Premiere of ULLOA at the Teatros del Canal

The LaJoven Theatre Company, (Best Cultural Industries Project 2019 from the Ministry of Culture), returns to the Teatros del Canal to pay tribute to the writer Emilia Pardo Bazán with ‘Ulloa‘, written by Irma Correa and directed by José Luis Arellano. The performances will take place from the 1^st to the 4^th of April in the Red Room of the theatre in the Community of Madrid, which will host its world premiere. In the words of the author, it tells “the story of a 21st century woman subject to animal and ancestral laws, who fights to eliminate them in a moral, psychological and carnal combat”.

Inspired by ‘The House Of Ulloa’, the story takes place in the hours before a rave. The characters Pedro, Tabo, Sabela, Jessy, Julián and Nucha will discover what they have always feared: loneliness, abandonment, the struggle against oneself, against the group. In the background, several questions: as a society, what have we inherited from our parents? Or from our grandparents? Are we still conditioned by religion, politics, gender violence?

“Emilia Pardo Bazán wrote ‘The House of Ulloa’ forty years after Emily Bronte wrote her Wuthering Heights. They both share the gloomy and sinister vision of a place far from the city where restrictive and alienating laws prevail, which lead them to act more like savages than like men”, explains Irma Correa.

“Nucha, the main character of this story, will receive one by one the bites of those hungry souls who fight to dominate in a specific territory that they consider their own,” she adds. “Nucha is not a woman of character, in the same way that neither is the priest Julián. Both represent wonder and ultimately powerlessness in the face of the savage.”

As a result of rereading Pardo Bazán’s novel, Correa has analysed the contexts of women writers such as Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina and Merçè Rodoreda’s Colometa. “Although of different forms, textures and contexts, I find that they all carry the inevitable tragic destiny impregnated in their blood from the beginning” she concludes. In her opinion, “we are witnessing paradigm shifts that link man with the awareness of his ancestral role, and many of them cry out, frightened and voracious, for a historical turn in our society. We have to tell new stories and break the old ones”.

The cast includes Alejandro Chaparro, Victor de la Fuente, Álvaro Quintana, María Romero, María Valero and Cristina Varona. The scenery and costumes are by Ikerne Giménez. The lighting design is by David Picazo. Music by Alberto Granados, Álvaro Luna and Elvira Zurita.