Taste of Ashes

Sweet or bitter: the weight of our choices

In the vein of the acclaimed La piel en llamas, the Western world once again collides with the East in an explosion of feelings that changes the characters’ lives forever, while offering an ambitious reflection on politics, religion, beliefs, faith, love and, ultimately, the flavour we want our individual and collective future to have.

They say you can never know for certain whether a fruit is sweet or bitter until you put it in your mouth. The same is true of the taste of the ashes that Guillem Clua’s characters are forced to savour. In Jerusalem, a land that has seen ancient religions, endless wars and millennia-old myths emerge, three American tourists face the weight of history and their own ghosts while two young Palestinians carry out a secret plan to give meaning to a life immersed in misery and oppression.

As the story unfolds, the audience asks itself new questions. Is the young Palestinian woman planning a terrorist attack at the hotel where the tourists are staying? Does the New York husband have racist impulses, or is he simply a cocktail expert? Does the artisan’s workshop really exist, or are the pieces sold by the young street vendor stolen? Will Jerusalem’s power break up the Western couple? Will the young recovering alcoholic become involved with the married woman before the two New Yorkers flee towards the Dead Sea? Is the power of the cradle of a two-thousand-year-old culture stronger than five years of failed artificial insemination?

The plot has an absent character: the New York couple’s elderly father, who resents the fact that she is an only child and hounds her with untimely phone calls. Through these conversations—or monologues—from different points around the world, the protagonist finds the key to her own Holy Land miracle. Taste of Ashes was presented at Repertorio Español in Manhattan, New York, in 2006, and was not produced in Catalonia until 2012.

Productions

• Repertorio Español, Manhattan: presentación el 6 de diciembre de 2006.
• Sala Muntaner, Barcelona: estreno en España en abril de 2014.

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