Autors i Autores

Carles Batlle

A l'anglès

La majoria d’aquestes obres es poden aconseguir a Catalandrama.

  • Suite. Traducció inèdita amb el suport de la Convenció Teatral Europea, 2000. (Trad. Sharon G. Feldman)
     

    On the stage there are two distinct spaces. Separated. A hotel suite and the living room of an ordinary house. Curiously, they share the same window. In the living room, a man of mature age, who is building a dollhouse, and his wife discuss things and observe each other once again, as they do every day. At the hotel, a young woman observes them. Or does she? In any case there is something on the other side of the window that compellingly captures her attention… Suite is an play of intimate dimensions. It presents an intense and strange relationship between four characters. Precisely, two married couples: one older, the other younger. Confronting the impossibility that dreams can become reality, the author proposes a radical conflict between those who opt for action and those who are inclined toward denial.

    A dense plot of feelings, betrayals, machinations and fidelities –not lacking intrigue– develops in such a manner that, at the end of the play, the audience realises that the objective of the characters, their desires and their strategies, goes way beyond what was initially apparent. Undoubtedly, Suite is a play that speaks about happiness, about the passage of time and also –as is the case in Combat– the function of art within society. On another level, it establishes a crude metaphor for contemporary Europe, lost and disoriented, without a precise destiny: ¿will she remain confused and impatient in the cold suite of any old hotel?, ¿will she remain comfortable and safe, closed and enthroned within the mirage of a home without foundations?, ¿will she flee toward an imprecise and unattainable future?
     

  • Combat. Perfoming Arts Journal (PAJ) (Nova York), vol. XXVII, núm. 79, gener 2005, p. 65-81. (Trad. Sharon G. Feldman, Pere Bramon i Neil Charlton)
     

    Combat has an eight-scene structure, presented as a series of alternating monologues between a woman, known simply as Ella ("She"), and a man, known merely as Ell ("He"). Ell is a young (twenty-year-old) soldier, who has recently enlisted to serve in the war. He spends with her his last night as a civilian, before going off to combat. It is his first sexual liaison and they fall in love. Gradually it becomes evident to the spectator that, in the enigmatic poetry of their monologues, both Ell and Ella are alluding to a shared traumatic event that occurred three months after their first amorous encounter and just a moment prior to the initiation of the monologues themselves. Batlle thus presents the audience with pieces of a puzzle that create an intricately designed structure, in which insinuating elements of an anecdote gradually coalesce only to reveal the full picture by the time the play comes to an end. Death, paradoxically, becomes both the point of departure and the point at which the monologues terminate, thereby creating a circular configuration of infinite repetition.
    The plot of Combat is interlaced with a series of ekphrastic evocations of John William Waterhouse’s pre-Raphaelite painting The Lady of Shallot (1888) and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s eponymous poem (1832). Both artistic works, based on a female figure of Arthurian legend, serve as points of inspiration for the fictionalization of reality and the portrayal of a so-called "landscape in the aftermath." In a literal sense, the "aftermath" here refers to a war that is taking place and to the lives of a man and a woman that are extinguished as a result. Batlle’s play uses the painting and poem as intertextual templates in creating a portrait of a war-ravaged landscape from the perspective of death and anguish. In contemplating the space of this landscape, the spectator is invited to ponder the fluid nature of boundaries, identities, and hybridities: those that are spatial, physical, or corporal and those that are aesthetic, ethnic, racial, cultural, or linguistic.
     

  • Tentation [Traducció inèdita] (Trad. Elisabet Ràfols). Veure: catalandrama.cat
     

    Tentation tells the crossed stories of three characters: Asha, a young Moroccan immigrant without papers; Guillem, an antique dealer, and Hassan, a man who arrives at Guillem's house to rediscover an old friend from his youth. Destiny maliciously interlinks the paths of these characters: because of a series of misunderstandings and a truly strange coincidence, all three will make serious mistakes and find themselves heading for tragedy. This play explores the clash of cultures, lack of communication, memory and identity, but also the Catalonia of today, in a moment of change and radical transformation.
     

  • Transits, [Traducció inèdita] (Trad. Sharon Feldman). Veure: catalandrama.cat (2012)
     

    We witness the “transit”, both physical and spiritual, of different individuals around Europe. In the near future, three men and two women coincide in a long-distance train. All of them are concealing secrets and desires to which they cannot confess. The plot, which uses an unusual time sequence, gives voice to the characters’ deepest thoughts and plays with the idea of a continent in transit, full of challenges and contradictions. 
     

  • Still Life (Monroe-Lamarr) [Traducció inèdita] (Trad. Sharon Feldman). Veure: catalandrama.cat (2020).

    Still Life (Monroe-Lamarr) tells of a meeting between actress Hedy Lamarr (also co-inventor of frequency-hopping technology, i.e. the foundation of what today are WiFi and Bluetooth) and Marilyn Monroe, the day before the latter’s death. The play, which moves around between two time points (1962 and 1966), is based on historical events and relates a tense and emotive confrontation between two women who are – or were – famous. In the conversation they dissect universal themes such as the fragile nature of fame, the irreversible passing of time, power interests and its manipulation, war, and the condition of women in the 1960s (especially in the world of the actresses).