Luis de Tavira shares a theatrical aphorism for every day of the year in a book.

▲ Director Luis de Tavira photographed at the National Arts Center in 2022. Photo by María Luisa Severiano

Daniel López Aguilar

La Jornada Newspaper, Monday, July 28, 2025, p. 2

Luis de Tavira (Mexico City, 1948) has not only made theater his home, but also his method of being in the world. Throughout his decades as a director, playwright, educator, and essayist, he has conceived the stage as a space where art and ethics intertwine.

Now, that thought returns in book form. On July 30th, the El Milagro Theater will host the presentation of the new edition of The Invisible Spectacle (Paradoxes about the Art of Acting), published by Ediciones El Milagro.

This is an atypical volume: 365 aphorisms—one for each day of the year—in which De Tavira brings together ideas, intuitions, and flashes of insight that emerged during rehearsals, workshops, and conversations with actors. This volume came together on its own , he explained in an interview with La Jornada.

It is the fruit of autonomous meditations that have come to me at various times over the years. Notes born from an instant amazement at the living work of dramatic art.

The structure is equally unconventional: it lacks traditional chapters and instead presents three large sections: The Region of the Actor, Poetics of the Actor and Ancient Novelty of the Theatre, which unfold into smaller nuclei, such as The Inside of the Outside, To Be or Not to Be, To Act is to Recognise, The Word Made Flesh, Imaginary Identity and The Art of Change.

Each section explores the ethical, technical, and philosophical dilemmas of performing arts. As thought 60 points out: This is the classic dilemma of the character: to be or not to be. This is the conjunction that makes the actor both to be and not to be .

The text avoids establishing a technique or imposing a school. It is closer to poetry than a manual. For Luis de Tavira, acting is a process that comes from thinking, contrary to popular belief . And thinking, he asserted, is much more than reasoning: it is intuiting, searching, finding, creating .

This book is written to be read slowly, because it arrives late to a hurried time . Thus begins the first reflection, and from that warning emerges the breath that runs through its pages: a slow writing that shuns haste and avoids formulas.

In an age marked by immediacy, the playwright proposes a quiet, almost secret reading as an act of resistance. "We live overwhelmed by a compulsive rush that has ceased to be life and has become an alienation of consciousness ," he warned.

Today more than ever we need to conquer inner peace to enjoy the presence of the present.

Reflection number 12 says: When an eminently artistic activity sells its sovereignty to the highest bidder in commercial exchange, that activity ceases to be art and becomes prostitution .

In this regard, the author was emphatic: A work of art belongs to that which is priceless. In acting, the conflict is deeper, because artist and work are one and the same. Without ethics, understood as that which gives being, art loses its essence .

This acting of the actor faces increasing pressure from the entertainment industry. De Tavira clearly observes the threat: Cinema and television have trapped the actor and the audience in the trap of mechanization. The robotization of the performer, at the service of industrial production, has stripped acting of its artistic meaning .

In aphorism 343 he sums up: little entertainment, little knowledge, abundant advertising, images that beautify reality and, above all, garbage .

The prologue to this edition, written by the Spanish critic Juan Antonio Hormigón, defines De Tavira as a man of integral theater and celebrates the volume's audacious character: a writing that seems to emerge from another rhythm, when it was still read among the woods, in the style of Fray Luis in his Salamanca retreat. It is not a treatise, it is a compass .

Three women with whom the stage creator has shared roles, words, and thoughts will accompany him in the presentation: Julieta Egurrola, Marina, and Stefanie Weiss.

Egurrola, who has been present since his first steps as a director, and his colleagues, who were also accomplices in the book's creation by encouraging him to gather and shape his scattered notes, will share the event. "This volume is also yours. It's ours ," he acknowledged.

In the face of the absolute dominance of the image, he reiterated his faith in the performing arts as a living and unrepeatable experience: "Theater is a privileged path to discovering our essence. Acting is the art of life itself. Some exceptional actresses and actors manage to transcend the mechanization of film and television: Bergman's performers or Strasberg's disciples are proof of this.

“Acting means much more than imitating gestures or executing sequences: it is unraveling an enigma, giving it substance and inhabiting it.

"Precisely, in one of the most lyrical and precise thoughts in the work, I wrote: 'Fiction is reality while it lasts. What else is life? What else is reality, but a prolonged instant?'" he concluded.

▲ A moment from the production of Cleopatra in Love, starring Natalia Millán and Alex O'Dogherty, which premiered yesterday. Photo courtesy of the festival .

