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CASA DE LA
MALDITA VANIDAD
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THE DANCER AND THE SHOTGUN.
INTERVIEW WITH HER MARGARITA BECERRA.
The artist tells us a little about her life and her new project as director "The Dancer and the Shotgun", inspired by the work of the Russian author Antón Chekhov.
A look at the professional.
BY: ANGÉLICA PRIETO.
What is theater for you?
The theater is for me a laboratory of experimentation in which the reality and the nature of human actions and emotions can be observed with the security that fiction provides, in which all assumptions are possible and imagination and art can help us. lead towards the most vile or the most sublime of human experience; all this in the generous physical and ephemeral encounter of actors and spectators that produces a transforming and vivifying flow of energy. In my experience as an actress it has been the space for professional and personal fulfillment.
What does it mean to you
"The dancer and the shotgun"?
This project has become a great dream come true, the scenic result of the work has filled me with satisfaction since we have achieved all the objectives that we set for ourselves. Once again the theater forces me to say thank you for a wonderful process that I have lived hand in hand with the best friends and colleagues who have been able to accompany me.
The Dancer and the Shotgun was consolidated thanks to the passion that inspired the project in all of us who participated in it. From the reading of Chekhov's stories, the narrative elements that interested us aroused in the whole team a kind of fascination that materialized in Santiago's text; always purposeful and willing to listen to the contributions of the whole group; director, actors, assistant director and art.
From the beginning it was clear that a text was intended that could be seen from three different spaces but that would tell a single anecdote, which would adjust to the aesthetic proposal of work in unconventional spaces and which was also inspired by the complexity that Santiago solved, In my view, in a majestic way.
Tell us about your teamwork
with the playwright
Santiago Merchant.
How did you choose
to the artists of the
team?
Artists are colleagues and friends that I have wanted to work with for a long time. We were united by the interest in the author and the pleasure of doing theater together.
The actors are Cony Camelo, Paula Edwars, María Adelaida Palaci o, Anton Tarsov and Mauricio Sarmiento.
The assistant director is Martha Leal.
The dramaturgy is by Santiago Merchant.
The Art Direction was in charge of "El Otro Trapo".
Photography by Felipe Flores.
How was that process of approaching Chekhov?
Being invited to participate in the programming of the Chekhov cycle of Damn Vanity 2015 raised two questions for me. What interests me about Chekhov? Why do a Chekhov in Bogotá in 2015? To answer these questions, I began by approaching this emblematic writer through some of his stories, collected in an edition and selection by Sergi Bellver in the book "Chekhov commented" in 2010. Book in which I found the following stories : “El violin de Rothschild”, “Desdicha”, “Enemigos”, “La Bellas”, “EL Misterio”, “Pequeñeces”, “La Corista”, “El Bendigo”, “Poliñka”, “El Álbum”, “ The Lady and the Dog ”,“ Female Luck ”,“ Sanitary Measures ”,“ The Apothecary ”,“ Early Morning ”. In addition to reviewing his biography and the correspondence he had with Olga Kneeper, the leading actress of the Moscow Art Theater and the author's wife.
In reading these texts, I found several elements in common, both from a thematic and formal point of view that caught my attention and are the ones that will be developed in this montage of THE DANCER AND THE SHOTGUN.
- Stifling everyday life usually generated by the overcrowding of characters in a house or tenancy.
- The use of time in the story as a literary resource as a lens that allows the reader to zoom in, focus their attention on specific details of the situation.
- A very sensory atmosphere full of sounds, smells, lights and shadows that accompany and affect the emotional journey of the characters.
- Awareness of beauty in two opposite senses; the inability of the characters to recognize it or, on the contrary, the disturbing discovery of its overwhelming existence.
- A latent or manifest eroticism, full of double interpretations or prejudices.
- Humor and melancholy permanently alternating in the development of the stories.
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The story always presents a moment of "recognition" an instant of epiphany (either for the character or for the reader) in which everything goes from chaos to order. Anagnorisis breaks with space-time, a fantastic perception of reality appears; Everything in the story seems to show it: there is a momentary transformation of the atmosphere, all the sensory elements are harmonized and time makes its Zoom in effect and in some cases even nature manifests itself in consonance with the moment in which the conscience.
In the words of Sergi Bellver in the prologue of "Chekhov Commented"
“Chekhov's eagerness in his stories: addressing the detail, exploring the silence, silencing certain things so that the essential is said, taking an apparent detour to distance himself, concentrating on the air, the light and not for the moment on the object. "
Perhaps if it is possible to reread Chekhov on the scene from his stories, you have to go back a few meters and look at the whole from a distance to see it with a new perspective. His image as an icon of narrative and dramaturgy sometimes seem to be above the pretensions of his work. I want to get closer to him from the elements that I found in his stories, elements that surprised me, moved me and helped me to enter the universe of his characters; I want to pay tribute to this author by reconfiguring the Russian universe through the dramaturgy of SANTIAGO MERCHANT, the use of unconventional space in La Maldita Vanidad and my perspective of what Chekhov offers as an experience to the “spectator-reader” of his works . I want to do an exercise in imitation just as Chekhov himself did, at the time, with the Tolstoy narrative.
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