PS/WAM. Rodrigo García

Wikipedia says that Rodrigo García is a writer, a contemporary theatre stage director, a playwright and a Spanish-Argentinian set designer. It also says that he has lived in Spain since 1986, and that his theatrical career began here. That he set up the La Carnicería Teatro Company in Madrid in 1989. That he has collaborated with the Centro Dramático Nacional (Spain), the Avignon Festival and the Venice Biennale, among others. That in 2009 he received the Europe Prize New Theatrical Realities. And that between 2014 and 2017 he directed the Center Dramatique National in Montpellier (France), renaming it Humain trop humain (Human too human). What it doesn't say is how his works can transform the viewer's gaze, as is the case with PS/WAM which was created during a residency in Naves Matadero and at the Citemor Montemor-o-Velho Festival (Portugal). This is how Rodrigo García himself presents it:

“And in the beginning there was Mozart
This project did not begin as a political manifesto, nor as a story to be yelled out, and it is certainly not the result of a need to condemn injustices. Because everything is a lie.

Everything is a lie. There is no room for any possible compromise in this arrogant and tumultuous 21st century that we live in, where individual thought has been wiped off the face of the map and is even frowned upon, giving way to ideals that are far removed from reality and that have been turned, even though it may seem to be a lie, into fashions that provoke admiration. Those ideals are not mine; they are barbarities that originate in the networks, in other words, they come from nowhere, and those who defend them do so to avoid being empty.

Everything is a lie. I’ve seen enthusiastic left wing supporters give their vote to the elitist centre-right candidate while at the same time refusing to buy anything that comes in a plastic container and using a website to order their organic purchases for the entire week. Everything is a lie.

Not everything.
It is true that the frustration of the social class that is sinking lower and lower all the time - yet which believes itself to be middle class thanks to Primark, Mercadona and Burger King - generates this chilling simple-mindedness and candour by the ton. They are nothing more than an urban herd detached from the reality of land and sea. They know nothing - except for a few days' vacation - of the small villages by the ocean or carved into the mountains, villages that are always dirty, screaming, wailing about the births and deaths of animals, about burning mountains and vines and stubborn olive trees.

The person rising up in defence of nature is none other than the city dweller who has never seen a cow.

Faced with such stupidity, how can I not propose Mozart's piano sonatas?

Musical notes.
Against lies.
Just musical notes.

Not even Mozart’s biography. Just the sonatas themselves. And the actor Juan Loriente appears, dressed like Mozart except that it looks as if the wardrobe has fallen on top of him. With his 18th century wig, he wears a pair of sweatpants and he sports an executive’s shoe on his right foot and a Hawaiian flip-flop on his left foot.

Sometimes he’s Mozart and sometimes he’s a poor lunatic who hurls himself over the piano notes that float in the air. A Mozart who goes to great lengths in inexorable rituals, based on an alphabet and a masonic symbolism in constant mutation.

And accompanying this false Mozart, another impostor, Daniel Romero, dressed half as a lady of the court, half as an ice hockey player.

Few venture to cross the old bridge that leads them from the shore of everyday life, that life that they unblushingly call useful (the lyingmovement) to the other shore, that of their own silent, still and economically useless darkness.

They even come to believe that the old bridge, over the years and due to lack of use, will be impassable. And nothing could be farther from the truth. The link with the arcane truth of each one of us, the bridge over our abyss, remains intact or perhaps even stronger than before and I even dare to say that it is still waiting for us, that it believes in us.

To put it more brutally and so we understand each other: even though you turn your back on it, transcendence does not forget you”.