Director Héctor Alvarez explores a form of theater that breaks the rules of traditional drama
When theater director Héctor Alvarez was growing up in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, UNESCO declared the town a World Heritage Site. Soon, millions of Euros from UNESCO and the European Union flooded into the town of 200,000 residents, much of which was invested in cultural projects. At one point, Alvarez recalls, there was not one but two international theater festivals occurring in town at the same time. “I grew up watching non-traditional, non-realistic theater. So, I never had a sense of what was normal,” he says.
To be fair, it was probably more than an institutional imprimatur and a torrent of cash that launched Alvarez into the world of avant-garde theater. As a child, he created dramas in the family home with a puppet set and a cardboard theater his father built for him, but some of the audacious performances he took in as a teen were more formative, including a condensed version of Macbeth featuring cannibalistic insects. “It was only 25 minutes long, but it made a huge impression,” Alvarez says. “I still remember it all these years later.”
Read the full article on the College of Arts and Sciences News.
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