“Our way of doing theater is linked to passion and desire. It has to do with putting a lot says Lisandro Penelasplaywright, actor, director and manager of Moscow theater, where it opens “The bones of the Mapuche”, of the Catalan playwright Víctor Borràs Gaschwithin the framework of a Spanish-Argentine exchange plan that Ana Scannapieco, Lisandro Penelas and Moscow Theater maintain with Theater Nu.
On stage, Daniel Begino, Roberto Monzo and the same PEE Escarban, with humor acid, in the world of three friends who keep a dark secret. The night and the rain will help to dig up it. The author and the work won international awards, which enabled the premiere of the Catalan version in Spain and Buenos Aires.
It can be seen from Friday 12 to 21 in Moscow, Juan Ramírez de Velasco 535. PEE He also directs “The ice cream shop”with Boy Olmiwhich will have functions in Moscow, and continue with “Trunco”, of and with Javier Marra. We talked with PEE.
Q.: How are these three friends and this close behavior that awakens laugh?
Lisandro Penelas: They shared a lot in youth and for a traumatic episode stopped being seen for 20 years. That friendship is as strong as all those generated in adolescence and those times. In the acting we had to find the balance between adult everyday life and that friendship rooted in the body that translates a way of linking that it soon is the same as when they were young. It is fun to see and we had to find the point of action so that this distance of today appeared and the closeness with the friends despite the passage of time.
Q.: How is this friendship and the masculine and toxic way of living it?
LP: All the time we say that there are three chavones, who see us are two women, the director and the assistant, and refer to this condition of 3 men being rough and unable to express what happens to them, going to violence, competition, trying to meet their emotions, not knowing what to do. That is what ends up generating a lot of fun and enjoyment, procedures so common to us that we don’t even notice them.
Q.: Is this friendship a shelter of that tacit agreement?
LP: One treasures in friendships something that is sometimes bright and beautiful, because it has to do with shared moments of purity and naivety, where shared time has nothing to do with the productive time. But other times one keeps darker things, these characters have that tacit agreement that is strange because it holds a corrupted type of friendship. They hide a kind of crime, share a memory of joy but also of dark secret.
Q.: The author says that “doing theater is an act of love and generosity, and surely for that, doing so with friends is the best way to carry it out” and talks about the friendship that began to be born to one side and another of the Atlantic, what can you say about these ties and these modes of production?
LP: We end up many times doing theater with friends as a way of refuge and at the same time the theater gives us friends. It also has to do with theater based on the desire to meet others, to tell intimate stories, get into play while one acts, from the emotional, ideological, linking or social. It is inevitable that when one enters such areas, it generates fraternity and wants to meet those people again, it is a magical wheel that leads to one side and another. That was the case with the author of the work, whom we met thanks to a scholarship in Spain. A very strong bond was born based on the way of understanding theater and acting, in the way of doing passion and desire. It has to do with putting a lot of effort, it is the very form of Moscow and independent theater. And as a Spanish company they have it, they do everything a lot with passion, they have another level of budget but they do not just because they have money, something that usually happens in Europe, does not here. There if there is no money, it is not done. Here.
Q.: Who are the outcasts, how are the invisible?
LP: The focus seems to be in friends and humor but the author’s ability is to make these friends deny or find the dilemma of this Mapuche who speak all the time and is one of these invisible. In this context of Argentina, in Buenos Aires it is full. We walk down the street and there are people lying and sleeping in the street, they come to ask, they stop, they are thrown into the street as things, and we begin to stop seeing them, because we are losing empathy, because if we had to stop in front of everyone, there are so many that the rhythm of life makes us deny. If you stop you can not continue with your life. It is very strong and difficult to assume it. It is a concern that I have with me all the time.
Q.: How is it misrepresented and manipulates the ancestral according to convenience? How are the native peoples represented without emptying them from conflict? There is the Irish, here the Mapuche.
LP: In original text he was an Irishman, he is the beggar of the town, here in Argentina it was rare, he had to find the local reference. We went with the story to the south and there the Mapuche appeared. The work works with irony because if it enters seriously everything becomes terrifying, hard, raw and plays a lot with double meaning. Through that tragedy it becomes comedy but also a bitter and acidic drink, such as the beer that the characters make. This place of the native peoples is dirty and at the service of characters that have nothing to do with those ancestral values of oppressed and passed peoples. These characters make use and abuse of the peel, which is what reaches us. In general we tend to be ignorant, not to know and judge without having an idea. We take the opportunity to get revenue, it is a dark and vile thing.
Q.: How do you see theater and culture today?
LP: Tradition makes us understand and make us protagonists of that space as a place of resistance but not only that. We receive the attack and at this time when culture, science and education are attacked at the same time generate a meeting of thought and emotion. There is great contempt but the theater deals with resisting and generating instances of creation, imagining new ways of doing this activity and approaching the public with stories. Our resistance is very activity, to do, not only claim and ask but to do on all plans. I feel that there is something that is brewing, I have the smell that this crisis will take us somewhere as creative artists and at some point something powerful at the theatrical level will happen. I long for an expressive exit that we are taking as a country.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
