The Festival recalls its origins with the San Javier Theater Group that premieres «Orquesta de Señoritas», by Jean Anouilh

Today, Tuesday, the 7th at 22:30 in the 49th International Festival of Theater, Music and Dance of San Javier

As every year, the program of the San Javier Festival keeps an appointment for the premiere of the last assembly of the theater group San Javier that this time is presented with «Orquesta de Señoritas» by Jean Anouilh directed by Orlando Gabriel Panizzoli. The work is set in the postwar period of 1947, in France and takes place in a spa where the orchestra plays, formed by six young ladies, played by male actors, and a man.

The actors, Pepe Sánchez, Pepe Pardo, Ricardo Tárraga, José Manuel Sáez de Gea, Alfonso Armenteros and Valentín Sánchez «have managed to think and feel like women» affirms satisfied director Orlando Gabriel Panizzoli who wanted to avoid the grotesque side of gender impersonation without stopping exploiting the most comic side of the Argentine version that replaced the actresses who originally interpreted it by men. The cast is completed by Manuel Rodríguez, who plays the only man in the orchestra.

The chosen version is more fun and comic than the original, considered one of Anouilh’s black comedies, although it maintains the tragicomic character that the members of this small orchestra reflect, which in the breaks of each performance show their more human side. through his daily life affected by the effects of a postwar period.

The dialogues held by the women members of the orchestra soon connect with the viewer by the actuality of the situations described in the text in which they talk about love, deception, or the family explains the director of the assembly, the Argentine Orlando Gabriel Panizzoli that in 2005 he entered the theater group San Javier with which he has directed «Violins and Trumpets» and «The Plumber», in addition to having acted as an actor.

The actors have been working on the assembly of «Orquesta de Señoritas», which was imposed by vote within the group before other proposals «, since last March with the difficulties involved in working with an amateur group in which the actors must combine the theater with their work, says the director who is satisfied with the result and sure that the audience will have a great time.The rest of the actors of the group assume all the production tasks of the assembly with Ana Lopez’s wardrobe and a minimalist scenography based on the musical props of the orchestra.

The Teatro San Javier group is the heir of the legendary local amateur group Oscar 69, which 49 years ago, together with its director at the time, Francisco Rubio, promoted an Amateur Theater Competition that ended up becoming the current International Festival of Theater, Music and Dance, without having stopped celebrating a single year since then. The annual presence of the San Javier theater group at the Festival is a tribute to the local theater and to the very origins of the Festival that is about to turn half a century old.