Playwright's Podcast: Transcript of Series 6 Episode 2 - Pablo Manzi talks to Omar Elerian

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This is the transcript of the recorded conversation between Pablo Manzi (PM) and Omar Elerian (OE), recorded for Series 6 of the Royal Court Playwright’s Podcast. This conversation was recorded in March 2022. The following content may contain strong language. 

SERIES INTRO

OE Welcome to series 6 of the Playwright’s Podcast with me Omar Elerian. This series will have a special focus on the international writers the Royal Court theatre works with. 

WRITER INTRO

OE Pablo Manzi has developed most of his work as a playwright with the Chile-based collective BONOBO with whom he has written the plays ‘Amansadura’, ‘Where the Barbarians Live’ and ‘You Shall Love’. His texts have been presented in festivals in Japan, Italy, The Netherlands, Peru, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, the USA, Sweden and Chile. He was invited by the Royal Court theatre and the British Council to do a residency in London where he wrote ‘A Fight Against…’/‘Una Lucha Contra…’ directed by Sam Pritchard. Currently he is developing ‘Temis’, his latest project with BONOBO. 

CONVERSATION

OE Hello Pablo, it’s a real pleasure to have you here. And I am in Milan, where are you in the world today? 

PM Well, hi Omar. It’s a pleasure also for me to have this conversation with you. I am right now in Chile, in Santiago. 

OE I like to ask a question at the beginning, which is what do you see outside your window? If you have a window in that room. 

PM That’s a good question. I see the city, some buildings, the street. Nothing too interesting, I guess. Very common. What about you? 

OE Well, I see the courtyard of my building. And it’s a bit cloudy today in Milan. So yeah, we’re probably almost in the same place, although thousands of miles apart. 

It’s a real pleasure to have you on the podcast. We’re going to speak a bit about your work as a as a writer, as s theatre maker, and the first question I wanted to ask you is the perennial question, ‘Why theatre?’ What brought you to choose theatre as the medium of your work? 

PM I guess that for me, at least, there’s a change of how I can respond to that question in different times of my life. But right now, I guess that there’s something that happened after the pandemic, which I was thinking a little bit about before the pandemic, but I think that there’s something about the collective possibilities that theatre can give. I mean, why are we theatre people missing it so much, having an audience right there. At least for me, it was so important. I mean, we’re still in a pandemic, but the first play that I could see after a year and a half was so emotional for me. I felt that it was so important for me to be in that… I don’t know, what’s the word in English for that… ritual? So I guess that there’s something that is very important for me about that, and about the feeling that there’s a lot of people that don’t know each other that are in this same ritual. And if this ritual is discussing some social problems or some social conflicts, I think that is what is more important for me right now. 

OE And how did you come to writing specifically, because of course you could have that ritual as a performer or like myself as a director. How did you get to writing then? 

PM Well, in Chile we don’t have a drama school that does specific courses about playwriting. So most of the people that write in Chile are people that are also actors sometimes. So I’m an actor. So I think about theatre and writing through that perspective I guess. Maybe it’s an unconscious perspective but I feel when I’m writing that I’m writing as an actor.  

I feel that when I first started writing I could be shy about showing people that I wanted to write. I feel that I was too shy in saying, ‘I need to do this’, and saying that to my colleagues and partners at the school and stuff like that. So at the beginning it was kind of strange and mixed up, where I was directing and writing and saying, ‘Yeah, I’m going to put these words in, but I’m not writing this play, right. I’m just directing it.’ So then when I started working with BONOBO they helped me a lot by saying, ‘You’re a playwright Pablo. This is what you should do.’ And that helped me a lot. I think I can connect the experience of writing with being inside that collective because I felt that they helped me a lot in this decision. 

OE Yeah, I think this is a recurring theme of this podcast. Because it’s also something that I recognised as a foreign practitioner coming to work in the UK, the importance in the UK of the role of the playwright, while in many other theatre cultures there’s a much more fluid definition. And, you know, there is a lot of jumping in between being a performer, a writer, a director, a producer. So how did you find it when you came to the UK? At the Royal Court of all places, you know, a writer’s theatre. What were your discoveries? What were your feelings in terms of seeing the differences in terms of practice and language? 

