Chapter 3
The first person Kim saw when he entered was the tall, lanky copperhead, Laia. Good. The first task on his list was to invert the terrible impression he must have caused the other night.
“Hello, Mr. Delatour,” she gushed. “Welcome to Teatre Romea.”
“Hello, Laia, isn’t it? Please, call me Kim. Just let me say how sorry I am for my performance the other night. I was sleep-deprived, jet-lagged…”
“Not at all, Mr. Delatour, uh… Kim. It was totally our fault. We simply didn’t think! Of course, you must have been in a terrible way after such a long flight. I hope you’ve been able to get some rest?”
“Yes, thank you. Yesterday I had a lazy day, although I did walk around the city a little. I even had a paella on the Rambla.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. “Well, you really mustn’t do that again. Most of those restaurants just take a packet out of the freezer and microwave it before serving it to you. We’ll take you to a decent place, where you’ll taste the authentic dish. None of that tourist rubbish.”
Kim felt humiliated. He shouldn’t have said a thing about his Barcelona explorations until he had a better grasp on the culture. Looking around the theater and hoping to change the subject, he said:
“To be honest, I’m surprised by how small this place is. Didn’t this building once house your national theater?”
“Yes, it has a narrow street entrance. But… follow me.”
She turned and walked deeper into the building, pushing aside a set of heavy burgundy plush curtains, and leading him into the theater proper. It was cavernous space, boasting three tiers of seating, all decorated in more of the burgundy velvet and golden ornaments.
“It’s named after the actor Julián Romea y Yanguas. As you say, this was the Catalan Government’s ‘national’ theater for many years before we built our current National Theater out at Placa de les Glòries.”
He was impressed. The stage also looked nice and spacious.
“What does it hold, an audience of five hundred?”
“It was built for six hundred and sixty, but our commercial limit nowadays is five hundred and fifty.”
Kim’s worries were assuaged. If they could fill this place for most of the season, they might do more than break even.
“And the wings? Is there much room?”
“Not brilliant unfortunately, only three meters on each side. It’s the main disadvantage with a historical building like this. But you do have a slight advantage of height. How do you say—the peine?—it’s high, giving you another five meters above the stage to raise and lower sets.”
Kim nodded. It still seemed quite an insignificant theater to be holding the European premier of The Swan, but they would see.
Laia grabbed them both coffees from the theater bar, which was still closed, but the manager, whom she introduced as Manel, was there setting up, and had turned on the coffee machine.
They continued their tour. Backstage, she showed him the camerinos or dressing rooms, and technical area.
Then by a back staircase, they climbed up to the large Rehearsal Room on the second floor, complete with a piano and a high ceiling for doing the large-scale puppet work that Kim’s show demanded.
By the main staircase, they then went up to the offices on the floor above.
By this time it was after nine and most of the office crew were there at their desks.
The producer’s assistant, director’s assistant (herself), theater assistant, season coordinator and schools coordinator had desks cramped together in the main area, while the producer, Santi Puig, and theater director, Jordi Veràs, each had an office to themselves.
He had been meeting them by video call for several weeks to hash out all the season’s technical and commercial details.
However, this morning they were both away at a conference.
Laia showed him a small unused space in between theirs, which had clearly been set up only lately with a desk and chair.
“That looks like it was the photocopying alcove,” he remarked dryly.
“To be honest, it is,” she said. They both laughed uneasily. “We don’t have a regular office for visiting directors, unfortunately. But if you need a larger space, the Reading Room above is almost never used. You could take over that.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll probably be doing most of my prep at my hotel,” he reassured her.
Lastly, she showed him up to the Reading Room.
This was up on the building’s top floor, reached by a much narrower stone staircase.
Here, a small landing gave onto two largish rooms, one on each side.
In the left one, tall windows flooded the space with light.
Around a vast black oval table, fourteen chairs were arranged.
At each place, a notepad, pencil, and small bottle of water had been set out.
“We call this the Reading Room, though historically, this floor was all given over to costume and atrezzo—what’s the word?”
“Props, properties?”
Yes, of course. This floor has the best natural light in the theater, that’s why. We now have another building a few streets away for scenery, wardrobe and props.”
“What’s in the other room?”
“Our ghost.”
They both laughed.
“Really?”
“What theater doesn’t have thousands of ghosts, all crowding to be seen?”
“True.”
“But they say this is the ghost of Margarida Xirgu.”
“Sorry, who’s she?”
“You must know Federico García Lorca?”
“Yes, of course. The dramaturg and poet from Andalucia, writer of plays like Blood Wedding and Yerma. I directed his The House of Bernarda Alba three years ago for the Sydney Theater Company. He was shot by the fascists at the start of the Spanish Civil War.”
“The same. I personally love his poetry. Romancero Gitano, the Gypsy Ballads, is my favorite collection.“ And she began to recite:
The Moon came to the blacksmith’s forge
with her bustle of spikenard flowers.
The boy is gazing, gazing.
The boy is gazing at her.
“Sorry, that’s the best I can do in English,” she said. “In Spanish it is even more beautiful.”
“That’s brilliant.”
Kim was finding Laia fascinating. Not only was she efficient but also intelligent and cultured. And clearly had some acting experience in her curriculum. It was going to be fun working with her for this short season.
“And you clearly have some acting training yourself, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, Dídac and I were at drama school together.”
There was that name again. His face darkened.
“Anyway, Margarida Xirgu was a Catalan actress,” she went on quickly, “for whom Lorca wrote many of his starring roles. She had her first professional role here in this theater, back in 1906. It was in the play Sea and Sky, by our most famous playwright, àngel Guimerà. She spent the last twenty years of her life in Uruguay, where she died. But they say she always missed her native Catalonia, and on nights of the full moon, when all is quiet in the theater after the evening performance, Xirgu can be heard up here, declaiming once again her greatest successes.”
“Hopefully we won’t be working that late, though it’ll depend on how quickly the actors give me what I want.”
Their laughter was interrupted by the tramp of feet on the stairs.
Looking at his watch, Kim saw it was a quarter to ten.
Over the next ten minutes, actors and the production crew arrived in ones and fews.
The Swan was a ten-hander, though only seven of the roles were speaking.
The other three were actor-puppeteers, who were to operate various object elements, including the massive swan that made various appearances throughout the play, and although symbolic, was virtually a character in its own right.
Kim took his time chatting and getting to know the people he would be working with.
Apart from himself and Laia, also present was the set designer and technical director, Xavier Pons, a lean, dark, and agile man with a quick nervous energy.
They had been communicating well by email over the past few weeks, and Kim was thrilled with his designs.
In the flesh he seemed a man of few words, who just nodded quickly at Kim with a small smile as he took his seat.
“We call him Hanuman, the monkey god,“ Laia whispered, “because he prefers to be up in the gods, climbing around the lighting bars rather than down on the ground with us mere mortals.”
The other production role there was Maia, head of props and wardrobe. She was a big jolly woman with a huge halo of red frizzy hair, dressed in a voluminous, frilly kaftan-type dress of reds and yellows.
“It is a thrill to meet you, Senyor Delatour,” she said in heavily accented English. “I watch your Casa de Bernarda Alba in video last week. Beautiful!”
“Thank you,” Kim smiled. It was nice to have his work acknowledged, as far away as Europe, halfway around the world from where they had put the production together.
The three puppeteers, two guys and a girl, dressed in dark unobtrusive colors, appeared fit, quick and supple, forming a compact, silent group at the foot of the table. They were friendly, but seemed to exist as an autonomous unit slightly removed from the rest of the cast.