“Between Shadows” is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama and a Tony Award, which is presented on Wednesdays at El Galpón de Guevara. With performances by Mela Lenoir, Caro Babich, Juan Manuel Barrera and others. Lenoir also continues to lead “Forever Young” and “Come from away.”
“In theater we talk about the three Ps: pleasure, prestige and money. You have to have two inside so that what one does does not turn against you. Most of the time there is pleasure and prestige, money… sometimes it comes”, says Mela Lenoir, that integrates the cast of “Between shadows”, of Michael Cristofer, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for best drama and a Tony Award.
With address of Bruno Pedicone It is presented on Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. in El Galpón de Guevara. It has performances of Lenoir, Caro Babich, Juan Manuel Barrera, Eugenia Correa, José Manuel Espeche, Pablo Mónaco, Isabel Noya, Nicolás Sousa and Mariano Ulanovsky. We talk with Lenoir, who continues to lead “Forever Young” and “Come from away”.
Journalist: What is so special about this work that won a Pulitzer and a Tony?
Mela Lenoir: My partner Bruno Pedicone, producer and director, was looking for material to do and read 30 works in two months. Very few works reached him and when he finished this one, he passed it to me. When I read it it made me laugh and cry. It is a very special work that in English is called “The shadowbox”, something that in psychology describes the mechanisms we have to avoid talking about what is important. The work is three characters in end-of-life situations, 9 characters in total, and how they approach and avoid talking about what happens to them, what is important. It goes between humor and harshness, there is the denier, the one who is fed up, the one who gets drunk to tolerate it. We like works that leave you with a good after-dinner meal, that when you leave the performance you leave transformed and with a reflection.
Q.: What are the themes and what challenge does it imply in relation to what you have been doing more closely linked to the musical?
ML: Text theater has always been my first love. I have been doing those works independently, but since musicals are commercial, they become the most visible part of my work. But I love text theater, it has the challenge of being very much on stage, allowing for sensitivity, verisimilitude, always in any genre if there is no truth it is difficult to reach the viewer. This work makes me raw, it is a different color than the one they saw me in, it is a woman who gets drunk to endure what she has to endure, weathered and selfish.
Q.: What can you say about “Forever Young” and its twelve years on the billboard or “Come from away”?
ML: They are two musicals that have been on the bill for a long time and I was lucky to be able to sustain myself. Not everyone can stand the repetition of doing the same thing for so long, those of us at Forever Young enjoy it, it impresses me, it seems like it is repeated but each performance is an opportunity to dig deeper, from the outside you hear the same old text but for some reason reason moves differently.
Q: What is the process of buying the rights and making it independent?
ML: We always ask ourselves why we do theater and it is because we cannot not do it. It is very rare that doing theater is a profitable business, there are some that are, but the majority of us who do theater do not do it for profitability, there is the challenge of obtaining the means, the venue, making a translation, getting it accepted, not Being a large company, they approve you, and they don’t ask us for something difficult to sustain. “Avenida Q” had rights costs for a cooperative that were very high. We make art for pleasure and prestige and because there is usually an important story to communicate, and the money, when we make things, also comes. But in general we do it because there is a powerful history and it is the way we have to sustain the culture.
Q: How do you explain that at this time in the country there are so many musicals about to be released and released?
ML: I imagine that they are very big projects that have been coming for a long time and the perseverance of continuing to produce helps sustain the theatrical machinery. But I am not a commercial producer, I imagine that they agree to relegate the economic recovery in order to continue making.
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.
