2 - Theory and Practice

Summary

Before looking in detail at the Els Joglars rehearsal process, we must contextualise the company's working methodologies, and how these emerged from exposure to a series of different ideas, culminating in a hybrid process. With the context firmly established, in this chapter I will attempt to define how the hybrid process shapes the overall product, beginning with the preparatory stages for a new project. As a central case study I will be using the company's 2005 show, En un lugar de Manhattan. My privileged access to rehearsals, as well as viewing videos of other rehearsal sessions and reading Boadella's preparatory notes, have proved invaluable resources on which to base the following study.

The plot of En un lugar de Manhattan involves a theatre company in search of a ground-breaking interpretation of Cervantes' novel Don Quijote, which is re-situated in New York, hence the production's title. The cast play actors in a production under the stern leadership of the temperamental and pretentious Argentinean director Gabriela Orsini. However, the interruptions of a plumber and a less than enthusiastic cast thwart the rehearsal efforts. Don Alonso, the plumber and the incarnation of Don Quixote within the performance, has been called in to fix a leaky ceiling. His assistant Jordi (referred to as Sancho by Don Alonso), informs the actors that he and Don Alonso are patients at a mental institution who have been given some odd jobs to keep them occupied, and that Don Alonso is obsessed with Cervantes' book. Gradually, the actors realise that they can have more fun with these two characters than with Orsini's tedious rehearsal by developing improvisations based on scenes from the novel, which of course Don Alonso takes literally in purest Quixotic fashion.