Paco Bezerra, three years after the censorship of his play about Saint Teresa: ‘I don’t feel defeated, I feel renewed.’

The Comédie-Française, the most prestigious theater institution in France, will host a dramatic reading of I Die Because I Do Not Die (The Double Life of Teresa) this Monday. The play, written by playwright Paco Bezerra (Almería, 47 years old), was censored by the Popular Party three years ago when it was removed from the programming designed by the then artistic director of the Canal Theaters, Blanca Li.

The reading will be performed by actress Françoise Gillard, with dramaturgy and staging by director Aristeo Tordesillas, on the stage of the Théâtre Vieux Colombier. “I have never been to that theater. It is a place I never thought I could reach, but I believe it places the work where it deserves to be, giving it the value it has, removing all the patina of a work that could have been written provocatively without artistic quality backing. That doubt for those who haven’t read it is completely clarified by what the Comédie-Française represents, and I also think it is a slap in the face to Spain, where no one is willing to represent it,” reflects Bezerra in a meeting held with this newspaper last Wednesday. The Comédie-Française programs the reading of three texts every year in the Foreign Writings cycle. Paco Bezerra, Chinese author Pat To Yan, and Russian Natalia Lizorkina have been chosen for this season that concludes on Monday.

This reading in the temple of French theater is the culmination of three years of painful wear, both professionally and personally, suffered by Paco Bezerra, who won the National Dramatic Literature Award in 2009 for Within the Earth. It all began in July 2022 when the playwright received a call from the Canal Theaters management, a center dependent on the Community of Madrid, governed by the Popular Party, informing him that his play I Die Because I Do Not Die was not going to be programmed in the 22/23 season, as previously assured by the artistic director of the center, Blanca Li, citing a lack of budget.

The play is a monologue in which Teresa of Jesus resurrects and lands in contemporary Spain, where she is forced to reconstruct her body by tying together all the dismembered pieces scattered around the world, more than 500 years after her death. The text, which received the SGAE Teatro Jardiel Poncela award in November 2021, was to be directed by Matías Umpiérrez and performed by Belén Cuesta. The decision to withdraw I Die Because I Do Not Die was made by the Board of Administration of Madrid’s Culture and Tourism, in a meeting attended by, among others, the then Councilor for Culture Marta Rivera de la Cruz, now the delegate for Culture, Tourism, and Sports of the Madrid City Council, but where Blanca Li was absent.

In theater, there is a discourse filled with concepts like solidarity, honesty, or commitment, which in practice is absolutely the opposite.

Paco Bezerra

Almost three years have passed since then, and Paco Bezerra confesses to feeling renewed. “I do not feel defeated; I feel renewed thanks to cinema,” he asserts, albeit with a somewhat bitter taste. He does not want to play the victim or complain excessively, but the reality is that both public and private theater have turned their backs on him. Since the censorship of I Die Because I Do Not Die, he has received no offers from any theater in Spain, has not premiered any performance, and has not written any theatrical text. His first staged work—“for which the audience paid for tickets”—was in 2011 with the premiere of The School of Disobedience, directed by Luis Luque, now director of Nave 10 at the Matadero, which is under the Madrid City Council.

This production was followed, a year later, by Grooming, which premiered at the Teatro de la Abadía in Madrid, under the direction of José Luis Gómez and starring Antonio de la Torre and Nausicaa Bonnín. Since then, every year, Paco Bezerra has seen how, season after season, his texts (Mr. Ye Loved Dragons, The Little Pony, The Heart of Phaedra, The Maids, or Oedipus Through the Flames, among others) had a place in the programming of major public and private theaters, including the National Dramatic Center, the Teatro Español, Las Naves del Matadero, as well as the International Classical Theater Festival of Mérida and theaters around the world.

But this ended in July 2022. “Life goes on, people forget, and many of those with whom you had a professional relationship start to drift away. My life bears no resemblance to what it was then,” says Bezerra, who formed a very solid professional partnership with playwright Luis Luque, with whom he premiered a total of nine productions, the last of which was Oedipus, Through the Flames, which was on tour at that time. “This demonstrates that in theater there is a discourse filled with concepts like solidarity, honesty, or commitment, which, in practice, is completely the opposite. In theater, and specifically in Madrid’s theater scene, a discourse is sold that is not then put into practice. I say this with all the pain and disappointment in the world, as well as with all the experience, because I am seeing it with my own eyes. It is an absolutely hypocritical discourse that is used solely to obtain money. In Madrid, theater is in the hands of politicians. There is no theatrical independence in Madrid. I am astonished to see how some in the theater profession, many of whom are friends and people I admired, have turned their backs on my case of censorship,” laments Paco Bezerra, who has seen actors like Nathalie Poza, Ana Belén, Gloria Muñoz, María León, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Julieta Serrano, and others lend their voices and commitment to the dramatic readings held in various Spanish cities and some abroad.

Pedro Almodóvar stated it during the first session of these readings, which took place at the Sala Berlanga in Madrid in November 2022. “I never imagined I would attend an event against censorship today,” said the filmmaker.

Audiovisual is precisely the sector where Bezerra has found professional rescue. He has written chapter 5 of the series Superstar, which premieres on Netflix in July, produced by Los Javis (Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi) and directed by Nacho Vigalondo. He is also in the process of writing the script for a film that is a project of actor Pedro Alonso, along with other important assignments that are yet to be specified. “I live today thanks to cinema. I have lost the desire to write theater. I do not want to continue working in such a hypocritical environment,” admits this playwright who, despite everything, maintains his artistic commitment. “We do not know all the good that exists in the bad things that happen to us.”