John Malkovich, in the skin of a serial killer: “I never feel an affinity with the characters I represent”

American actor John Malkovich will be the protagonist in Madrid this Thursday 11 and Friday 12 August in a unique show with a live orchestra, in which he plays Jack Unterweger, a serial killeralthough he makes it clear that he “never” feels an affinity with the characters he represents.

“I neither approve nor disapprove of my charactersit’s nothing but work, “said John Malkovich, a Spanish enthusiast, who received the Donostia Prize at the San Sebastian Festival in 1998.

Malkovich will represent the show at the cultural festival The summers of the Villa from the capital of Spain.

The prison poet

Infernal comedy. Confessions of a serial killer It is a direct montage from the Austrian Michele Sturmingerand this is close to a real character, the Austrian Jack Unterweger (1950-1994), who had no choice but to confess his crimes in writing, which gave rise to this play which was first performed in Vienna in 2009.

Unterweger was known as the “prison poet”, because there he wrote his autobiography and poems, texts that ended up being very well received among German-speaking intellectuals. The man in question was released on probation in 1990, until further investigation brought him back to prison.

in his cell committed suicide in 1994hours after learning that he would no longer be released and that he had been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of nine prostitutes.

away from the character

“I think that there’s nothing wrong with playing characters who aren’t good. I neither approve nor disapprove of my characters, it is nothing more than a job that I have to do as an actor that I am “, Malkovich emphasized at the presentation of the staging in the Spanish capital.

“Once you kill someone, I don’t know who can redeem you, maybe you can redeem yourself, but that’s not something that Unterweger was really interested in doing, or I really don’t know … and neither are the authors of the work,” he said. added.

The peculiarity of this unique theatrical piece, which has already performed on stages in different countries, lies in the staging, which includes a live string orchestra that performs baroque music during each performance, in addition to the presence of two solo sopranos .

“This work is special, it has something that others don’t have and it’s the musical component and the power that music has: the sensation it gives is as if one were struck by a moving house “, the great interpreter explained.

Malkovich, who gained recognition and popularity with his work in the film Dangerous friendshipshe commented that he was attracted to the “strength, beauty and joy” of working with an orchestra and two sopranos and to try to see “how he could fit in” such a bet.

Inspired as always, he said that for him cinema and theater are like two instruments, “one would be the piano and the other the violin”. They are both music, but in the way of interpreting them they are not really related. “Theater is ephemeral and organic”, it is “something alive”; and cinema “lasts forever”, he concluded during a meeting with the press.

Source Agency EFE

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