“We ask ourselves why we do a play if we don’t know what will happen next month but, given that, there is something overcoming which is the strength of theater, and that is why it continues to exist,” says Leticia Coronel, author and director of “I am here without end”, which won the second Germán Rozenmacher award for new dramaturgy and was published by Eudeba in a trilingual edition.
It stars Nazarena Amarilla, Maira Annoni, Blanca Anzoategui, Damiana Gamarra, Jennifer Hernández and Coronel, and premieres on Sunday, May 5 at Estudio Los Vidrios, Donado 2348. We talked with Coronel.
Journalist: What reflection is there in the work on this mother-daughter relationship?
Leticia Coronel: I wrote the work from the perspective of the artist and from the guilt as a mother for the number of hours one dedicates to work, to rehearsals, to creating the works. Having shared so much time together because I took her to all the rehearsals, I thought about how to convey to her my love as a mother, the one that was rehearsed. She is my only and first child, and I captured what it was like to be a mother while she was rehearsing. I thought from guilt first but I discovered that one, as an adult and mother, becomes aware that one day she will no longer be there. The awareness of time, death, is not the same when you are its mother as when you are not. The children will be left alone because it is the process of life, but that completely took up the work. I had written it for one thing, the two loves of my life, my daughter and the theater, and I realized that it took me to another place. The material won over the author, and she talks about accepting death and the absence that is so necessary for life.
Q.: With so much love for the theater, how come your daughter doesn’t like it and prefers it away?
LC: The first few years she went to many theater and dance classes, she liked it a lot and then she grew up and stopped liking it. One thinks that being an actress is the most beautiful thing and tries to get into it, but Amanda saw me at the bullfights all the time and says that theater is very stressful. Especially the way of producing theater, at 12 years old she has made a decision that she does not want a life on the run, where something is always missing. I like the decision-making power she has when she says this, I don’t choose for my life.
Q: What is the scene and what is this catharsis that is done for life?
LC: The stage is the work zone of affections, I always work with autofiction and I also campaign for an emotional theater in this hostile, cruel and hopeless world. The artist grabs from there to build extreme signs of vitality, affirmation. One needs to believe, decide, put oneself in relationship with existence. The scene is a place of life and there is a lot of vertigo, especially when one works with personal themes. I like to take personal material to the extreme to make it more universal. We are not so used to living in feelings with high intensities, so I think the scene is a place to feel, I like to dedicate myself to this.
Q.: What can you say about the artistic creation and search?
LC: It is very different from what I have been doing, it is absolutely precarious. The room is like a garage, a workshop, so many aesthetics coexist because it does not have all the conventional signs of theater, so the space asks for dialogue with what it is. It was a complex job and here the setting asked to go for the most naked, the bone. We find ourselves with the weight of the material and the weight that the interpreter has to transfer, the weight in the saying, in the emotion, is very delicate, in the accuracy that cannot be corrected. You have to have a very good ear in this naked setting. It has the combination of raw, tender and simple. Our friend in the setting is the precipice, here we know that in addition to the nerves there is a precipice that goes beyond being present or connected. The work operates before that mystery. It is a combination of perception, intuition, tuning, procedure and honesty.
Q: What is it like to produce independent theater today?
LC: Today is being extremely difficult because the discouragement and uncertainty are very great. You work all the time with what you bring, what happens to you, and that is noticeable. Today the work of sustaining, economy, bond, is a survival. In the production of the work, the fatigue that living and exhaustion brings is added. It continues and they cannot tear it down, it is the force of existence, the desire to live is consolidated there, with or without money. The greater the threat of death or attack on the theater, the more alive it is.
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.
