21 FEB – 6 APR 2025 Tuesday to Sunday at 20:00 | Accessible performances: 13 and 14 MAR 2025 Meeting with the artistic team: 6 MAR 2025
Lucía Carballal
Miki Esparbé, Manuela Paso, Marina Salas. Rest of the cast TBC.
Pablo Chaves Maza (AAPEE)
Pilar Valdelvira (AAI)
Sandra Espinosa
Benigno Moreno
Belén Martí
Raquel Alarcón
Centro Dramático Nacional and Teatre Nacional de Catalunya
Project carried out with the 2023 Leonardo Grant for Scientific Research and Cultural Creation of the BBVA Foundation
About the show
Dinorah died yesterday at her home in Madrid. Her relatives have gathered to comply with the Abelut: the Jewish mourning ritual in which the closest relatives withdraw from the world for seven days. Seven days during which they must live together to process the mourning.
Her eldest daughter, Reina, arranges this gathering. It is attended by her son Pablo and his fiancé Marina, who come from London; her sister Yael, with her children and against her will; Tamar, a practically unknown cousin… For a few days, they all leave their dramatic realities behind, devoid of rituals, to confine themselves as a group.
What do these people, united by a distant, now faded, history, have in common? What they no doubt share is a fear of what is to come: having children or not, breaking with family to go their own way, being able to dream about the future despite the dour forecasts.
Note from the author and director
It’s clear: for a long time, we have looked at everything through the prism of individuality. The new and vibrant ideas in every area are the ones that enhance the particular of the self, the distinctive and unique feature of identity. So the theory that, in general, the same things happen to us all has a somewhat old-fashioned feel. As old-fashioned as many traditions that once bound the community together.
Precisely because we are so far removed from rituals, I imagine a play in which a family carries one out, despite not really understanding it, and even denying its utility. I think that merely being there, together, sharing a space, repeating something that many generations have done before, can be revealing. It may allow them to build, and finally commit to, a possible future. And it may also be an opportunity for theatre.
This Sephardic family poses the idea of a family as an extended story, much greater than ourselves, through which we can rethink what it means to belong, what it means to go your own way.
Lucía Carballal
Project carried out with the 2023 Leonardo Grant for Scientific Research and Cultural Creation of the BBVA Foundation
Lucía Carballal
Miki Esparbé, Manuela Paso, Marina Salas. Rest of the cast TBC.
Pablo Chaves Maza (AAPEE)
Pilar Valdelvira (AAI)
Sandra Espinosa
Benigno Moreno
Belén Martí
Raquel Alarcón
Centro Dramático Nacional and Teatre Nacional de Catalunya
She is a writer and director. She studied Drama at the RESAD and at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, where she graduated in this speciality in 2008. She was then invited to study Stage Writing at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and received a Master’s degree in Film and Television at the Carlos III University in Madrid.
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She recently wrote and directed La fortaleza, which premiered at the Teatro de la Comedia and Los pálidos , which premiered at the Centro Dramático Nacional. For Los pálidos she received the ADE Award for Best New Director, a nomination at the TimeOut Awards for Best Show, a nomination at the Godot Awards in the category of Outstanding Playwrighting, a nomination for the Mandarache Prize, and a nomination for the Max Awards (Outstanding Playwrighting).
She previously wrote the works La actriz y la incertidumbre as part of the project LAPIRA of the Centro Dramático Nacional, Las bárbaras - Centro Dramático Nacional-, La resistencia which premiered at Teatros del Canal and was nominated for the Max 2020 Awards in the category of Outstanding Playwrighting, Una vida americana performed at the Teatro Galileo and nominated for the Max Awards for Outstanding Playwrighting, Los temporales Centro Dramático Nacional, A España no la va a conocer ni la madre que la parió co-written by Víctor Sánchez Rodríguez, which premiered at the Russafa Escènica Festival in Valencia and won the EURODRAM Award, and Mejor historia que la nuestra which premiered at Teatro Lara, was nominated for Calderón de la Barca Award and was runner-up for the Marqués de Bradomín Prize.
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She was also the playwright for the project Storywalker: de Qingtian a Usera, creating 9 audio fictions involving the Chinese community in Madrid and in close collaboration with its members. In 2019, she was one of the seven European playwrights chosen by the prestigious author Simon Stephens to participate in the international playwriting meeting in the Beckett Room in Barcelona Siete de un golpe.
In parallel to her career in theatre, she works as a film and television writer.
The publisher La uña rota has published the work Los pálidos and before that Las últimas, which compiles five of her previous plays.
Lucía hasalso taught numerous stage and audiovisual writing courses at the Centro Dramático Nacional, Sala Beckett, Teatro de la Abadía, ECAM, Universidad Carlos III, and elsewhere.
