Angélica Liddell, the Catalan artist who brings cruelty to the stage and triumphs in France | Ideas

Angélica Liddell (Figueras, 58 years old) is the only artist in the history of the Avignon Festival, the most prestigious performing arts festival in the world, who has been invited by three different directors: Vincent Baudriller, Olivier Py and, now, Tiago Rodrigues, who has chosen it to inaugurate the 2024 edition with Dämon—Bergman’s Funeral, the second staged funeral in a trilogy about death. Liddell will represent her in the Cour d’Honneur of the Palace of the Popes, a UNESCO world heritage site. There she will culminate 33 years as a director, playwright and actress, creating a theater that, in her own words, does not seek the contemporary, but the eternal. She “she is one of the great theater inventors of our time. Her long-lasting and passionate history with the Avignon Festival reaches its climax with this creation. We are excited to share with the public Liddell’s transgressive poetry fueled by the genius of Bergman, and presenting it on the historic and founding stage of the festival is a symbolic gesture of defense of artistic freedom,” remarked Tiago Rodrigues for e-mail when asking about her.

We also spoke at length with Gumersindo Puche, the invisible face of Atra Bilis, the company they co-founded in 1993. He and Liddell are a tandem and have a relationship of symbiotic balance, whose existences are closely linked. Puche produces the works and festival directors are used to dealing with him, not her. It was important to finally give him a voice. But when Liddell realized that the piece would not be exclusively about “Sindo”, we lost their collaboration. The creator is uncomfortable with others being called to talk about her, perhaps mainly due to her shyness, something that can be shocking given her works.

Theirs is politically incorrect theater, unpleasant and uncomfortable to the point that many spectators have ended up vomiting, fainting or leaving the room before the show ends. It reflects hatred, helplessness, deep disappointment. It combines the beauty of the best classical music compositions with textual violence. Motherfuckersuseless, you have screwed up my life. And his works last as long as they have to last. For example, six hours. On the stage, a cow cut open. Her own blood. Angélica Liddell exposes without limits the most miserable part of the human condition without aiming to provoke (how banality!), but rather to make reality unbearable for the viewer. According to her, cruelty educates more than morality, which is why she is concerned about the hidden censorship of supposedly free countries.

Liddell is not an approachable person. He identifies with the misfits, the sick, the rejected. He connects with Artaud, Pasolini, Bernhard, Genet, Rimbaud, Sade, Fassbinder, Bataille, Bergman, Nietzsche and uses theater to address existential problems, such as suffering or death. Also social, such as femicide (The house of strength), sexual abuse (Cursed is the man who trusts in man) or oppression. “The world is no longer divided into ideologies. It is divided into rich and poor. And who cares about the poor? The year of Ricardo. It alludes to both the cruelty of man and nature. In This brief tragedy of the flesh It gave prominence to both dwarfs and people with Down syndrome and physical disabilities. In I will make you invincible with my defeat addresses the disease. He demonstrates that intensity is not measured only by the scream, but by the intimate: his sacrifice is to show vulnerability through confession. And, faced with pain, he opts for isolation. “The more confinement, the more contact with the infinite. “Emily Dickinson was not loved because no one accepts being loved by a gun.” The only thing that claims to save her from suicide is taking refuge in cinema and doing theater.

Vincent Baudriller, the first director to invite her to Avignon, was the one who saved her career by inviting her, in 2010, to perform his last two works, The year of Ricardo and The house of strength, which paradoxically had been a resounding economic failure because they had barely been programmed in Spain. When the French director met Liddell the previous year, she and Gumersindo Puche considered dissolving the company. They had spent years working in Port Aventura, years making puppets in Retiro, and they always opted for Atra Bilis, even when they stopped being a couple. What they could not conceive is that, having sold out their plays and being at the pinnacle of the Spanish theatrical avant-garde, they still did not have the institutional support to be able to make a living from the theater.

The success in Avignon was resounding; the applause, exciting. Although there were empty seats at first, thanks to word of mouth, the tickets were sold out after the first performance. “Few artists have the courage to delve so deeply into the complexity of the human being. Angélica is very generous because she leaves a lot of her life in this artistic research. As an audience we are faced with a work by Liddell, but we must not forget that she is physically on stage. She asks us to go far away, but she also comes,” points out Baudriller, who programmed five of her works in Avignon and another two at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland, which he currently directs.

Liddell’s career took an international turn. Even so, in Spain he did not receive adequate support due to the lack of a co-production structure that supports creators. “The problem in our country is that it prevents artists of Liddell’s stature from developing their full potential. Not only does legislation have to change, but also the value that our culture gives to contemporary art. The support is an investment in what is going to become public heritage,” Natalia Álvarez, current director of the Conde Duque Cultural Center, comments by phone.

There is a lot of talk about the brain drain in Spain and not so much about the drain of artists. In 2014 Liddell said he had reached “the limit of contempt that one can bear” and during the following four years he did not release anything in our country. “Thanks to all the French theaters that opened their doors to a shadow (…) It has been here where I have been able to enjoy the most beautiful moments of my life, not only of my profession, but of my life,” said the theater creator when collecting the insignia of Knight of Arts and Letters of France in 2017.

In 2018, Liddell returned to the Spanish stage motivated by the change of management of the Teatros del Canal, led by Natalia Álvarez and Àlex Rigola. “I remember the day of the premiere. The Red Room was packed and an atmosphere comparable to a Rolling Stone concert was created. Liddell is a phenomenon and the public adores her,” says Natalia Álvarez, highlighting that tickets for her works sell out in less than two hours from the time they go on sale.

This dedication of the Spanish public continues to be reflected in the ovations of more than 15 minutes that it has received. Voodoo (3318) Blixen at the Conde Duque Cultural Center and at the Salt theater in Girona. Applause from an audience that seems to be thanking her, congratulating her, asking her not to abandon them. Trusting that the Spanish institutions will react, even if it is out of dignity, even if it is out of shame.

Sign up here to the weekly Ideas newsletter.

_