It was a makeup artist, Inesita, who many years ago discovered the literature of Jorge Luis Borges in Cuba. Today Hanna Schygulla (Königshütte, today Chorzow, in Poland, 80 years old), an essential figure in the panorama of European cinema and theater, remembers him with emotion. “My dear Inesita,” she recalled this Wednesday in Madrid, on the eve of the premiere at the Teatro de la Abadía of a show conceived and performed by herself 20 years ago around the mysterious poems and stories of the Argentine author and who is now resurrected, in Spanish and under the title Borges and megiving the leading role to actress Andrea Bonelli.
The new production in Spanish is directed by Schygulla herself, but this time it stars the Argentine Andrea Bonelli. It combines the sublime literature of Borges, through seven of his stories, with the popular and powerful magic of tango music. The show, which can be seen at La Abadía from this Thursday until next Sunday, features the same musicians, Peter Ludwig and Peter Wöpke, who presented it in German and French in 2023. On that occasion Schygulla herself was also the interpreter of the work. On this occasion, one of the stories from the initial montage has been changed, at the suggestion of Andrea Bonelli, in addition to the incorporation of images and projections.
It was an instant infatuation, confesses the one who was muse of the filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder and who, at 80 years old, retains the energy and curiosity essential in an artist who has traveled a long and beautiful path. “I was relaxed, with my eyes closed, while she (the makeup artist) worked on my face,” explains the actress. It was when he opened his eyes that he found in his lap a piece of paper with the following phrase by Borges: “There is not one thing that is not a silent letter of the eternal indecipherable writing, whose book is time.” Schygulla did not understand anything, but she felt suddenly carried away. “Sometimes the things we don’t understand grab us stronger than those we understand,” says the actress with the Spanish learned on her trips to Cuba.
Thus began a relationship with Borges that still continues. “It’s very difficult to know why. I am attracted to the mystery, the magical realism of her stories and poems, her dimension of time and the traces she leaves,” adds the actress and director, who speaks of recycling to refer to this new production that premiered in Buenos Aires and a few years ago. days in the Canary Islands. “We are recycling something, I like that expression also as a way of treating life, because otherwise we will drown in what exists. You have to recycle. I am very satisfied with something that is reborn after 20 years. We all know that things have a beginning and an end, but it is also good to see that there are things that have a beginning, but that can be reborn before their end. “I really liked the idea of resuming this production without me being the protagonist and of returning to its origins and doing it in Borges’s original language,” explained Schygulla, who herself proposed the space of the Teatro de la Abadía, which she met in the on two occasions, 1997 and 2000, in which he worked here as an interpreter.
This actress plays with the beautiful idea of uniting on the same stage the wisdom and excellence of a sublime writer like Borges with the popularity of Argentine tango. “I had the desire to combine something as popular as tango with the high literature and culture that defines Borges. “I wanted to walk that path, uniting the most sublime with the most popular,” adds the actress, who confesses that she is still discovering the wisdom of a man like Borges, who makes her reflect with every sentence she reads. “Borges takes me into mystery,” explains Schygulla, an actress who learned from Fassbinder the struggle to achieve that magical moment of doubts and daring on stage, far from the “ideal.” “The ideal does not exist, not even in life. That tendency in art to search for the ideal seems to me less fascinating and fruitful than that of taking things as they come,” adds the actress, who appears terrified at the rise of the extreme right in Europe. “It’s a disaster. It is like a return to a past that we know ended in catastrophe.”
What would you say now to that makeup artist who discovered Borges on a piece of paper? “Dear Inesita. What pleasure I would feel now if I could talk to you about something that you started, with your beautiful and unforgettable blue eyes, in such a Cuban face.” Signed: Hanna Schygulla.