An actress wants to breathe poetry again and calls a director to put together a show about Alfonsina Storni but, yes, make a comedy out of it. This is the starting point of Seaweedwritten and directed by Dennis Smith, who also stars alongside Lourdes Invierno in the show presented at the Camarín de las Musas.
“It’s an unexciting moment of Wikipedia,” Smith says, explaining the origin of the idea, roughly similar to that of the work. “It was born with the call of a soap opera character who asked me to make a comedy about Alfonsina, but not to be dramatic, to be happy”.
According to Smith, it seemed a little crazy at first. “But I was progressing in the work, and I began to understand what he meant by her”send it to Alfonsina de la zambita sad”. He also told me that she had read a note from Dany Mañas about Alfonsina and wanted us to write together. Her encounters with Dany were fundamental for her to meet another Alfonsina, far from the popular myth,” she says.
a different figure
Thus appeared a different woman from the figure remained in the collective memory: from her economic position to the way she decided to die. “All I had heard was the exact opposite of Alfonsina’s life,” says Dennis.
Ultimately his idea and the actress’s did not match, but Smith moved forward with the project and this work remained, “a game about putting together a play with five poems by Alfonsina outlining something close to a biography.”
And she assures that there is some documentary, some theatrical play, some history lessons, textual sentences from her and, “some are also quite invented, and obviously, the five poems that, we hear, tell it in an intimate place”.
-If the work does not reflect the Alfonsina Storni that everyone has in mind, what surprises can the public have with this work?
– I think that those who have no idea about his life will be amazed before that he didn’t die in the way we all believe: he wasn’t walking in the waves, far from it. Then, speaking of an idea about Argentine poets which, I believe, is in the collective unconscious and that is that they are all like the Ocampo sisters: rich, wealthy, belonging to a thinking elite. Nothing further from the truth.
Surprises gives you Alfonsina
-What did you discover about Alfonsina that surprised you or didn’t know?
-I think the most moving thing, at least for me, was the strength and arrogance of the work. She was a woman who worked until the last minute of her life. Before deciding to “finish”, as she liked to say, Alfonsina sent her last poem to print, knowing that her fee would go to her son Alejandro, to whom she left all the pay slips in order she.
-Like many Argentinian artists and directors, you spend a lot of time working in Spain, how is this experience?
– My career is here, in Buenos Aires. I live in Spain because I got married and while I was there, things happened between 2020 and 2021, I was able to tour and perform and it was all very good, but the truth is that I don’t have much imagination about “do it my way ” there. I feel that theater is a very frank dialogue with the viewer, and it has to do with the desire to communicate with someone. And there I don’t have that will so present.
-Do you feel much difference with what happens in the Argentine theater scene compared to the Spanish one?
-The truth is that the theater scene here is spectacular and motivates me. I’m in Spain because I got married and we lived at a distance, so now it’s more about trying to keep a balance: writing and pre-producing there, and then editing here.
-This year, moreover, your first feature film “Virgen Rosa” is coming out in which you direct Juana Viale, what will we find?
. We shot it last year and this is my first film done with INCAA. They’re going to find something very original, a very strange staging that has a dramatic justification that I’m thankful for finding, and with some incredible actors. It’s a story about memory, about how everyone remembers as they can and sometimes as they want, with three characters hiding great pain.
-How was working with Juana?
It was total luxury. His portrayal of him in the film is something I’ve rarely seen, what he does is devastating. AND a hard worker who never loses her good humour. I feel it will be a big surprise to see her play a character that has such a unique sense of humor. He lets himself be directed, he’s funny, he’s not afraid of anything.
The functions of Seaweedwith a performance by Lourdes Invierno, Dennis Smith and live music by Fernando Lozada are Saturdays at 8pm, at El Camarín de las Musas, Mario Bravo 960, General Admission: $2,000.
Source: Clarin