PM It’s really interesting what you’re saying Omar because I had that same sort of shock when I arrived at the Royal Court. Because when we started rehearsals I was so shocked, I guess that is the word, because they were asking me so many things about the play. And when I’m in Chile, nobody wants to hear anything that I can say about the play. They are just like, ‘Shut up, please! We’re not interested in your visual ideas or your ideas about direction.’ It’s different when I’m directing, you know. But here they were always asking me this. And there was a moment where we had this conversation with Sam and I understood that they really needed to know some ideas. Because it’s a different way of working. And I also found that at the end I understood a little bit more and I find that was also interesting. Because there’s a thing about the work that I find to be very profound, and that sometimes we also kind of underestimate the possibilities of the word. I’m somebody that really, really enjoys reading, for example. I’m also used to the perspective you mentioned before about the playwright, that they are just one more element in the whole process. But here, they were saying, ‘You know, this is the playwrights’ theatre, so you have to understand that power.’ 

OE Did you feel more pressure or more power? 

PM Well I guess that’s an uncomfortable question. Yes, because I do feel that that gives a power to the work. That is something that is being really discussed, for example right now in Chile. It creates the question, ‘What comes first?’ What is the source? What is the first source of the creation, and there was a tradition in Chile, that the first source was the playwright. So for example, I work in a collective and sometimes they say, ‘This is a play “Donde viven los bárbaros” by Pablo Manzi,’ because I’m the playwright. But I always this is not my play. And this is not my idea. This is a collective idea where I just did the playwright work. But I guess at the same time, like I was saying before, when I spoke with Sam there was another sort of art to get into the world of the words. And for me that was also a new place to explore. And I didn’t have that experience, for example, being in Chile. It was very much, ‘Let’s get it onto the stage and we’ll work out what’s happening once it’s there,’ whereas here we could take plays to another ‘forest’, to try to understand another world which, if I have to be honest, I also didn’t understand so much. So it was really interesting. 

OE Which brings me to another question about… You had ‘Una Lucha Contra…’ produced in Chile in Spanish… 

PM No, no not yet. This is the premiere of the play. 

OE Okay, so how was it then, to have a premiere of a play that you wrote in your mother tongue, which speaks a bit about, you know, Chile and South America, but to have it premiere in English in London for a British audience? 

PM Well, it’s really interesting, because… How can I say this? For example, I do feel that sometimes there are things about identity that sometimes can unite some perspectives of the world. But if we simplify every understanding of our political thoughts by thinking only about that, we are going to reduce some possibilities of transformation, I guess. So this is really strange, because I was thinking a lot of stuff about this play, and just because of some coincidence there were a lot of British authors that people in Chile were sending me, like Benedict Anderson, or another writer Jean Franco, who made amazing work about violence in Latin America. So I do think that there has been stuff that has happened in UK that have similarities with Chile, for example, the whole process of privatisation, the process with Thatcher right, that is kind of a mirror for what happened in Chile in the 70s and 80s. So I think that that there was a lot of stuff in common, and certainly for somebody of my generation, and William’s too, he’s the translator. So I hoped that this could make sense to people here because there was also, from what I read, a process of privatisation of social life in the UK. So that was one dimension. 

There’s another dimension that is the dimension with my partners from Latin America that were part of the cast. And we were speaking about some stuff which we didn’t know would work here, like the humour. I think there is a humour that is very related with some experience of violence, and maybe cruelness and stuff like that. And there’s also a thing about the feeling of an atmosphere that you can feel in some countries in Latin America. I discussed this also with the cast that there is sort of an atmosphere, where you are living in a habitat, where there’s a feeling of permanent danger. That if you go to the streets, or if you go outside, the community is a place of danger. So I was really interested that we could communicate that to the audience, that atmosphere. And I felt that, from that perspective, the whole team made an amazing work, because I do feel that they communicated that sort of atmosphere. 

