Il Metodo Grönholm
Translated from the Italian. Titles, names, venues and press headlines are kept as originally published.
Il Metodo Grönholm
byJordi Galceran
translation diEnrico Ianniello
in collaboration withLaura Mesa Fernandez
with
Nicoletta Braschi
Maurizio Donadoni
Enrico Ianniello
Tony Laudadio
set design
Giacomo Andrico
costumes
Cristina Da Rold
lighting design
Cesare Accetta
production photos
Oreste Lanzetta
Marco Caselli
directed by
Cristina PezzoliL’idea dello spettacolo nasce da un aneddoto reale.
A few years ago in Madrid, a file containing job applications for a supermarket chain was found in a rubbish bag.
An employee of the personnel department had noted his impressions of the candidates: “fat foreigner”, “not this one, ugly and scruffy”, “chubby with spots”, “off her head, alcoholic father”…
The employee, justified by the sacred mission entrusted to him, believed he had the right to put those brutal remarks in writing. The mere fact of having the power to grant or refuse a job entitled him to be cruel, sexist and xenophobic. I imagined the girls hoping to become cashiers at that supermarket trying to give a good impression of themselves to this individual, doing and saying what they thought he expected of them; I imagined them willing to put up with small humiliations too, in order to get the job they needed.
This is what the characters of The Grönholm Method do, to the extreme, because it does not matter who we are or what we are like: what counts is the opinion that others, the spectators of our lives, form from our appearance.
Nobody is interested in our true identity except ourselves. The Grönholm Method has some points in common with an earlier play of mine, Parole incatenate (Killing Words). Both are about cruelty. If there the landscape was that of love relationships, here cruelty shows itself in working relationships, and in one of the cruellest processes in that sphere: a recruitment selection.
The plot is simple. The last four candidates for a management post at a major multinational are brought together to undergo the final tests of the selection process.
The idea of the game as a metaphor for human relationships, always present in my work, here becomes an absolute point of reference. Formally, the play is a game on every possible level: the characters play with each other, and the audience is invited to join in, trying to discover the candidates' true personalities and, if possible, where the truth lies and where the lies are.
All the tests the characters undergo, incredible as it may seem, are inspired by real recruitment techniques documented in specialist manuals. What happens in the play is that they are taken to their extreme consequences, without hiding the comedy that arises from the absurd harshness of such tests.
Di questi piccoli effetti collaterali del piccolo mercato parla questa commedia.
Jordi Galceran
Photographs are free of publication rights for press use. Please always credit the photographers: ph. Oreste Lanzetta, Marco Caselli
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