Stage design for Antonio Buero Vallejo's play.

The Director of the Centro Dramático Nacional, Juan Carlos Pérez de la Fuente, contacted me to create a scenographic project with features very close to architecture. It was my first scenography and one of the first to be commissioned from an architect (I don't understand why painters are relied upon more frequently). I think that the difficulty of the work lay precisely in what was most original and interesting about it: subtly transforming, before the eyes of the audience – as there are no intermissions – a welcoming and pleasant space into an oppressive and claustrophobic one. It was about following the text, which is always situated from the protagonist's point of view. As the play progresses and the protagonist regains his sanity, the audience must accompany him on this journey. I guessed to discovered in the play thoughts that went far beyond a specific political moment, which is why I tried to ensure the scenography did not remind the audience of any past era; I almost preferred it to have a slight futuristic touch. To believe that one is in a comfortable foundation and then discover that he is in a prison, inevitably condemned to a more or less distant death, is not an experience confined to any particular time; it is the human condition itself. At the beginning, the play takes place inside a space that fulfils all the comfort needs of the supposed "scientists", in an idyllic setting, surrounded by nature, freshness, and an abundance of technological comforts. But this space evolves through subtle changes and with the protagonist's gradual recovery until it reaches a cold atmosphere, a prison of modernity. A space dominated by deprivation, a transparent room, a rat trap where privacy no longer exists. I designed an interior in forced perspective where the six characters coexisted. At the back of this apartment, a large opening offered a magnificent view of the outside landscape. To one side of the door, the bathroom module; on the other, the lockers and a bookshelf with a television, video recorder, and music system. In both the bathroom and the bookshelf, I played with the appearance and disappearance of elements through the semi-transparency of the glass. I made another reference to the exterior space through a side window with a curtain that fluttered in the breeze, reflecting the waters of a hypothetical lake beside the Foundation. However, the idyllic landscape in the background vanished, and in its place, a backlit image of a false perspective placed us inside a cell, in the endless courtyard of a prison.