Tejas Verdes

Fermin Cabal

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781783194148
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

'We are not beggars. I am not here for you to cast your pity at me like breadcrumbs tossed to a cripple. Because I know you're listening to me; and my voice won't be silent, not yet.' Tejas Verdes ( 'Green Gables'), once a sea-side resort, was an infamous Chilean torture and detention centre during the early years following the Pinochet coup in 1973. Fermín Cabal's humane and powerful play traces the life of a young woman who vanished one night in Santiago. Beneath the tolling of the church bells, her voice and the voices of those who share her story ring out with poetic beauty and overwhelming love.

inside intelligence presents

The Scottish Premiere

Tejas Verdes

by Fermín Cabal
Translated by Robert Shaw

inside intelligence

Tejas Verdes

by Fermín Cabal
Translated by Robert Shaw

Cast

The performance lasts approximately 70 minutes.

There will be no interval.

Director	Robert Shaw
Designer	Sarah Paulley
Lighting Designer	Conleth White
Stage Manager	Catherine Lewis
Assistant Director	Alice Kornitzer
Design Assistant	Gillian Argo
Producer	Chris Foxon

First performance of this production as part of just
Festival at St John's, Princes Street, Edinburgh,
on 2 August 2013

This translation first produced at the Gate Theatre,
London, on 10 January 2005

Madeleine Potter | THE DISAPPEARED/ THE FRIEND/THE DOCTOR/THE GRAVEDIGGER/THE INFORMER/THE SPANISH LAWYER/THE SOUL IN TORMENT Madeleine's most notable film credits are with Merchant Ivory for whom she has done four films: The Bostonians, in which she starred with Vanessa Redgrave and Christopher Reeve (Best Actress with Vanessa Redgrave, International Film Festival, Delhi), Slaves of New York, The Golden Bowl and The White Countess (starring Ralph Fiennes) released in 2005. Other film credits include Two Evil Eyes directed by Dario Argento, Bloodhounds of Broadway directed by Howard Brookener, The Chosyu Five directed by Sho Igarishi and Red Lights directed by Roderigo Cortes.

Her London stage work includes the acclaimed After Mrs Rochester (People's Choice Best Actress Nominee) in which she starred with Diana Quick, and which won an Evening Standard Award and Time Out Best Play of the Year.

Also in the West End she starred with Macaulay Culkin and Irene Jacob in Madame Melville, All My Sons directed by Howard Davies and Southwark Fair directed by Nicholas Hytner, both for the Royal National Theatre, and An Ideal Husband, with Martin Shaw, directed by Sir Peter Hall.

Madeleine was in the first production of Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis with Daniel Evans and Jo McInnes at the Royal Court, directed by James MacDonald. Madeleine's most recent theatre credits include Electra directed by Carrie Cracknell at the Gate and Latitude Festival, The Internationalist directed by Natalie Abrahami, Mother of Him at the Courtyard by award-winning writer Evan Placey, The Water's Edge at the Arcola and Broken Glass with Anthony Sher at the Tricycle directed by Iqbal Khan.

She has also starred in numerous Broadway productions including An Ideal Husband directed by Sir Peter Hall, The Master Builder (opposite Lynn Redgrave), The Crucible (with Martin Sheen), Getting Married, Steven Berkoff's Metamorphosis (opposite Milhail Baryshnikov), David Hare's Plenty and Slab Boys (opposite Sean Penn, Val Kilmer and Kevin Bacon).

Other New York credits include Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, Pegeen in Playboy of the Western World, Nora in The Plough and the Stars, Lady Anne in Richard III (with Kevin Kline) and the premieres of Lydie Breeze, directed by Louis Malle, and Marion in Abingdon Square, written and directed by Irene Fornes. She played Ophelia in Hamlet for Lindsay Anderson at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre and Rosalind in As You Like It at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Madeleine can currently be seen playing resident Psychiatrist Sharon Kozinsky in BBC's Holby City. She has been heard in many radio plays for the BBC.

From time to time, Madeleine is a teacher in Oxford for the British American Drama Academy and has led workhops for Synergy Theatre Project and at HMP Brixton for the London Shakespeare Workout.