OE Amazing. 

Can I ask you, in Chile, what is the role of the playwright? We’ve discussed that maybe it’s different in as much as the playwright is not the centre of the narrative as it might be in the British system, but what is the role of theatre and new writing at the moment? Does it reflect on the on the current issues of society? Of course, Chile now is in a quite transformative moment of its history. But does the theatre have a have a say in it? Does it occupy a space within that debate for you? 

PM Yeah, well there’s a lot of people doing really interesting work right now in Chile. And we have a tradition of theatre that is very close and related to social conflicts that are present in Chile. And we have a tradition that theatre is a place where you can go and see a problematisation of that conflict. And I’m a big fan of the theatre in Chile, of my colleagues, and yeah, I guess that with what is happening right now in Chile there are lots of plays speaking about that. And there were also a lot of plays speaking about it before this big change. I don’t know, maybe there was somebody, but I think most people weren’t expecting what happened. And how is it in in Italy for example, the experience between playwright and directing? 

OE The honest answer is I don’t really know because I’ve moved back just a couple of years ago and they’ve all been shut because of COVID. But my impression is that, which is something that I could probably also translate to the UK where I’ve worked for many, many years is that theatre occupies a space which is supposedly quite progressive and on the beat of history, but actually many times when history comes knocking at the door, it doesn’t stand up to the challenge. And I think we’ve seen this vividly throughout the pandemic. I think there have been, of course, examples of theatres that repurpose themselves, becoming vaccine centres or places that were serving the community in a different way from their principal purpose, which would be putting on plays, but by and large, I think we saw institutions just trying to figure out, ‘Oh, how do we survive now that we can’t charge people money to come and see what we do?’ I thought that was a really interesting moment to witness. As somebody who has run a building, I was the Associate Director in a theatre in London for many years, I’ve been inside an institution. But then over the past three years, I’ve been working as a freelance, so all of a sudden, knowing how it works from inside, but also being on the outside and seeing the problems and how critical this moment was for it all. And I thought it asked a really important question of us, because what are these beautiful buildings for if all the artists are just sitting outside with nothing to do? So for me, it’s interesting to ask that question to you. Because I know Chile, of course, you also have COVID, as everywhere else in the world, but are also going through a time of civil reckoning. Confronting a history that is extremely loaded, and a process… It’s always interesting to try and understand… These buildings, what purpose do they serve, and how do artists and communities and audiences inhabit them? And I feel like every corner of the world has a slightly different experience, depending on their historic moment. 

PM Yes, yes, I agree. 

OE And do you feel like your job or your mission as a playwright has changed? Since you started because of the political events of the past few years? 

PM Um, I don’t know if I have the answer for that right now, but at least I think that you were saying something really related with what happened here, because you were saying how we in Chile have the pandemic, but it’s also true that we had before that a suspension of our social understanding of normality. In fact, it’s kind of strange because when we were in the pandemic, there was this new concept of the ‘new normality’. But in Chile we were speaking about that six months before, because everything was changing. So there was this question, ‘How will it be, the new normality?’ Because the normality that we have right now, the habitat where we are living in was no longer making sense. So I guess if I have to say what I’m thinking right now is a more a place where I feel I’m suspended. About what is the normality that we should create? It’s strange, I think that we are almost in mourning. What’s the word like? We are in el camino. On the route. 

And I feel the important thing now is knowing what that route will be. What is the camino where we are going to ask and discuss stuff? Because I know this is a historical moment and it’s very important not to erase what happened in the past. Because we have a whole century of experience where some moments were like this, and really difficult stuff happened. So it’s a strange moment. So if you ask me, like, if this changed me, yeah, it changed me a lot. But I don’t know, if I have the conclusion of what I should do with it right now. 

OE Do you think theatre has a role in writing that direction of travel? That route? 

