La Hongaresa marks 30 years of theater with a premiere in Buenos Aires

La Hongaresa is turning 30 in the place its founders describe as a lasting source of artistic and personal inspiration: Buenos Aires. The Valencian company will celebrate the anniversary with the world premiere of ‘Coro’ on Sept. 6 at Toda Teatro in the San Telmo neighborhood.

Founded by playwright Paco Zarzoso and actor Lola López, La Hongaresa first came to Argentina 26 years ago. Since then, the company has repeatedly returned with its productions, building what Zarzoso calls a network of artistic, emotional, aesthetic, ethical and human ties.

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It is a great joy to turn 30 and come to Buenos Aires because it is a place of inspiration, where the company has been nourished by all kinds of artistic, emotional, aesthetic, ethical and human ties.

For López, the connection also carries a local identity. La Hongaresa comes from Puerto de Sagunto, a young industrial city whose residents include families that arrived from elsewhere in Spain. She said the company identifies with the porteños of Buenos Aires, making the anniversary celebration on the other side of the Atlantic especially meaningful.

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We are from Puerto de Sagunto, a very young city. Sagunto is 4,000 or 5,000 years old, but Puerto was created by Basque steelworkers and workers who arrived from all over Spain. We are the children and grandchildren of people who were not born in Valencia, and we call ourselves porteños, like the porteños here. Celebrating our 30 years with the porteños on the other side of the Atlantic is a joy.

The company has spent part of the season in Buenos Aires, presenting two other works since early August. ‘David’, written and directed by Zarzoso, was staged at the Teatro San Martín with Spanish actors Enric Juezas and Ángel Figols. ‘Tejedoras de abismos’, written by Argentine author Arnoldo Lieberman and directed by López, features López portraying the poet Alejandra Pizarnik and Austrian composer Alma Mahler near the ends of their lives.

López said the company’s plays begin with the need to tell stories about “our abysses” and “our vertigo”, describing that impulse as creative resistance rather than submission to the market. The productions range from a violent father-son relationship in ‘David’ to the inner lives of passionate women in ‘Tejedoras de abismos’. She also said the company values language in every production and likes to think of its members as “poet-dramaturges.”

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We arrived here 26 years ago with proposals born from the need to tell something, to tell our abysses and our vertigo, but as creative resistance, not submission to the market. That makes us deeply admire Argentina.