During these thirty years, we have had the opportunity to watch the dramatic works of theater plays by hundreds of authors. The exhibition included the dramaturgy of Alicante. It is astonishing that in this new two-year adventure, there are no works of authors producing in Alicante. At least someone who spends the summer in Alicante. Of the fourteen authors in this edition, all very interesting, four come from the city of Valencia, three from Madrid and two from Andalusia. Galicia, Euzkadi, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Castelló offer a title.
The absence of Alicante writers’ titles cannot be attributed to the fact that the director was from Valencia or that the Exposition was planned there; Since Heras was from Madrid, he planned it in Madrid and in thirty years there was rarely a representation of Alicante. The house is lost. For this reason, his manager either could not find works in the first two years or did not find them of sufficient quality. None of this is objectionable. However, it should be added that, unlike these three decades, the Exhibition team consists entirely of Valencia, and those with links to Alicante are volunteers who are entitled to jerseys. This is another significant difference compared to the past: more than a hundred people from Alicante participated in the event. If this is good for Alicante institutions, it’s good for me too (I’ve been in airplane mode for a long time). But it seems some are changing their seats, suspecting that the changes in these two years are the product of Sergi’s relocation strategy. If the entire team is from Valencia… Complete the sentence.
As for the public, the director himself noticed that 60% of the audience at the exhibition were not sitting in the seats, but were visitors to an installation at MACA, and he found this to be a happy effect. Street theater disappears, children’s theater disappears, tributes and awards disappear, and MACA facilities come into play. In short, the exhibition is now further (equally) away from the centre.
But what worries me is what the Alicante City Council and Provincial Council will devise to alleviate this decline in the presence of Alicante in Spanish dramaturgy. We all know that a playwright is not created in a day. I had the pleasure of bringing Estruch Residence to life in 2016. It currently has six editions and its main authorship is represented by Antonio Cremades, Josi Alvarado or newcomer Marcos Montagud, meaning 50% of the projects are local authorship. Alacant a Escena is a project that premieres new dramaturgical voices such as Eva Collins, Sara Ruiz, Jose Maleno, Esther Abellán or Juan Diego Cerdá, among others. But this was not the beginning: in 2001, together with the then Deputy Provincial for Culture Miguel Valor, we organized the First Exhibition of Theater Writers of the Province of Alicante. There was only one edition, yes.
However, the IVC is not far behind and it should be noted that it has not repeated the small theater productions held in Alicante for four years. They were neither generous nor frequent: five times in thirty years. And they spent half as much as they did on any other production in Valencia. This was not my case, because my only public production, as awful as the ones mentioned above, was ruled out by PP and IVC refused to release the compromised version in Valencia. Paradoxes: Sometimes it is not necessary to be loyal to the institution.
As a result, it seems that the city of València has a relief from the nineties and the city of Alicante, as it adds with the Exhibition, has platforms to show the productions of the IVC, Dramaturgical Workshop, both located in Valencia. . I believe that the Cultural leaders of our City Council and Provincial Assembly will listen to this new dramaturgy that is trying to grow here, cannot find a place, and does not make a minimum level of public investment. The exhibition should be one of these areas, as it was in the past. After all, the Exposition is funded in part by the distribution of local and state taxes, taxes that the People’s Party has always cared about.