PM What I always think is that theatre can be a place to discuss things, and I have to say that I’m not a big fan of theatre that says, ‘This is the route we should take,’ without discussing the problem. I think we know what our true beliefs, our true thoughts are, when we are in a more complex context. So I do feel that when plays take me to that complex context, then I can say, ‘Oh, so in that context, I am also going to think the same, I’m going to have the same dream, I’m going to keep my thoughts, or in that context, I will change my perspective.’ So I feel that theatre is a place for that. I don’t know if that makes sense in English, at least in Spanish does. 

OE It does, and it makes me wonder whether you feel like this context energises playwrights to write about the present? Because of course, you have new writing, but as with everywhere you will be putting on classics, you will be putting on all sorts of plays. So in terms of new writing, and new plays, and new voices, and your generation of writers and theatre makers, do you feel this context is an opportunity? And what do you see coming out of it? 

PM This is strange because it’s related with what I was saying before, that we are part of our history. And I want to hear all the generations, like, for example my generation is a generation that was raised in a radical process of neoliberalism that was being created in Chile. But it was also a democracy that was trying to transform into a liberal democracy. Sort of an… 

OE Western liberal democracy. Yeah. 

PM So what I’m trying to say is that we were living through two processes at the same time. We were trying to make that change in the place of the language and the symbolic perspective of life, and there was another one that was everything that was happening in the economic change that our families and everybody was living. So I was part of that generation. But there’s a generation that is older than me that were provoking our generation a lot a few years ago. So we were in the middle of this. And now there’s a new generation because I’m 34 now... so there’s a generation now of people that are in their 20s, which was very important for this whole change. But I do feel or I want to hear each one of these generations because I feel that this is kind of like a net in history that we have to build again. Because it was destroyed. So what I’m trying to say is that I don’t feel that everything that is new is from somebody that is younger. And I feel that everyone that is part of this history, right now, because of the change that we had, is kind of suspended, and is going to have new reflections about everything that has happened. 

OE That’s interesting because I was thinking when you mentioned earlier… Having your play performed for the first time in Britain and having the opportunity to be at the Royal Court, I imagine you might have seen some shows and spoken to some of your peers. And you were saying people sent you plays by different playwrights. I’m curious about what kind of influences you’ve had personally, but also in terms of the Chilean theatre scene? And how have they been absorbed or reinterpreted? Because I’m aware that many places in South America have felt a huge wave of American colonialism, both military and economic, but also soft power intervention. I’m curious to understand, in this moment of the country, how is that kind of reassessed what other influences are coming? You know, is there a rejection of something? Or is it looking at other things? 

PM

Well, that’s a big discussion right now. Because the soft power that you mentioned. I’m seeing a lot of that right now in theatre and not only theatre. 

Well, English is not my language. So this is a discussion that is also very hard to have even in Spanish. So in English it is going to be even harder for me… But I do have some critical thoughts about just repeating everything that the cultural industry of United States is saying to us. Like, ‘This is how you have to organise your cultural politics.’ And I feel that there is a risk that we just say, ‘Yeah, sure. We have to do this, we have to do that.’ For example, the tradition of the political left in the US is very different from the left tradition that there is in Latin America. So we cannot just say, ‘Okay, so we are going to erase all of these traditions.’ I agree that that tradition was very, for example, conservative in a lot of aspects and I’m very happy that those things are changing, but at the same time, I am also asking myself, when we speak for example about class, I don’t know what the cultural industries in the US can say to us about class. Or about, what is the project of the society that we want to transform? Do we want all of our social groups to enter this neoliberalism experience? Or do we want to change this way of seeing life, because for my generation that’s very important. I learned how to breathe in that habitat. So if I am honest, I learnt the idea that the other is somebody that is dangerous. And the possibilities of creating something different always seemed impossible. So we just had to enter this sort of party. But I mean… I would love to explain this in Spanish! Because I have a lot of things to say about that. But that’s kind of like one of the things that is for me important about that soft power of US industry right now in the cultural experience of South America, for example. 

OE That’s really clear. 

So okay, staying on the theme, I think one of the things I’ve been interested in asking is always who or what have you encountered recently that has been inspiring to you?  

