‘Falsestuff. The Death of the Muses’ and Iñaki Rikarte triumph at the Max Awards, which have not forgotten sexual assaults in the theatre | Culture

Falsestuff. The death of the muses, from the National Dramatic Center, won the award for best theatre show at the 27th Max Awards gala, held in Tenerife, where Eduard Fernández won the award for best actor (for All the love songs), Natalia Huarte (by Psychosis 4.48) with the award for best actress, and where Nuria Espert collected the Max of honor appealing to the “social change that theatre can trigger”. With two awards, best director and best author, Iñaki Rikarte was crowned as one of the winners of the night with forever.

“May there never be another case of sexual abuse and may the changing rooms and the halls be a safe place for everyone,” proclaimed Antonio Onetti, president of the General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE), the entity that organized the awards and which this 2024 celebrates 125 years of age. The applause that began among the audience was one of the biggest of the night, but it was one of the few moments of vindication of a gala in which there was no more talk of sexual assaults in a year in which the playwright Ramón Paso was accused of sexually assaulting 14 women (a news item that was added to other news related to sexual violence and abuse of power in the audiovisual sector).

Electraby Pílades Teatro, opened the afternoon with the award for Best New Show. Jorge Usón, with The one-eyed girl, won the award for Best New Author, which he dedicated to his psychoanalyst. In the first part of the gala, more dedicated to dance, the best male dance performer was Àngel Duran, for COWARDSand the best female dance performer was the French Christine Cloux, who recalled that, although dance “is usually seen only in young bodies”, in reality “it is found in all bodies”, as demonstrated in the show Seoul Corp his own, born 58 years ago. The award for Best Dance Show went to Mont Ventouxfrom the Kor’sia choreographic collective. Agnès López-Río, who collected the award, thanked those who, like her family, always encouraged her to “try to go through the world on tiptoe.”

The playwright Natalia Menéndez, remembering La Barraca by Federico García Lorca, presented the award to the amateur theatre association Troysteatro (formerly LaTrup) which took its first steps at the Tenerife university of La Laguna in 1981. The award for Best musical composition for a show was won by Raquel García Tomás, for Alexina B. The show tells the story of the first intersex person on record: Herculine Barbin, who was born in France in 1838. Ladies Football Clubby Barco Pirata and Teatros del Canal, won Best Musical or Lyrical Show. Nuria Moreno, producer of Barco Pirata, collected the award and dedicated the prize to Sergio Peris Mencheta, director of the show who is recovering from cancer. “I hope we can achieve the union of those of us who are dedicated to the performing arts. Without this union we will continue to suffer budget cuts, censorship, precariousness, and lack of exhibition,” she exclaimed in another of the few moments of the night that put their finger on the sore spot of the theatre’s backroom.

The figure of Ángel Guimerá, a Canarian poet and playwright, whose centenary of death is being celebrated, was the backbone of a gala that opened with a scenic recreation of the writer’s life. “What is there after the sea?”, the actors shouted in chorus on stage, rocked by the music of the clarinet and by the waves themselves that they recreated with their bodies. Recreations of various episodes of his life were inserted among the awards of a gala that travelled to the Canary Islands for the second time (the first was in 2009, 15 years ago, with a gala held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), and was attended by the Ministers of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, and Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres.

“I have felt part of the change that theatre has brought about. I adore you,” proclaimed Núria Espert (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, 89 years old) on stage, who received the Max honorary award for her long and prolific theatrical career after a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes. The winner of the Princess of Asturias Award in 2016 was introduced by the playwright Miguel del Arco, who pointed out that she was a “link between classicism and modernity.” The performer, who has won the most important awards in the world of theatre and who first took to the stage at the age of 13, encouraged the new generations of performers to change the world from the stage. “I have seen extraordinary transformations,” she exclaimed, before urging young people to follow her legacy.

Eduard Fernandez, by All the love songswon the award for best actor, who dedicated the award to his mother, and recalled one of his last conversations with her, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and on whom the work is based. Natalia Huarte, for Psychosis 4.48was the winner in the category of best actress, a work that confronts her with her “own body” and forces her to enter “the darkest places”. Sarah Kane wrote this text about depression in 1999, a month before committing suicide. “Theatre must shed light on the dark,” the actress urged, “it must talk about people’s problems, such as mental illness.” The trophy for best adaptation went to Fernanda Orazi for Electra.

Iñaki Rikarte was proclaimed winner of the best direction for forever. “Theatre is a collective art,” he recalled, before denouncing an ecosystem shrunken by precariousness and cuts. Rikarte also won the award for best playwright (along with Garbiñe Insausti, Edu Cárcamo and José Dault), and foreverwhich tells the story of a couple since they decide to become parents, and whose peculiarity is that the actors wear cartoonish masks, seemed to be the big winner of the night, but the award for Best Theatre Show finally went to Falsestuff. The death of the muses, from the National Dramatic Centre. Marcel Borràs, the director of the play (along with Nao Albet, who did not attend the gala), collected the award and the ceremony ended with the last, inevitable part of Ángel Guimerá’s life: his death, his multitudinous funeral in Barcelona, ​​and the recreation of the hundreds of people who, a century ago just like yesterday, responded to the same call of the celebration of theatre.