31.01.2021 00:01 h.
Updated: 01.31.2021 00:12 h.
Winner of three Goya awards, seasoned in film and television, Laia Marull returns to the theater with a mythical character in the history of Spain and iconic in Lorca’s homeland scene, Mariana Pineda.
The Catalan returns to Spanish theater from Madrid with this show about the love of freedom individual and collective, on the defense to death by ideals and integrity and with a conceptual setting, to express the inner world of the figure it represents. He does it in times of pandemic and at a time when the values that the character represents seem to be scarce.
The actress reflects on what it means to represent such a legendary character, the emotions what she feels about the public who can go to see her, and what she feels on stage. Feelings that have made you change your mind about him theater.
–Question: How did you get to the project Mariana Pineda?
–Answer: The director called me and it seemed like a great plan. I had done a Lorca before, So five years pass, but he was a small character and the truth was that he wanted to make a Lorca. Also, it seemed curious to me because a few years ago I recorded for Forta La Xirgu, a TV movie what happens around the premiere of Mariana Pineda and how the actress and the poet met. That’s why when they called me I thought, this has already been done (laughs). So he wanted, besides for him she was his heroine and, unfortunately, they had a very similar ending.
–What does Mariana Pineda have that makes her special?
– He is a very vital character. They don’t let her live and she has that tragedy inside. He becomes brave during the performance. She was not born a martyr, or a heroine, she ends up being after her death for following her ideals to the end and being a character of integrity. Talking about such a character now is very important because we are in a world because we are a little lacking in this integrity.
– What is it like to face such an important role in Lorca’s work?
–It is a double illusion, because there is that parallelism that the character also represents how they ended Lorca. But the character has a lot of poetry and a lot of heart. You just have to let the work flow inside, make vehicle between the words of Lorca and the audience. And as is a character that moves by love, is to let that love take over a little of you. Along with the desire for freedom.
In fact, it is also a love for freedom. The sentimental drama is almost left to go to the ideological one.
It is ideological, but with a brutal emotional charge. The character is moved by emotions and ideas that are the same thing. Is a woman in love and purely ideological, goes hand in hand with that desire for love for freedom, for one’s neighbor and for love.
–Also, a personal and collective freedom.
–Exact. The misfortune of the work is that because of that collective freedom she is left alone, tremendously alone. But she will continue to defend that freedom until death and that makes the character become a heroine and a martyr in spite of herself. Because he is only an upright character who does what he feels, and what he does he thinks and what he thinks he says and that’s it.
“ Something you don’t see much of today.
“ It is very out of use today.
– The work, nowadays, does it become a vindication?
–I think so. The character has to stir something in the viewer in some way. We are already too used to incongruities and that nothing happens, because I say one thing and do another, because we don’t have a word, because we don’t think of others. That is why it is beautiful to play Mariana Pineda now, and ugly in the sense that, sadly, he is still far from us.
These incongruities also seem to be seen in the management of the pandemic itself.
“ It must be very difficult to organize this. The bug he is very bad and goes where he wants. What is terrifying is seeing how it is used as a political weapon, with a pandemic that should make us all go together.
–And from the theater, how do you live? We have seen that there are territories that have closed theaters and cinemas while others have not.
–It’s strange. When the theaters are closed we complain those of the theater and when bars are closed, those of the bars. Society would have to be something else and not go for guilds, but it’s difficult. Things are closed but later the aid does not arrive, many businesses and producers go down. There are many people in my profession who are two candles, but many sectors also happen. What is annoying is that there is no good general plan and the one that exists is criticized here and there.
Laia Marull and the cast of ‘Mariana Pineda / MARCOSGPUNTO
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In fact, there is controversy even in the theater. It is argued that culture is safe, but there are also those who think that if it’s time to close, it’s time to close.
-Things are done very well, but now it sure is nothing. And culture is safe, we say it with a small mouth. But as Lorca said, “man does not live on bread alone. If I were hungry and helpless on the street, I would not ask for bread; but I would ask half bread and a book”. We also feed on books, poetry, music.
–And during the confinement there has been an increase in subscriptions to platforms or the sale of books online.
–And now when we have been able to open the theaters we have seen how the live act is very necessary, it makes a community. Theater creates community, because we are all feeling one thing at a time. That is not the same for a small screen, it is not worse.
– Is there a claim to the theater after the pandemic?
