Remedies for Leonora, celebration of friendship and art, in dialogue with memory

Between whispers that seemed to emerge from the darkness, Remedios for Leonora returned to the scene yesterday, almost a decade after its premiere, this time in a dramatized reading format.

The work of Estela Leñero Franco, directed by Gema Aparicio Santos, found in the sobriety of this modality a favorable territory to dialogue with memory and celebrate friendship as a form of shared creation.

With just two lecterns, some projections and a discreet sound design, Gabriela Betancourt played Remedios and Bertha Vega, Leonora. They remained almost motionless, faithful to the spirit of the reading: the action occurs in the word.

More than 60 people packed a room at the Center for Exploration and Critical Thinking (CEX) of the Ibero-American University, where this theater series takes place on the last Thursday of each month. Chairs were placed in front and on the sides; From there you could hear the rustling of the leaves and the breathing that marked the silences.

In interview with The Day, Aparicio Santos explained that the CEX project proposes an experience focused on the text.

“With the minimum of resources, the reading is carried out and the public’s imagination completes the rest. To address the transition between sleep and wakefulness, that space between life and death that the montage poses, it is supported by sounds, music and projections that place the characters. The actresses almost do not move; their movements are subtle and contained.”

The story represents the reunion of Remedios Varo (1908-1963) and Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) in a dreamlike territory. Leonora summons her friend; They both discover that they live in a dream and seek to decipher it.

The harshest episodes of their biographies then emerge: Varo’s arrest in Nazi-occupied Paris, after hiding a French soldier, and Carrington’s internment in Santander, Spain, in 1940, an experience that he later transformed into writing.

Cats, affections and the impulse to paint the earth’s mantle also appear. The projected images dialogue with that inner world where alchemy and imagination become language.

From The Miracle to Cenart

Gema Aparicio highlighted the complicity of the performers, a quality that allows them to understand the emotional universe of these creators. He added that Leñero Franco’s text “leads to the exploration of the feelings of both painters.”

For her part, Estela Leñero recalled that the play premiered almost a decade ago at the El Milagro theater and then had a season at the National Arts Center (Cenart). The transition to dramatized reading involved focusing attention on the images and the relationship between the characters.

“My interest arose when I met two surrealists, exiled and ahead of their time. I wanted to vindicate their friendship. Faced with versions that suggested rivalry, I proposed looking at them as free creators. It is a way of observing them not as victims, but as artists and revolutionaries.”

At the end of the performance, the audience remained in the CEX patio to talk with the director, the playwright and the actresses. The intention is to prolong the stage experience and open a space for collective reflection.