the play. Sometimes it's a blue dot, sometimes a dolphin, sometimes… a being from another galaxy?

Martí is Charlie. Talk like Charlie and talk like the narrator, they're figuring out how to do the breaks. Let him enter and leave the character. It's not easy, you have to find the point between one voice and the other, while his character sinks. "Stay here", Ferran tells him, "stay in the shit, Charlie is in trouble, I want you to stay in the shit. Then you'll go out for a run."

To try is to try, to try. Go back and forth, go back to the beginning, continue, start again, try a gesture, change tone, change gesture, add a chair, remove it. To move and stand still, to shout and speak lower, from one place and from another. Paula, Joan, Alba and Martí try again, two pages only. "Five pages of this text are like 15 of a normal text", says Alba. "When you pick up speed, the story moves in front of you in a brutal way", adds Ferran. The difficulty is going in to find the rhythm.

You have to experience Unbearably Long Hugs before you can interpret it, perhaps. Know where the text goes to know how to say it. And think how to break it, how to get out of it, and how to adapt it to a fabulous space like the Gothic nave, a space stopped in the 15th century that has lived a thousand lives in these 600 years and that will soon host four more . The lives of Charlie, Amy, Krystof and Monica.

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• A blue dot