Theatre

Edgar Chías is a man under pressure. For two years, the Royal Court has been working in Mexico with Mexican playwrights: selecting writers, exchanging ideas, developing plays. And now, the project culminates in Chías’s drama, ‘On Insomnia and Midnight’, opening at the Court this week. ‘I’m worried,’ says the playwright through an interpreter, ‘that the audience are going to sit back, cross their arms and say, “Right, let’s see what this Mexican author has got to show us”.’ And that’s just the half of it. ‘What I’m really worried about is taking the play back to Mexico afterwards. Because I’m sure they’ll be waiting, ready to tear it apart.’ Feature continues

Such are the stresses attendant on international recognition. It’s not that Chías’s is the first new Mexican play to hit the British stage. Only last year in Edinburgh, ‘The Girls of the 3.5 Floppies’ by the opulently-named Luis Enrique Gutièrrez Ortiz Monasterio played at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre. But ‘On Insomnia’ is the highest-profile co-production between the UK and Mexico that anyone can remember, and ‘one of the most important things that ever happened in the theatre in Mexico’ – at least if actress Vanessa Bauche is to be believed. Bauche is the golden girl of the current Mexican film boom, having starred in ‘Amores Perros’ (whose pretty-boy star Gael García Bernal she reportedly dated) and the recent Tommy Lee Jones flick ‘The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada’. ‘I was named after Vanessa Redgrave,’ she tells me. ‘So this is a thing I always wanted to do: come to London and make theatre.’

The play was selected for production from five Mexican plays given readings at the Court back in January. These five in turn were selected after workshops in Mexico with 14 playwrights, led by British dramatists April de Angelis and Simon Stephens. So what makes Chías’s play so special? ‘It was the most achieved in terms of the way Edgar controls his material,’ says Elyse Dodgson, who runs the Royal Court’s international arm. ‘And it’s a play that we thought would work very well both here and in Mexico’ – where it will transfer after the London run.