La Jornada: In Until the World Dies, an elite locked in its own abundance exhibits its fractures

135 years after his writing, Hedda Gablerby Henrik Ibsen, bursts into an unexpected place: a penthouse in Lomas de Chapultepec.

The staging Until the world dieswritten by Juan Carlos Franco and in season at the El Milagro theater, transfers the Norwegian playwright’s classic to the present and places it in the face of tensions that have not disappeared.

In a conversation with the media, producer Leonardo Daniel Miranda Cano posed the question that underpins the project: “What kind of world are we willing to stop living in? Transform or just be dressed?” The concern does not seek to be resolved: it remains suspended.

An opening party sparks the story. Between privilege, desire and inherited violence, the celebration breaks down. The structure and names of Ibsen’s original are preserved, but the environment changes: an elite locked in its own abundance exhibits its fractures.

Miranda Cano pointed out that the montage is based on the validity of the text. “Thinking about this reinterpretation allows us to attend to its resonance and question social structures that are in certain decline.”

The cast brings together Cecilia Ramírez Romo, Luis Eduardo Yee, Elizabeth Pedroza, Jorge León and Juan Carlos Franco himself along with Fernanda Bautista, Sofía Orozco, Frida Pérez and Emilia Olavarrieta. The production is in charge of Miranda Cano and Paola Andaya; The Penguin Random House label acts as a contributing company.

A job born of love

Franco spoke of his close relationship with Ibsen’s text. “This work is born from a very particular love for Hedda Gabler, and from asking ourselves how to make her closer to us as creators and to the public.”

He also stressed that this rereading is built from the present. “There is a desire to link it with what we experience today, with the problems that concern us.” Along these lines, he maintained that it is, at the same time, “a classic text and profoundly ours.”

The story takes place in a single night. Giorgio Ribisi organizes a celebration that seeks to mark a beginning. At dawn, there is a body on the ground. Hedda arrives at that marriage with a surname inherited from a general and torturer father, as well as a revolver. The appearance of Roberto Luzardo, an old love, with a manuscript about the end of the world, alters the balance and reactivates what had been contained for years.

Cecilia Ramírez Romo indicated that Hedda remains recognizable in the present. “We are bringing a story of someone who could be a person we know, and that is also very sad, because it implies understanding that things have not changed as much as we think,” he said.

He added that the production articulates competing versions of the same event and that “we see different perspectives on a single catastrophe, something that is very similar to what we are experiencing now.”

The way of working was built in a shared way between Juan Carlos Franco and the cast, with the accompaniment of Daniel Giménez Cacho. The process was oriented towards an exercise of horizontality.

Franco described a “five-headed” direction, where ideas are discussed and adjusted together, and from that friction arises creation. “It has been a conflicting experience, but enjoyable, because that is where creativity comes from.”

The cast worked from a logic of exchange. It was not about competing, but about completing the other, and the decisions were adjusted until a common point was found. Privilege appears as one of the axes: “we were interested in talking about that sector that cannot see its own conditions, but that determines much of who we are as a society.”

Luis Eduardo Yee brought the reflection to stage work. “I question whether art has responsibility, whether it has the possibility of transforming society.” That doubt, he concluded, is part of his practice: “It forces me to ask myself what I am doing on stage and why.”

Until the world dies It concludes performances on May 31 at the El Milagro theater, located at Milan number 24, Juárez neighborhood. It is presented Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 6 p.m. It lasts 110 minutes.