Jorge Caballero

Sent

La Jornada Newspaper, Monday, July 28, 2025, p. 3

Mérida. The Mérida International Classical Theatre Festival is the oldest stage event held in Spain and is considered the most important of its kind. The festival is not only a dramatic gathering but also part of the Mérida archaeological complex, declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), along with its Roman Theater, built between 15 and 16 BC, the main venue for the stage and an important Spanish vestige.

In an interview with La Jornada, the director of the Mérida International Classical Theatre Festival, Jesús Cimarro, and the mayor of the city council of that city, Antonio Rodríguez Ozuna, explained: The performances of the works of the meeting are held annually during July and August in the Roman Theatre of Mérida, considered one of the buildings in the world that best represents the solid modes and harmonious forms of architecture in the time of the Emperor Augustus .

Cimarro explained: “The festival began its journey in 1933 with the staging of Medea, by Seneca, in a version by Miguel de Unamuno, with the actress Margarita Xirgu as the lead.

“After the 1934 edition, it was suspended for 19 years due to the political tension in Spain, and restarted in 1953 with a performance of Phaedra, performed by a university company. In 1954, professional theater returned to Mérida with the production of Sophocles' Oedipus, performed by Francisco Rabal. Since then, the festival has been held uninterruptedly, hosting productions of the greatest works of classical Greco-Latin and Greco-Roman theater on its two-thousand-year-old stages—the only requirement for participation in the festival.”

From the 58th to the 71st edition, the festival has successfully recovered its local audience and consolidated the influx of spectators from the rest of Spain, making the summer event one of the three most important and high-impact cultural events of the season.

It is, therefore, one of the leading theater festivals in Spain. From 2016 to the present, the number of attendees has risen from 44,000 to 180,000 , said Rodríguez Osuna.

Jesús Cimarro added: “91 years ago, actress Margarita Xirgu continued a task that began centuries ago: performing the great Greek and Roman comedies and tragedies on these ancient stones, honorary witnesses to the history of the performing arts.

Throughout its 71 editions, the most prestigious national and international theater professionals have paraded through its arena, including actors, actresses, musicians, directors, authors, lighting designers, and costume designers.

Proof of what Cimarro mentioned is the musical staging of Cleopatra in Love, starring Natalia Millán and Alex O'Dogherty at this year's Mérida International Classical Theatre Festival. It tells the love story between Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen, written by Extremaduran playwright Florián Recio and directed by Ignasi Vidal, who reinvented the story . The cast included Francisco Morales, Iván Clemente, Habana Rubio, Beatriz Ros, and Virginia Muñoz. The music was composed by Pablo Solo, the sound by Shuarma, the choreography by Amaya Galeote, and the set design by David Pizarro.

This musical was held early yesterday morning, and took the audience through a series of intense emotions and took part in the political intrigues and unbridled passion between the main characters.

Jesús Cimarro continued: It's true that theater is a minority in the world, but I want it to be a majority minority. When the audience comes to this festival, they experience it firsthand: a night in a theater that's been around for more than 2,000 years, together with 3,000 people, experiencing the aesthetic joy of the architecture and the shared passion of the audience .

Among the successes of the event mentioned by those interviewed was the invitation extended to both experienced and emerging playwrights, "so that they can experiment with theatrical perspectives."

“During a performance of the play Oedipus, in which most of the very young actors shared the stage with some more well-known actors, including those who star in series like Money Heist and Élite, an 18-year-old girl and boy approached me after the performance ended. I asked them if they wanted to meet the famous actors, and they replied no, that they wanted to meet the director. I asked their ages and if they liked the play; they replied that they loved it. I also asked why they didn't come to other productions, and they replied that they didn't go to 'dad stuff.' The young couple had gone to see Oedipus because the lead actress was in Élite; so, attracting young audiences is one of our primary missions.”

We have lowered the average age: a decade ago it was 64 years old and now it is 43.

Cimarro concluded: "Theater is an experience that must be lived, because it's aimed at the mind and the heart. It's incredibly important for young people to have this experience, as well as for them to realize that theater tells stories that, once they understand them, they'll enjoy ."

The 71st edition of the Mérida International Classical Theatre Festival has only a few days left in July and all of August. Ten plays remain to be presented, seven of which are premieres. These include Memoirs of Hadrian, a co-production between the Festival and Teatre Romea based on the play by Marguerite Yourcenar, starring Lluís Homar; The Trojan Women, directed by Carlota Ferrer and starring Isabel Ordaz; and The Brothers, by Terence, starring Pepón Nieto and Eva Isanta, among others.