Hollywood, abuse, lack of control and fragility in “Garland Project”

(By Pedro Fernández Mouján).- Marina Munilla is the actress, Gerardo Grillea is the director and they both share the dramaturgy of “Garland Project”, a work that delves into the troubled, suffering and expansive life of the great Judy Garland, acting phenomenon of Hollywood since she was a child, and which can be seen on Sundays at 8pm at No Avestruz (Humboldt 1857) in the Palermo neighborhood.

A Hollywood star since her childhood, a high-performance singer and notable actress, Garland (1922-1969) was the protagonist of the emblematic “The Wizard of Oz”, with a film career that began in childhood and lasted until the beginning of the 60 and that was marked by abuse, the imposition and desires of others, drugs and the search for love and refuge.

In “Garland Project”, Munilla and Grillea choose a particular setting with their own songs that presents Judy, in London at the end of her days, in which she is once again harassed not by Hollywood producers and by her parents but now by the doctors, the drugs, her lover and the contracts, and she is visited by memories of the past, which seem to have never stopped haunting her.

“I had the need to talk about childhoods, Judy was the driving force to address the topic indirectly. It was Marina (Munilla) who suggested that I investigate Garland and every time I delved deeper into her life, thousands of images emerged that “Today they echo: thousands of children in the world who are forced to work. We want the work to be a cry to warn about this problem,” Grillea tells Télam in a first approach to the problem.

Munilla, who in addition to participating in dramaturgy imposes an intense, demonic and devastated Judy on the stage in a commendable work, points out that she always felt “very similar to the character of Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I remember as a child watching that movie repeatedly in the afternoon alone and feeling identified with a girl in a world of adults.

“Dorothy – she adds to this agency – suffers from a certain lack of understanding on the part of adults and I think the same thing happened to me at some point. Furthermore, I invented imaginary worlds like she did to escape in some way from the boring and lonely routine in my childhood life. I also feel every time I play a personality that existed that I have to find what that character would come to tell us if they could do it. In Judy’s case, I’m sure there’s a lot she couldn’t say. , complaints that he could not make about the mistreatment of his person.

Télam: What were the central materials of the investigation and how did you think about and carry out the transfer of that investigation to the stage?

Gerardo Grillea: We investigate Judy as a child and focus on the long days of recording that she had to endure, and obviously how all that had an impact on her adult life. Judy suffered a lot, she was abused by the industry, she was never able to get out. She also became addicted and no one really helped her. The stage challenges were several but I think the most important was thinking about how to tell this life without falling into cheap shots. The work is made up of fragments, so we had to work with the entire team to amalgamate them. The use of technology helped a lot (we used archive images and projected phrases). Also through music we were able to externalize what Garland never could, the lyrics of the songs are the stark voice of a silenced Judy.

T: In the character of Judy, this double tension appears between talent and enormous expressive and extroverted energy along with enormous fragility as a result of repeated abuse of her that comes from childhood. How did this come together in the scene?

Marina Munilla: When I play Judy Garland, great fragility is combined with great scenic power, which forces me to work with opposite poles all the time and that is very complex. I am also interested in showing the frivolous world in which she moved, and her constant request for help that was drowned out between pills. It is the acting challenge at the greatest moment of my career, because in addition to energy management there are many live songs that I sing. And the songs in turn have the power of denunciation, something that I mentioned that her person comes to tell us, through me in this case.

T: Judy also talks about a moment in Hollywood and certain elements in the large-scale “business” show that could still be present.

GG: It is like that today, but on a smaller scale. Everything is more controlled. Although it is difficult to report it, there are more active voices. But until not long ago it happened in Argentina with children’s and youth strips. In the work it is incorporated in different scenes, to name a few fragments I can mention when Judy is forced to perform shows to cover the expenses of her own treatment or when Judy as a child is humiliated on a television “late night show.”

With performances by Marina Munilla, Gastón Biagioni, Leonardo Murúa and the voiceovers of Rita Terranova and Osmar Núñez, “Proyecto Judy” can be seen on Sundays at 8 p.m. on No Avestruz.