Madrid
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Luisa Carnes, «the most important narrator of the generation of 27», is one of the many Spanish women on whom the civil war and exile threw a desert of oblivion. She was born in Madrid in 1905 and was a member of the PCE and a staunch defender of women’s suffrage. According to his own testimony, at the age of eleven he already had to learn a trade, and among the jobs he developed (where his work as a journalist stood out) he spent time as a shop assistant in a pastry shop and tea room, Viena Capellanes, located on Calle Arenal de Madrid, next to Plaza de Isabel II. From this experience was bornTea Rooms‘, a novel published in 1934 and applauded by the critics of the time.
However, it did not see the printing press again until a few years ago: the text reached the hands of the playwright Laila Ripollwho saw in him a magnificent theatrical work.
The Fernán Gómez Theater has just premiered ‘Tea Rooms’, directed by Laila Ripoll herself and a cast that makes up Paula Iwasaki, María Álvarez, Elisabet Altube, Clara Cabrera, Silvia de Pé and Carolina Rubio. «’Tea rooms’ tells the story of several women, employees of a distinguished tea room near Puerta del Sol -explains the director-. They are Antonia, the oldest; Matilde, alter ego of the author; Marta, the youngest, whom misery has made brave and determined; Laurita, the owner’s protege, frivolous and carefree; Teresa, the manager, the faithful dog, always defending the company… They are women accustomed to obeying and keeping quiet, accustomed to stretching a wage that she does not even give to buy a tram ticket. They are women who suffer, who dream, who fight, who love… And Madrid always in the background, a convulsive and hostile Madrid, enormous and alive».
Although the work talks about women of the thirties, says Laila Ripoll that «in reality it is a portrait of women of all times; we can recognize ourselves in them all the women of today».