‘La golondrina’ premieres in Uruguay with Estela Medina
The first Latin American premiere of La golondrina took place on 25 August at the Teatro del Notariado in Montevideo, Uruguay. Directed by Gerardo Begérez, the production features national actress Estela Medina as Amelia, alongside actor Marcos Valls as Gustavo (Ramón in the original version). Estela Medina is a prominent Uruguayan theatre actress with a hugely long career and countless national and international awards. Popularly known as “the lady of theatre”, she was a pupil of actress Margarita Xirgu in the first generation of EMAD and was the leading actress of the Comedia Nacional until 2008. She is currently a resident actress at Teatro Solís, the venue where Smiley premiered a few months ago.
The text is inspired by the terrorist attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, United States, in June 2016, in which 49 people died, but La golondrina is not only about that day of mourning. Other tragedies also resonate in the play, such as the shootings at the Bataclan theatre in Paris and the attacks on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice and on Barcelona’s La Rambla. London’s Cervantes Theatre hosted the world premiere of La golondrina in September 2017, as part of the first New Spanish Writing cycle. Performances in Greece and Italy followed like a chain reaction, and the Spanish premiere, with Carmen Maura and Félix Gómez, took place a few weeks later.
The two characters in La golondrina start from opposing positions, each arguing about a recent terrorist attack carried out in the name of Islam. Amelia, a severe singing teacher whom Gustavo visits to pay tribute to his recently deceased mother, says: “What really makes us human is our ability to feel other people’s pain as our own. That is what sets us apart from beasts.” As they revisit those events, the two discover truths that force them to reflect on accepting loss and the meaning of forgiveness.
