Hello Friends,
Over the last year, I have had the honor of observing Lupe Gehrenbeck’s work as a playwright and director for my theatre company, Non Disposable Productions. A fan for a long time, watching readapt a Shakespeare program we created, was pretty awesome (Summer of Love to Winter of Discontent to Shakespeare on Wine). I have been at the production meetings, our reading series, the rehearsal room and even in the Hamptons with her. Lupe has a very clear vision of her projects and being able to support her in moving from the abstract to the concrete is a wonderful experience. When she is leading a conversation on theory, movement, and script analysis, one just listens, absorb and apply it the work.
Read below as I asked her two questions and the rest just flowed.
Malini: Lupe, your repertoire and experience in theatre in around the world is extensive. What is your experience of the theatre scene in each of those places? When you are creating your art in these locales, what inspires you? And is there one or two places that you are connected to?
Lupe: My work changes depending on the place where I am working. I am a strong believer in the profound power of catharsis that theater has. For this reason, every time I work in theater I feel a responsibility to connect, in a sensitive way, to the reality and spirit of the place where I am creating. I did a project that was all about discovering how this dynamic between theater and reality, artists and audience, works. I was inspired by the hypocrisy that lies below much of the political correctness, knowing that many of the nomenclature is far from giving a more respectful name to a social condition but actually serves to discriminate. For example, when I was in France I noticed that they do longer call gypsies, gypsies, but “people who travel”. The homeless are referred to as people with no fixed address, the SDF (Les Sans Domicile Fix), citizens who are respectfully named but are still considered less than others. Can you imagine how easy it is to become homeless? In my research I discovered that the homeless was a whole universe, expression of the sickness of our society. There are so many different reasons why people become homeless, it’s not only about economics. It’s so easy to lose your home from one day to the other. How this universal problem is expressed in different ways and in different places is so interesting and meaningful! Just think that the very first homeless people that existed were Adam and Eve when they were expelled from Paradise.
So I started from the beginning and wrote two monologues, Adam and Eve, to talk about how this social condition of the homeless is expression of the problems that we are all living in modern society. I directed them in different cities, working with local actors. The text was always the very same text (but in three languages, of course, Spanish, English and French) and it was always directed by the same person, me. In Paris, Eve became a bag lady who wore a sumptuous dress fit for a queen and carried useless objects that to her were precious. The weight of history present in French culture drove me there. The French live the present always connected to the past, carrying that heavy luggage which makes them as thoughtful but also slows them down. The constant revisiting of history, recycling history, re- interpreting history that French culture does, made me imagine Eve in Paris as Marie Antoinette, a queen among beggars, her only subjects she could find because of their homeless condition. She is always around, always present, but not part of the system anymore: with no power, living on the streets, with everybody and nobody, and dressed with revisited, recycled plastic garbage bags.
In Caracas, Venezuela, inspired by the social inequality that’s prevalent there, Eve became the woman who cleaned the theater. The woman who provides a service that nobody gives thanks for; a woman that does not have a place in the hearts of whom she serves because they don’t feel any gratitude. In Barcelona, Spain, inspired by the importance of family in the traditional Catalan culture, Eve was a housewife from the fifties, prisoner in her beautiful and comfortable home, taking care of the family, without “A Room of her Own”, in Virginia Woolf’s words, homeless. In London, inspired by the architectural juxtapositions that are very unique to the city, and by its social mapping where the poorer live the furthest out, Eve was a forgotten menopausal woman losing her home, her temple, her body going through hormonal changes that makes it hard for her to recognize herself anymore. In NYC, Eve was an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, as a New Yorker you must know the rest of the story, right? And so on.
According to what I perceived as the most important and more sensitive issues in each city, I adapted the concept specifically for the production. This project went on for three years, also in Montréal and Montpellier.
Most recently when I directed a potpourri of Shakespeare’s various plays, in Bridgehampton, I felt an immediate need to locate the staging of the scenes next to the sea and to the vineyards. It is my way of showing a minimum of respect to the audiences. I recommend it. The response is always beautiful, the public is always grateful: when you give you always receive. Working in theater carries a lot of social responsibility. It is not only a matter of egoistical artistic masturbation. It is a matter of communicating and connecting with an audience through life and truth. In that situation the best is to be honest.
I am deeply connected with Caracas, the place where I was born; to New York, the place where I discovered the world; and Paris, for familial obligations. I make theater in these three distinct cities on a regular basis. The effort is great, working in different languages and dealing with so many cultural nuances is nourishing. I feel I am privileged. Next September I will be going to Buenos Aires, a city I’ve never been to before, invited to direct one of my own and favorite plays, Gregor Mac Gregor. I am very excited about this new adventure already full of mysteries… to be continued… till the end of my days.
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Lupe Gehrenbeck has written, produced and directed Descubierta, The Girls of Santa Fe, Piñata, Are we going or are we staying?, With an A of Illusion, From Miracielos to Hospital, Gregor Mac Gregor, Eva, Adam, mostly in Caracas but also in Paris, Montreal, London, Montpellier, Curacao. In NYC: Eva (The Producer, IATI, PAM Festival) The Guardian Angel (The Living Theatre; Repertorio Español, 4th Street Theatre), Salsa, (The Lee Strasberg Institute). Gregor Mac Gregor and Cruz de Mayo are being co-produced by Argentina and Venezuela, for Public Television, part of a series about Venezuelan Playwrights. Bolívar Coronado, is now showing in Caracas directed by Matilda Corral. Now working on #SELFIE and THE GUARD ORDERED TO COLLECT FISH FROM THE BEACH, my newest plays. Awarded with Juana Sujo Prize, National Theatre Award in Venezuela, CASA and “Actors of the World” Award, London, Sept. 2008. Lupe lives between Paris, Caracas and New York.
Live, Love, Learn,