When Antonio Buero Vallejo’s classic play Story of a Staircase won the Madrid City Council’s Lope de Vega Prize in 1949, it quickly became one of the essential works in our country’s dramatic literature. Now, 75 years after its première at the Teatro Español, it is returning to our stage.

Time passes on the staircase, the real protagonist of the drama, while the lives of the neighbours converge on it: simple people with longings and frustrations, trying to survive in an impossible society. The plot is made up of small stories that take place at three moments in our history (the spring of 1919, the autumn of 1929 and the winter of 1949) and allow us, without a doubt, to find coincidences with the society of today, three quarters of a century later.

Director’s note

On 14 October 1949, Madrid’s Teatro Español premièred Story of a Staircase, the first work by Buero Vallejo to be brought to the stage. Just a few months before this new production sees the light of day, 75 years will have gone by since that day. I was delighted to be invited by Eduardo Vasco, the artistic director of the Teatro Español, to direct this iconic work in our dramaturgy, and, given that the enigma of time and its relationship with space is at the very heart of the play, I feel that it is a happy and indeed inspiring coincidence that today, in the year 2025, the stage of this theatre will once again be visited by the inhabitants of that humble abode.

Story of a Staircase is a vivid portrayal of the reality of the Spain of the period in which Buero Vallejo wrote it, reflecting a state of affairs that affected not only the lower middle class such as the residents of the building, but also a considerable part of the population, which suffered enormous hardship in all aspects of life in the wake of the devastating civil war. The aftermath of that conflict weighs heavily on the human drama presented on stage, and is fundamental to any full understanding of the play.

The plot revolves around three moments in the life of Spain in the first half of the 20th century, and “the humble staircase“ is the setting for a series of small events that befall three generations of different families. Through their everyday actions, the inhabitants of this tenement house will allow us to share their dreams, their frustrations, their sadness, in a time and place where everything is lacking. We all want to know where happiness lies; we search for it, just as we search for truth and freedom; but where and when and into what circumstances we are born is of the essence. The entire play is permeated by the dialectic between human freedom and the fatality of fate - what Buero calls “the absurdity or imperfection of our social structure”, and the questions it raises resonate as much today as they did then, alerting us to our most negative realities with the sole aim of keeping hope alive.

Helena Pimenta

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