Why a work by Don Juan Ruiz de Alarcón?
I had undertaken a theatrical adaptation of a work from the Golden Age for an International Festival. So I immersed myself again in a reading that I had abandoned since my student years. I rediscovered all the "greats": Cervantes, Tirso, Calderón, and Lope... and suddenly I stumbled upon the texts of Don Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. I found in them much more freshness than in the works of the authors considered the stars of the era. Furthermore, the target of the luckiest poets, this hunchback, poor, proud, and even boastful... in other words, full of flaws and virtues, the personality of Alarcón attracted me with its disarming humanity. And finally, the final stimulus: Ruiz was Mexican, born in "this new world" which seems to me - or is it South American chauvinism? - to be spiritual.

Overlooked, "colonized" (almost all anthologies place him in Spanish literature), Alarcón had the misfortune of being "adopted" by two "great" writers from the other side of the Pyrenees: Corneille and Goldoni took, both of them, his most successful work "La Verdad Sospechosa" as a starting point for comic plays. I even read in the preface to Corneille's comedies that this work belonged to... Lope de Vega.

"And the walls have ears" is a work of minor importance, but charming. Its greatest strengths are, unfortunately, a very lively language and its comfortable and musical verses. Not finding worthy translations in French, I tried to do this work on my own, but quickly became disappointed. To capture the sound of Alarcón's Spanish, skills that I did not possess were required. Moreover, since the plot was quite conventional, like in all "plot comedies" of the time, I decided not to betray only half of the work (trying to respect it) but to betray it entirely, trying to find that inner rhythm and theatricality that I liked so much in it.

I had Don Ruiz de Alarcón participate in the action because I believed that the role of Don Juan de Mendoza (poor, ugly, hunchbacked) rightfully belonged to him and that it could be enriched with the author's persona. Moreover, Don Ruiz's indifference towards "literature" (he disregarded literary life and dedicated himself to "commerce" towards the end of his life, considering his work a simple "hobby") encourages this kind of freedom.

It is true that it was a time when theater was not taken very seriously, but also a time when it did not go badly for this reason.

(from the author's preface)