Uz: el pueblo

I wrote Uz when I was 23. I was guided by a number of premises. The first thing I wanted to know was: if it had taken God 7 days to create the world, how long might a faithful follower of his take to destroy it? The second idea had to do with my experiences of reading the Bible all out of order in my youth, because even though I was neither a Christian nor a Catholic nor a believer, some of the stories in that book of books had made a big impression on me. The book of Job, not to mention Abraham’s sacrifice in Genesis had made a major impact on me. Some of the ideas of the new atheists, such as Hitchens, Dawkins and Onfray, were all the rage at that time, and they would argue over and over again about how religions were responsible for allowing a good person to end up committing atrocious acts in the name of God. If there was a third idea, it was to use all this cocktail of dangerous ideas to write a comedy. A powerful, intense comedy that didn't pause to consider who it might hurt along the way and, above all, one that would make you laugh a lot. And I mean, a lot. Sometimes, as far as I'm concerned, that's what writing for the theatre is all about: bringing together ideas that really don't seem to go together and making them provoke a new, surprising reaction on stage, contrary to expectations, so that they reveal in our frustration the prejudices we are laden down with.