PRINCIPIANTES

“Principiantes” is the theatre adaptation of one of the best known short stories by Raymond Carver, originally published in 1981. The plot revolves around the theme of love, through four characters who converse in a kitchen: a “long-standing” married couple and their friends, a younger couple whose relationship is more recent. Over the course of the evening, in an atmosphere marked by the changing light, the four friends share their experiences and ideas, big and small, about what love means and the need for the other. Romantic and heartrending, while at the same time realistic and poetic, the story is not only a reference of an era, but it grips us today with the force of an essential piece of music.

When the story first came to light, it was famously edited by Carver’s friend and editor Gordon Lish. This staging is based above all on the original version, which was recovered in 2007, but also draws on other passages and fragments of the American author, the aim being to submerge us in the recurring elements of Carver’s universe: relationships, love and alcohol as refuges, but also as deadly weapons, predestination as opposed to chance, and the literary texture of the American experience.