Fermín Cabal | Playwright

Fermín Cabal, born in León in 1948, is one of the generation of Spanish theatre artists who formed the independent theatre movement following the end of the Fascist dictatorship in Spain in the mid-1970s.

In his early career he worked as an actor, director and playwright with such groups as Tábano, Los Goliardos and El Gayo Vallecano. By the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s he became recognised as one of Spain's important new voices in the theatre with his plays Tú estás loco, Briones (You're Crazy, Briones) (1978), ¿Fuiste a ver a la abuela? (Did You Go to See Grandmother?) (1979), ¡Vade retro! (Get Thee Behind Me!) (1982) and Esta noche, gran velada (Big Do Tonight) (1983).

In 1985 Cabal co-authored with José Luís Alonso de Santos Teatro Español de los 80, a collection of interviews with the leading theatre artists of their generation. His next play Caballito del diablo (Dragonfly) came out in the same year and in 1986 he wrote his first film-script, La reina del mate (Checkmate Queen). From 1986 to 1988 he wrote the television series Ramper. In 1990 he returned to the stage with his play Ello Dispara (¡shoot!). This was followed by Entre tinieblas (Dark Habits) (1992), a play based on Pedro Almodóvar's film of the same name, Travesía (Crossing the Line) (1993, winner of the Tirso de Molina and Teatro de Rojas prizes) and Castillos en el aire (Castles in the Sky) (1995).

Cabal has also translated and adapted several English and American plays for the Spanish stage, including David Mamet's American Buffalo, Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy, Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Terry Johnson's Hysteria.

Among his recent writing have been 24 episodes of the Spanish version of the American sitcom Golden Girls and his versions of Electra (1997, based on the play by Jean Giraudoux) and Medea (1998) both premiered in the Roman theatre at Mérida, for whom he has also written a version of the Agrippina story. In 2005, he directed his adaptation of The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker in Madrid. In the last two years he has published Modern Spanish Playwriting (Dramaturgía Española Actual – interviews with 24 contemporary Spanish playwrights), a biography of Cardinal Tarancón, who headed the Catholic Church in Spain during the transition from dictatorship to democracy in the 1970s, and Dakar-Madrid con Ricardo – a journal of the well-known car rally.

His film Ni piés ni cabeza, about the Spanish police force known as the Guardia Civil, opened in 2012; November 2013 sees the opening of his latest play Un mundo mejor ya está aquí (Brave New World is Here).

Tejas Verdes was commissioned by Aran Dramática, an exiled Chilean theatre company based in the Spanish city of Badajoz, where it premiered in 2002 before its Madrid debut in 2005.

Robert Shaw | Translator and Director

Robert graduated from Cambridge University. In May 1995 he founded Inside Intelligence.

Robert's translation of Fermín Cabal's Tejas Verdes received its UK premiere at the Gate in 2005 with Gemma Jones, directed by Thea Sharrock. It was first performed in a reading at Jermyn Street Theatre in 2002 directed by Robert with Joely Richardson and Patsy Byrne.

Theatre as director includes Happy New (Trafalgar Studios), the British premieres of The Woods (Finborough Theatre) and his own translations of Ana in Love (Hackney Empire) and ¡shoot! (Jermyn Street Theatre). Other theatre includes One God, One Farinelli! (BAC),Three Women (Jermyn Street Theatre, London, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh and 59E59 Theatre, New York), his own adaptation of Some Gorgeous Accident (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh), his own adaptation of Up To Now (Edinburgh Festival), Teddy and Topsy (Hill Street, Edinburgh and Old Red Lion Theatre, London), Poem Without a Hero (Edinburgh Festival), As You Like It (Cambridge, Jermyn Street Theatre and Greenwich Festival), The Investigation (Richmond), Inferno XXXIII (Gate Theatre), Reunion (Duke's Playhouse, Lancaster), Tell Me That I'm Dreaming (The Place), Measure for Measure (Chelsea Theatre), The Poker Session and The Ruling Class (Putney Arts Theatre), A Little Night Music (Cambridge), The Hostage (An Giall) (Edinburgh Festival), Waiting for Lefty, State...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Half-title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• The Disappeared
• The Friend
• The Doctor
• The Gravedigger
• The Informer
• The Spanish Lawyer
• The Soul in Torment