"El Drac d'Or" (The Golden Dragon), in the Teatre Akadèmia
The play by Schimmelpfennig, a critique on a deranged, globalised society in which the actors transgress theatrical conventions, can be seen up until the 16th of February
Up until the 16th of February, the Teatre Akadèmia will play host to El Drac d'Or (The Golden Dragon), by German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, which saw its debut in Vienna in 2009. International success led to performances in more than forty countries and the production in question transgresses established theatrical conventions in that the male roles are played by women and elderly roles are played by young actors, and vice versa.
The action takes place in a Chinese-Vietnamese fast-food restaurant and consists of no less than forty-eight scenes, some of which are very brief, in which five separate plot lines end up converging. El Drac d'Or is a considerable challenge for the actors (Oriol Casals, Òscar Molina, Mingo Ràfols, Bàrbara Roig and Clara del Ruste) who, under the direction of Moisès Maica, attempt to bring to the stage Schimmelpfennig’s original text, which has been translated into Catalan by Anna Soler i Horta.
The characters’ mutation serves as a vehicle for plot development in this acerbic comedy which, with a frenetic rhythm and a backdrop of social drama, attempts to reveal the darker side of our globalised world. All the scenes take place in the restaurant and focus on one of the employees, who has a tooth ache, in an effort to approach subjects such as immigration or the speed at which we live our lives.
El Drac d'Or has been defined as a poetic, brutal, explosive, enigmatic and moving text and production is at the hands of the Teatre Invisible company with the collaboration of the Goethe Institute of Barcelona and the support of OSIC – the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya.