The Madrid Players is Madrid's main English-language theatre group. I've been involved ( a word which conceals all sorts of misdemeanours ) for a few years in the mid-1990s, and continually now since 2010. Although the city is home to umpteen semi-professional or even professional outfits, each of them is a slave to the need to earn money from theatre, their performers indeed professionals, but condemned to an eternal treadmill of Alice in Wonderland in pigeon-English for semicoherent 7-year-olds, dusting off A Christmas Carol for a yuletide spin every 12 months. Marley's torment seems a picnic in comparison.
Ahem. Sorry about that - got a bit carried away, there. The truth, though, is that if you want to do real theatre in English,Madrid Players is the only game in town. Our strength is that we're an amateur group, a democratically-constituted organisation run by elected volunteers. This means that in a difficult year, we might stop squabbling amongst ourselves long enough to put up a few shows; but on the up-side, it means that whatever your dream show is, you've got a chance to do it. Irish drama so obscure not even its author is convinced he's heard of it ? No problem ! An intense narration of the life of Catherine of Aragon ? Sure to put bums on seats, go for it ! Robert Burns on ice ? Write up your proposal and present it to the committee.
O.K., I'm being flippant. We haven't done the Burns show yet, although I have high hopes. The Constant Quene put so many bums on seats people had to be turned away.. And the Players do many more mainstream shows ( I've been involved in the Crucible, Steel Magnolias, Oliver, Our Town, a good number of pantomimes now ). Not many groups in Madrid can put up a pantomime which attracts audiences of 3000 people every year. And we do have a particular tradition of evenings of musical theatre. But the group does offer a creative space the like of which I haven't experienced since I was at uni, when we used to put up and go and see the kind of shows no-one in their right mind would produce, perform in or go and see, without costumes, props or occasionally actors.
It's also an example of that aphorism - I think it's Kipling who wrote this - that there are two kinds of people : those who stay at home, and those who don't. MPs is a pretty cool meeting-place for the second kind, and it's enriching to find yourself singing, doing ludicrous voice warm-ups, painting scenery, with assorted Irish, Americans, Scots, Australians, Canadians, and of course, a strong number of good Spanish folks ( it was a Spanish philosopher whose name escapes me who wrote that la patria de cada uno son las idiomas que habla - your native country is the languages you speak. Particularly if you speak them while dressed up as el Pulpo Paul, trying to recreate the Stade de France on World Cup night with only 6 performers and no sound effects. ). In fact, probably more than enriching, there are moments when it feels like you've joined a slightly odd extended family : odd, because for the time of the rehearsal process, and particularly the 2- or 3-day run of a show, you work very closely with this disparate group of strangers, depend completely on each other for the pantomime or song or sketch or whatever to hang together - but of course, we know virtually nothing about each other's lives outside that strange and slightly magical theatre space.
But this, of course, is theatre. It depends entirely on everyone, performers and audience, believing intensely, for a short period , in something that isn't there at all, and by this shared delusion somehow willing it into being.That's why perhaps my favourite theatre photo is this one, pinched from Eva, which must have been taken maybe ten minutes after Steel Magnolias ended.
It sums it all up, really : whatever story you've just been telling - Ebeneezer Scrooge, Catherine of Aragon, the redemptive power of friendship in a hairdressing salon - there's nothing really there. It's all just breath, love, and masking tape.
Shakespeare loved the precarious, wobbly-flat nature of theatre, I think. He refers to it in any number of plays, but never more beautifully than in The Tempest Act 4 Scene 1, when Prospero renounces his magic :
" Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air :
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
I could blether on a whole lot more. Every show feels a bit like a personal Everest ( some more than others... ), and that's a second thing that I think connects virtually all members : apart from all being slightly nuts in a variety of interesting ways, we're all ants-in-your-pants types, uncomfortable sitting around when there's another corner to be turned, another mountain to be climbed, another ( God help us ) SHOW TO PUT ON.
( The view from the top. Audience not pictured. )
And finally, there's the sheer joy of creativity. We've just come off The Constant Quene, a play about the life of Catherine of Aragon, England's Spanish Queen. I signed up for singing in the choir, because that seemed like an easy option. Like, who knew ? We had a great time in the rehearsal process, all of us went some way beyond what we thought we were capable of in all directions, we seem to have picked up at least two more gigs on the way ( Spanish Renaissance music is apparently the new rock n´roll ), and there's talk about sticking together as a unit after Christmas ( I hope singing as well ). On a personal level, the combination of this and my school inspection seems to have set me off in all directions ( you might have noticed ). In particular, the combination of all those lovely Scottish names rolling off the Black Wall, and the wonderful performance of The Flowers of the Forest has reconnected me with... but that's a story for another time.
I'll shut up now.
Oh, here's a link to the website. You'll be able to read something that actually makes sense there.
www.madridplayers.org
