DIRECTOR’S NOTES

We all imagine a better world. A better life for ourselves. Maybe even for the ones around us. “I’ll be happy when I marry”, “I’ll be happy when I’m validated”, “I’ll be happy when I get out of here”. That’s what we think. “When I make money”, “When I’m free”. The characters in Mad Forest love politics. They live in a rare world where change is actually happening in front of their eyes, a world of possibility where the impossible happens. Where a country defeats a dictator, a girl marries the love of her life and gets to travel to America, or a couple fight for their love against their families and gets to be together happily ever after. And yet, they struggle. When you get what you have wanted for a long time, you face the risk of it not matching the idea of what you wanted, and this is where Caryl Churchill places her characters. In a place where ideas have to face reality. A place where ideal has to force its way into real. And it’s far from romantic. Revolution is not a happy place. It’s not a pleasant place. Mad Forest happens in a place of frustration, disappointment, and violence, where we realize that “happy” might not be a goal in life after all. It might be just a fleeting moment. A scarce and rare moment where the ideal and the real briefly touch each just to part ways again. A moment in the country, far from civilization, looking into the sky and wondering. Wondering what would the world be like if we just stayed there and never went back.

Jordi Casado i Olivas