PM Well, a lot of people, I guess. 

There’s an Argentinian playwright called Griselda Gambaro. And she has some amazing texts that changed my perspective of theatre when I was in drama school. Because she has something… I don’t know who could be similar. For example, in UK could be kind of like Harold Pinter or stuff like that. But maybe some people in Chile or in Argentina could kill me if I’m saying this. But I think that there are some similarities because she creates some sort of very disturbing environments, where you have to start again, to understand what is happening. Because it’s kind of like something that is very familiar, but at the same time very disturbing. Something really violent is happening but you cannot say what it is. So you have to start again with your interpretation of the social logic. And I loved when theatre can make me feel that process, that I’m seeing something again. That I’m not taking anything for granted. So she’s amazing. She’s a really amazing playwright. 

Well, there’s other playwrights that were very important for me. For example Guillermo Calderón. He had a play at the Royal Court. 

There’s another playwright called Luis Barrales that was also very important for me.  I don’t know, there’s a lot of people. 

OE And is there anything else that you found inspiring lately, not even in theatre? 

PM Well, there’s a Brazilian filmmaker that is called… I hope to say it in the right way… Kleber Mendonça.  I hope that’s how your pronounce his name.  I know how to write it I think that he’s very interesting. 

I know this is very old but I was seeing again some movies from Buñuel and they are so amazing. 

There are so many people! This novelist in Chile that is called Nona Fernández, for example, it’s also really interesting what she’s doing. 

Yeah, well… there are a lot of names that I’m thinking of right now! 

OE It’s interesting that you mentioned Buñuel, which I know a bit better than many of the names that you mentioned! But thanks for sharing that because it’s always great to have a bit of an exchange. 

I couldn’t see ‘Una Lucha Contra…’ but I’ve read the script, and from that and what you’ve spoken about, it feels to me like you have an interest in the subject of violence. Is that something that you feel you will continue to go back to? Is that a constant of your work, analysing violence and the representation of violence, or how violence exists in our lives and in societies? 

PM Yes, yes. Is it strange because most of the time it has felt like such a big topic that when people in interviews would suggest that to me, I would say, ‘No, it’s more specific than that.’ But I have to admit, after some of the plays I have written since, I feel that it is very important for me. I don’t know why. I’m not proud of it. But it is there. 

OE I find it interesting because sometimes when you start building a body of work, you don’t know, you’re just following your own instinct and your own story. And then years later you start looking back and going, ‘Oh, there is this thread.’ And as you said, you don’t really realise. People are telling you, but you’re like, ‘No, no, no, no, no! That play was completely about something else.’ But actually, it was also about a specific theme that comes back. And the question I have is, do you think this specific topic of violence is something that comes from, as you describe, the place where you live and where you grew up and the reality that you’ve been confronted with? Or do you think this is a constant that you find across time and space? 

PM It’s hard to answer because sometimes in a social meeting with people they say to me, ‘Oh, Pablo, you’re always seeing the violent part of it.’ And I guess maybe it’s true. For me it is harder to say that they are right when they say that to me, but I guess there’s a part where it’s true. 

How can I explain it…? I feel that it’s related with this experience of the process we lived through in Chile with this sort of implicit and very ambiguous way of expressing violence. For example, it’s kind of strange because in Chile, people have this social perspective that we are very different from the other countries of South America and that in Chile there is no such thing as these kind of very explicitly experiences of violence that you might hear about elsewhere. That Chile is a more civilised country. I hear words like that sometimes. That we are calmer. We are more introverted, stuff like that. But the thing is that we still feel this atmosphere of danger. That there’s something below, in the underground, that is happening. There’s a really strange thing about what happened in the first days of this big change that we had in Chile. The first demonstrations started in the subway. Underground. And there’s something I do feel is very interesting about that, because there’s something about the underground as the only place that the project to destroy social life was not able to destroy. Because people have to move, you know, so there’s a lot of people watching themselves. And they cannot make anything with that because people have to go to their houses. And the thing started there. I think that some people from Chile could say like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know if that makes sense.’ But at least for me, that makes sense. And when I think about that, I feel that that there’s something that I felt my whole life, that there’s sort of a violence that we don’t want to speak about, but is happening. 

