GIORNATE D’AUTORE

FOCUS LUCÍA CARBALLAL

Conversation between the author and Florian Borchmeyer

Reading from Los nuestros
directed by Nicoletta Robello
with Luchino Giordana, Stefano Guerrieri, Irene Paloma Jona, Laura Mazzi, Elisabetta Mirra, Salvo Pappalardo, Francesca Tripaldi

translated by Antonella Caron

TEATRO DUE – Shakespeare 1

31st OCTOBER, 4 pm

A Sephardic woman, descendant of a family expelled at the time by the Catholic Monarchs but who had returned to Spain a few decades earlier, has died. Her eldest daughter, Reina, calls together her closest relatives to celebrate Avelut, a Jewish tradition in which relatives observe seven days of mourning, isolated from the world. Her son Pablo and his partner Marina, who arrive from London, take part; her sister Esther, with her children and against her will; Tamar, a cousin she hardly knows… For a few days, everyone abandons their dizzying reality, empty of rituals, to immerse themselves in a collective seclusion from which differences in character, points of view, grudges, and unresolved issues emerge.

What do these people, united by a now fragmentary past, have in common? What they certainly share is a fear of what is to come: having or not having children, breaking with loved ones in order to move on, being able to delude themselves about the future despite the bad predictions.

Los nuestros starts with the case of one family to open up a broader narrative, much bigger than ourselves, with which we can rethink what it means to belong, what it means to embark on our own path, between the desire for personal growth and the attractive power of the roots of family feelings.

Lucía Carballal (Madrid, 1984) is a playwright and theatre director. She studied dramaturgy at the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático in Madrid, the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona and the Berlin University of the Arts.

She recently wrote and directed Los nuestros, a co-production by the Spanish National Theatre and the Catalan National Theatre, as well as La fortaleza, which premiered at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid and is currently on tour. Her play Los pálidos premiered at the Spanish National Theatre and earned her the Theatre Directors’ Association Award for Best Emerging Director.

Her previous plays include La actriz y la incertidumbre (Spanish National Theatre 2020), Las bárbaras (Spanish National Theatre 2019), La resistencia (Teatros del Canal 2018), Una vida americana (Teatro Galileo 2017, nominated for the Max Awards for Best Play) and Los temporales (Spanish National Theatre 2016), all collected in the book Las últimas, published by La Uña Rota in 2021.

Alongside her theatre work, she writes for both film and television.