“ He sits at the functions. First, the gratitude is mutual, because for us that the public is there is a lot, it is very valuable.
– What is it like to work in times of Covid?
“ He’s a bit schizophrenic. We go to a community and the theaters close, in some others there is a capacity for 1,000 but they only allow a hundred to enter … and you go there in trains, sometimes full. At first it was crazy. Then there is something else, more personal, we go on stage without masks and there are also an act of faith which is almost absurd. On an emotional level it is not easy. But there we are and it is very powerful to be there.
–You started prepandemic and you continued in the middle of the third wave. Is there a difference in the audience? Is it more sense?
–I want to think so, but 100% I don’t know. Of course, the work does this a lot. Now one also feels that side of social function that the theater has. The applause is weaker because there are fewer people, but you notice that warmth in the applause.
“Is it very difficult to face that half-empty room?”
– In general, I have never cared about the people who are there. There are people who get very sad when the theater is empty, I get very sad for the producers, because it tastes bad to me. But at the level of being on stage, even if there are few, you dedicate it more passionately.
–And now that some works have been filmed to be seen on screens, is that okay? What opinion do you deserve?
I don’t like filmed theater. It loses a lot, too. I can’t watch recordings because I get depressed. You think you have done a very beautiful thing and when you see it there you think “what the fuck is this” (laughs).
–But you have made movies and series
–But movies and TV are already recorded in a way. The camera in cinema enters the actor, in a way, it makes your insides show. In the theater the spectator sees it in the moment, the camera does not see it.
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Actress Laia Marull, in front of the Teatro Español / JC
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–But there are those recorded theater projects
And they must exist. It is good to bring the theater closer to the viewer when he cannot go, in difficult moments and revive the theater. These are the means we have, we have to take them and it is fine as a tool for divulgation, for people who can’t come to the theater. It’s nice, but I’m a little scared.
–Why?
“ I’m afraid we’ll somehow get used to it being the same when it isn’t. But on the other hand I trust that it will not happen, because the theater is something alive and the rooms are full to the extent that they leave us. It is an absurd fear. But as a guild I must say that things are being recorded and I don’t know if they are being managed well, nor are they being paid well.
That is also one of the fears of the cinema. Films designed for direct release on platforms are made.
–There, yes. Theater is not getting lost, but cinema and movie theaters, yes, they are in greater danger. The difference between live or recorded is so great compared to film recording and seeing it on a small screen that it seems that nothing is happening, but the difference is brutal. There are great directors who when they record, if you see it on a small screen, you lose everything. And that does scare me. Cinema is being lost, it is not valued even at the level institutional.
After the crisis of 2008 we could hardly recover. Some big movies were made and we did some very good medium-sized ones, and now he’s gone to hell. Now the cinema is made with just two dollars, with a lot of effort. There are few people who do it and it opens in a very bad way. It is impossible. That happens in the cinema and it makes me very sad. It is very painful.
-You have been seen little in theaters outside of Catalonia …
–Yes.
–For what is this?
–Coincidences of life. Catalan theater travels less and if he does, he comes to Madrid after rehearsing it in Spanish. On the other hand, when I do theater in Madrid it has much more capacity to travel and I don’t really understand why. That would have to ask distribution. But I have done some works here, like Antigone, I came with the Spanish version of Roberto Zucco, Fires…
-In recent months we have spoken with theater people who tell us the same thing. That there is hardly that traffic from Madrid-Barcelona and even less from Barcelona to Madrid
–We have gone to some Catalan squares such as Reus, Rubí, Granollers and some more. I do not get it. It is true that Catalan theater has its own tours within Catalonia, and in that sense it is more secluded and more closed. But when we adapt the show to Spanish to go to Madrid, it would be his thing to keep traveling, and it doesn’t happen. What of tour Spain It is as if it were the heritage of the works that come out of Madrid and the reason I don’t know (laughs jokingly).
What projects do you have now: cinema, theater, TV …?
“ Well, nothing. I am with Mariana Pineda at full capacity until April, and I have another theater project, but it is more than a year away.
–And you who used to be a film actress almost, now you see yourself more in the theater?
–It is true that I always said that I was more of a film actress than theater, and it is true that I liked her more. But, now, over the years and having done more theater I would tell you that theater has something special, the connection with the public is very powerful is different. And now, with film productions that are all shorter, you hardly have time to get into the role. In the theater, by spending more time with the character, you work on it more, outline it more, discover new things about the character. It is different.
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