OE It makes me think about one of my favourite filmmakers, Pablo Guzman, the Chilean documentary maker. In his work there is this constant tension between history and the future. In ‘Nostalgia for the Light’ he goes into the desert where there is a telescope that looks at the stars, which is our past, but also the relatives of the desaparecidos who are looking for the bodies and remains of their loved ones that have been kidnapped and killed by the Pinochet regime. So it feels to me like there is a similar question here about this underlying violence that has been entombed and how it is constantly popping up in certain places, and how you as an artist, as a playwright, sharpen your lens in order to pick it out and expose it. And it is so interesting for me to see that kind of similarity in the topic.  

We’re about to close, but I have one last question. What is the burning question that you’re asking of yourself? That you’re grappling at the moment? And it might be, ‘What am I going to prepare for dinner?’ or it might be, ‘How are we going to ends the wars?’ but is there anything at the moment that is at the forefront of your thinking as an artist? 

PM Well, I think there’s always one that is at the forefront of my work with BONOBO, which is related to how violence is expressed and how it is developed in the context of liberal democracies. And that’s something that is very interesting and a question I carry all the time.  

And also, I think there’s something that is around ‘A Fight Against…’ and that I want to keep on working with, about the unconscious impulse we have for creating community. Right now, I’m very interested, for example, in religion. I’m going to write a play about the theology of liberation. There was a big, important process in Latin America about that which involved big discussions, not about if God exists, no, the question was what does God mean to our community? And if God means justice, the only thing we have to think about is, who is God? So I’m thinking about that right now. Because there’s a lot of people that laugh about religious people from a very secular perspective. But we don’t have to underestimate that belief. Maybe there is a communitary impulse here and a necessity to change and ask about justice… Stuff like that is very interesting for me. Maybe your question was expecting a shorter response… 

OE No no, no, it’s great. It reminds me of something I read a few years ago about the theology of liberation in South America particularly, which said that statistically, the Catholic Church has a schism every 500 years, between the Oriental and Western church, and of course, Protestantism and Catholicism. And then of course, in the year 2000, we’re due another schism and everybody had their eyes on Latin America because it’s probably the biggest Catholic community in the world. But some of the dogmas of the traditional Catholic Church confront themselves with a society that requires a different level of justice, and therefore, I think we’re 20 years late still for the schism to happen. But I was wondering whether you thought that was still in something in actuality? 

PM Well, absolutely. I think that’s what I’m trying to think about so much because, well, I’m not religious, but we cannot deny what you were saying, right? That, for example, in Latin America, the religion is really, really important. I do think that we cannot underestimate that there’s something about that that doesn’t have a simple response. 

OE Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Okay, great. We’ve come to the end. And I usually close with this question, but you kind of already gave me a few recommendations, but I’d love to get one that is not theatre related. So I’d love you to tell me, is there a piece of music or a film or a book or something that you’ve been hit by lately that you want to that you want to recommend? 

PM So many things but yes, for example, that director Kleber Mendonça, there are a lot of things that are interesting. 

I was speaking also about Nona Fernández who is this Chilean novelist and also a playwright. Ho else…?  Those are the two things that I think are really interesting. 

I saw an amazing movie called ‘This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection’, I think that’s the name. 

What else? There’s so many things! I could be hours here so maybe I’m just going to say those ones! 

OE Okay, great Pablo. It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you so much. And I wish you good luck with the next plays and hopefully to see you in London or in Santiago in the near future. 

SERIES OUTRO

OE Thanks for listening to the Royal Court theatre’s Playwrights Podcast, if you’d like to listen to more make sure you subscribe to get the next episode.  The Playwrights Podcast is brought to you by the Royal Court theatre, presented by me Omar Elerian, produced by Anoushka Warden and Emily Legg and with music by Kareem Samara.