Frankenstein's Mother - Centro Dramático Nacional

Synopsis

1954. Germán Velázquez returns to Spain from exile in Switzerland, where he has spent more than half his life, to work in the women’s asylum in Ciempozuelos. There he meets Doña Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira, a brilliant yet paranoid parricidal eugenicist he met in his father’s clinic at the age of 13. This woman fascinated him to such an extent that he became a psychiatrist.

On his return, he finds himself in a country he no longer recognises: the strength of the sun, the humiliation of the women, new flags, different names on the streets, fear, silence, misery.

A pact with Almudena Grandes led us to adapt this marvellous and rich novel, the fifth of the series Episodes of an endless war, set in the 1950s in the midst of Franco’s regime, in a women’s asylum, a portrait of a country where social and ideological differences are what determine human relations.

Director’s note

Frankenstein’s Mother is an extraordinary novel for a number of reasons. First, because the fantastic portrait it provides of Spain in the 1950s as seen by someone who has been educated outside this country, who has studied and grown up outside it. Everything that is normal in any context happens here in a peculiar way and is loaded with a twisted intention. This is precisely what happens to Germán when he arrives at the women’s asylum in Ciempozuelos. Everything you have to think about to talk to someone else, especially to a person of the other sex!

Another reason is that in seeing everything that happens in this madhouse, everything that is explained in the novel, linked to the most intimate stories of the characters, we realise that nobody has ever explained the real history of this country of ours. We have never known where we come from and why we behave the way we do.

Another reason is the impressive character Doña Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira, the murderer of Hildegard (her gifted daughter), who she created and destroyed, a brilliant woman who believes she is superior to others, and a eugenicist, a metaphor of our country at that moment in history, a country more Catholic than Catholic, more pure than the pure, which is always right and imposes itself by any means.

We have tried to be faithful to Almudena because that is the only way to understand this text and honour its greatness.

Carme Portaceli

Frankenstein’s Mother

TEAM

Text

Adaptation

Directing

Cast

Stage space

Lighting

Costume designer

Music and sound design

Audiovisual aids

Choreography and stage movement

Assistant director

Editorial Almudena Grandes

Producer