When the news of the sudden death of Joan Ollé Two novel characters came to mind. Although I did not know him personally, his defamation and civil death case caught my attention and seemed symptomatic of the miseries of our time. The first character I am referring to is Charles Arrowbythe protagonist and narrator of the sea, the sea (1978) by Iris Murdoch, one of the best novels of the last century, “that unseen colossus,” as George Steiner called it. Murdoch managed to give voice in that work to a despotic man of theater –actor, director and playwright– who retires to a remote place on the English coast to write his memoirs. His attempt to abjure the magic, however, is disrupted by the constant inrushes of ghosts from his past and the withdrawal from him becomes a mozartian comedy of revenge, unresolved love affairs, jealousy and obsessions. Murdoch manages to choreograph such a rich variety of characters that his virtuosity is almost unbelievable.
«The actor’s craft is sacred and the theater is an elevation above life»
Shortly before his death, Iñaki Ellakuría gave Ollé an excellent interview in The world (7-30-2022) which we now read as his testament. The director and professor spoke openly about his expulsion from the Institut del Teatre for accusations of sexual abuseof the smear campaign that was organized against him by certain media, of his critical position regarding the independence process and the trade to which he had devoted his entire life. His statements about the performing arts, backed by his demanding career, could have been in the mouth of Arrowby: «The theater is a sacred experience –it should at least be–, in which, as occurs with bullfights, from time to time when the sublime is reached. Before, he had admitted that he no longer went to the theater “because I don’t want to hear how someone recently operated on vegetation yells at me.” A reason, by the way, that we share with many fans who have stayed orphans of true professionals.
Ollé, like Lluís Pascual before him, was accused of being a tyrant in class, something he defended himself against by appealing to his right to protect the boards from mediocrity: «The actor’s craft is sacred and the theater an elevation above life, must have a share of spirituality. But many of the young actors willingly ignore the great masters of the theater. They aspire to do theater, to appear in television series, to have many followers and to be influencers on social networks. Perfect, but we have to say that they do not aspire to do the theater of the masters».
In the sea, the sea, Arrowby makes some of the deepest reflections that have been made on the genre: «Emotions really exist in the depths of the personality or on the surface, but in the intermediate zone they are represented». O well: “The theater is a place of obsession and not a friendly dreamland. Unemployment, poverty, disappointment, searing indecision (choose this now and you’ll miss that later), the harsh reality is thrown in our face; and, as in family life, one soon learns the narrow limitations of the human soul. And despite everything, it is the obsession that it is about. All good playwrights and directors and most (not all) of good actors are obsessed. Only geniuses like shakespeare they hide the fact or perhaps transform it into something spiritual. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, I must be the most corrupt of men. A theater director is a dictator. (If he’s not, he’s not doing his job) ».
“In our world you can’t talk about almost anything without one deserving of being accused of some sin against society”
I have no doubt that Ollé would have subscribed to these words, a conception of artistic demand that no longer has a place in our world, in which you can’t talk about almost anything without one deserving the blemish of some sin against society. In education, as in literature and art, cruelty and abuse of power are torturously confused with the obligation of teachers in a given discipline to be implacable and inflexible, because no one else will be able to be so legitimately again in a lifetime. from the student. Daniel Barenboim, who was also accused of tyranny by some musicians A few years ago, I was reflecting on the decline of the great orchestras precisely because of this prohibition against being harsh, even uncouthas he said himself, rude.
If Barenboim has reached the heights that we still admire in him, whether as a pianist or as a conductor, it is because in his youth withstood the elements of George Szell or, even in his maturity, those of Sergiu Celibidache, who continued to treat him like a child until the end. All Celibidache’s disciples, by the way, nowadays venerate his teacher, who helped them in the most selfless and generous way while terrifying them when they got on the podium. “Only I can be the enemy of everything that prevents you from becoming yourself,” he used to say. Someone will reply that all this belongs to another era, to a patriarchal world and to a military conception of education and that other methods are possible and even healthier and more effective. In agreement. But, are we aware of what we are destroying for the sake of a supposed seraphic pedagogy? Isn’t the right to learn also part of the learner’s integrity?
«That world of false denunciations and virtual sentences that end up trivializing very serious and very painful issues, such as sexual abuse or true labor exploitation, is already ours»
The questions come to mind because of the second character that came to mind when I found out about Ollé’s death. In the human stain (2000) Philip Roth Coleman Silk is a Hellenist of retirement age To whom one day an internal investigation is opened for racism that ends with his expulsion from the university and his social death. In one of his Greek classes, Silk had referred to two students who never came as black spooks, “black ghosts”. He was thinking of a recurring Homeric epithet, melanos, often associated with the black ships, the black sea, the black wine, the black birds. But those two students whom he had never seen turn out to be black. With the acquiescence of the entire academic faculty, Silk is accused of denigrating boys and his exile is decreed.
Let us now leave aside the extraordinary formal and moral pirouette that Roth, at the height of his mastery, makes with history, which also serves him to examine the state of American society at a certain moment, in 1998, just when it broke out. the lewinsky scandal, which works as a public correlate of his private research. When we read the novel back in the day, beyond admiring the novelist’s skill and both aesthetic and political ambition, the drama that Coleman Silk experiences seemed to many of us an impossible exaggeration. However, that world of false denunciations and virtual sentences that end up trivialize very serious and very painful issuessuch as sexual abuse or true labor exploitation, is already ours.
Speaking of his case, in the interview with Ellakuría, Ollé was blunt:
“The newspaper ara published a report with 12 theoretical testimonies, most of them anonymous, when the journalistic code of ethics says that any contribution from anonymity have no value. Despite this, the headline accused me of two crimes such as harassment of power and sexual abuse, making me a kind of Harvey Weinstein, the black beast of catalan theater. The ara is a moral police from journalistic immorality. They called me the day before the publication and asked if I had anything to say about the accusations being poured out on me. I responded to the journalist asking him to let me read the article so that I could give my opinion. When he refused, I understood that it would not end well.
«The first symptom of the moral corruption of a society lies in the eclipse of its public imagination»
As his friends have remembered these days, Ollé I was in the spotlight for a long time for not being attached to the independence cause, the same as Lluís Pascual, who had to put his foot down by refusing to hang the yellow ribbon at the Teatre Lliure. In the end, the prosecution filed the case against Ollé. His reputation, however, was destroyed. No one can ever repair the damage they caused to him and his family.
These days have been five years since those infamous September 6 and 7, 2017 in which the Parliament of Catalonia violated regional and state laws and kidnapped the representation of all the citizens of the Community. That farce failed in its practical objectives, but those responsible, today pardoned, have managed to normalize a climate of obedience and submission that has created monsters such as witch hunts. The first symptom of the moral corruption of a society lies in the eclipse of its public imagination.
The theater, from Greece, was the space where the cops staged his discussion of inherited myths. Neither Oedipus nor Antigone have been the same characters since Sophocles brought them to the stage. The British crown bears an inescapable gravity thanks to the encouragement of Shakespeare. And the verticality so characteristic of Spanish culture has its roots in medieval mysteries and baroque dramas. Trying to submit the scenarios, together with the universities, the newspapers or the public media, to an exclusive ideological cause is the best way to end a country. The republic thus becomes a correctional facility. As spectators, many citizens of Barcelona owe it to Joan Ollé that he defended the complexity of theatre, which is nothing more than our own condition and at the same time that of democracy. As Charles Arrowby would say: “The theater is an attack on humanity.” “The truth about us,” Coleman Silk would say, “is infinite, like the lies.”