Two women, a ghost, a song, an old wound and a current problem, memories. This is what “As if it were tonight” is made up of, the staging that actress and director Yailín Coppola brought to the stage with the company Argus Theateralong with Mariana Valdés, a partner in the group for several years and an actress with a peculiar career, marked by a certain pattern that is repeated in her professional career.
In Valdés’s work, the scheme of working on works written, directed and performed only by women has been repeated almost as a constant in his career for more than a decade, a pattern that he confesses “has been pure chance because it has not been something planned, I had hardly even noticed it,” she tells me, highlighting the number of plays in which she has acted written and directed by women, “even without even considering myself a feminist,” she adds.
“Working with texts written and directed with women has been casual, but also something nice that I am very grateful for, even though these works have not been considered under a feminist concept, this support is always good, demonstrating the need we have to express many things.”
She also specifies that: “We have received texts from women and of course we have felt identified, we have been communicating and thus my modest work I practically owe to my friends and the playwrights who have trusted me.”
Valdés keeps working at Argos Teatro, with Carlos Celdran in front, who has allowed on more than one occasion to give space to other actresses and playwrights to present their works in the company, in which Mariana treasures many memories.
“We went as his first group of students, from there we created a special bond in the group where Yailín Coppola, Rachel Pastor… Caleb Casas was also present. I was out of the country for a while for family reasons and when I return I officially rejoin the piece System to Argos, although everyone who has passed through there always feels part of the group”.
Upon his return to the country, shortly before rejoining the company, he takes on the challenge of assuming the characters of “The Tree of Cats”, text by Elaine Vilar Madruga, where she assumes the role of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and a young Cuban poet, a “beautiful, very poetic and interesting writing that addresses the current context of a girl and in turn is related to La Avellaneda, where the themes of emigration, the return and the return to your roots with the conflict that comes from understanding that emigrating does not have to be forever, because people have the right to go and return and that is not bad”, a conflict that the actress and that helped her understand script with whom he worked at that time, in a staging under the direction of Ismercy Salomón.
Was it complex to assume both roles, considering the personal closeness to the plot?
One reads the text, tries to understand it and in a certain way, looks for that reality in you and many times one creates his own reality from the script, to bring that girl, her sensitivity, with all her dreams and desires to me, who I was going back to Cuba and I had to rethink my future.
It also had to reflect the sensitivity of La Avellaneda, her loneliness and the moment with her sick daughter, when she wanted her father to recognize her and as a woman, one finds it a little more comfortable to be sensitive beyond the story as such, from a emotional point of view where in some way, we are all present in such a case, just as it happens in as if it were tonight”.
In acting, the text is a result of what is happening at the moment and we went looking for that. At that time I had something to say from my reality in relation to the work and it was the result of what I wanted to express, despite being a very poetic and symbolic text, it was a very interesting process the fact of landing on stage a writing loaded with symbols .
Then came the experiences of Drainalso directed by Yailín Coppola (with text by Laura Liz Gil Echenique) and the staging of And what have you done?with text and direction by Rachel Pastor, a comedy with an all-female cast, to return to drama again at the hands of Coppola.
In the case of recent as if it were tonightin the words of the actress, “it could be said that it is a feminist text: it talks about women, topics such as femicide… but the beauty of it is that it does not expose the subject as a protest speech, hence the interesting thing because it shows a problematic of a family where two women connect at one point with different spaces and times”.
“My character has to give a piece of news and from the moment he evokes his mother, already deceased, a victim of femicide, and from there arises that encounter with the past where these problems are addressed, without an aggressive discourse, but rather he poses the problem from a specific point of view. family view,” he explains.
How do you remember the process of once again, reliving in a certain way an earlier experience?
When facing a character, one is always renewing oneself and new emotions appear. For example, in this new character the girl had to tell her boyfriend that she was pregnant, something that I had already experienced with my daughter’s father, a pregnancy that was not wanted, a situation that had already happened, therefore she had to look for new stimuli for that character.
It’s amazing how sometimes things you’ve already experienced don’t work for you as a resource on stage, to reproduce different emotions with something I’ve already experienced. But this helps to work on my emotions with my family, as a woman, with my desires and contradictions.
You were also involved in a TV project recently…
brave directed —once again— by a woman, Heiking González. I was also lucky enough to work with my six-year-old daughter who has a character in the series. She is about the COVID-19particularly the initial stage when we did not know how to deal with the disease.
The series takes place in an isolation center and I am one of the volunteers who support the medical staff there. We had to act again as in those first moments of uncertainty, with the extremely rigorous measures of that time, which was also complex.
Reviewing all these years of experience, Mariana acknowledges that “due to a matter of society, there are fewer female playwrights, but what is really needed is a greater space for them to be heard. Working so much with women and seeing my friends when they have directed and even act while directing, I have seen that they have to fight a lot all the time».
And he specifies that, at least on stage, «we are all a little bit all. It has been a channeling process that has helped me a lot, the theater has been a healing process where I have been able to express myself, a liberating process».
