Marcelo Alonso and Francisco Reyes shared a concern: meeting Argentine playwright Daniel Veronesse. That’s why together they decided to contact him and travel to Buenos Aires to show him how eager they were to work with him.
However, it took years for the perfect opportunity to emerge. “Just in October the opportunity presented itself, he had the agenda and so did we,” Alonso says.
This is how “Brief Encounters with Repulsive Men” was born, “right in the beginning of work caught us on October 18, we finally managed to get together, we managed to rehearse, Daniel traveled to Chile and we traveled to Argentina and it turned out to us, we did,” the actor tells hoyxhoy.
The work marks the beginning of “La Previa” from Santiago to Mil, performing this Friday and Saturday at 20:00 hours. Because the function will be held in La Aldea del Encuentro, in the commune of La Reina, the function has a capacity of up to 30% face-to-face audience under certain sanitary conditions and will also be transmitted via streaming. Tickets are on sale on the website of Santiago a Mil.
What’s it like to be part of the first public functions after all this time?
It’s fantastic. What interests me most is being able to do so so that our colleagues will be encouraged to do so, so that the rooms are encouraged to do so, so that the ministry of Culture understands that it can be done and helped, facilitated and helped. We are artists, so the expression of our art is very fundamental. You have already noticed that state policies have not existed with regard to art, nor from the same minister we have with her famous phrase. We have all been able to withstand the pandemic thanks to culture, not thanks to the free market or the “real needs”.
Recordings of “100 Days to Fall In Love” have also returned, how was the return?
It was very nice, especially because of the reunion with my colleagues and the technical team. Finally for me, being with people and doing my job is what fascinates me the most. Re-exercising the trade and being lucky enough to have a job after the pandemic is over, I’m very happy about those things. And to be able to contribute in some way the revival of the industry also seems very nice to me.
Is it awkward to record with all measurements?
It’s super awkward, but it’s nothing you can’t get used to. At first it was super comical to walk all day with the mask recording, being with anti-pads… and now it’s super awkward to walk without a mask, without anti-hair. In fact when we have to record, being without a mask and without antiparras feels super exposed, it is a very strange feeling. And it still affects, with our colleagues we have talked about how crazy physical closeness is, beyond kissing, that contact is so part of the genre.
What can you tell about the work of Brief Encounters?
It is eight moments when a man talks to a woman, and in each of those moments one sees a different look at masculinity misunderstood in terms related to women. In one for example, it is a discourse of how a man conquers women and makes a whole reference to hen hatcheries and the selection that is made. In general they are conversations with repulsive men really funny, quite sharp, very ironic. All in order to criticize this behavior. Through this treatability, it gives you a sense of that misunderstood masculinity that somehow or another we all live in.
In a way, it shows this character who creates society about the masculine…
Yes po, one of the worst things about machismo is all it generates, in women, in the family, and also in men. It’s super unpleasant to be a man. It’s super competitive, it’s super violent… men don’t really cry. It’s very unpleasant in my case to be 50 years old and to have grown up in that masculinity. I’m an actor and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to explore, understand, renege on it and try to reinvent it in some way or another. And this has been present in all of us: it is not just men sexists. The whole society is sexist or maybe more patriarchal. One of the big mistakes is to think that the only victims are women when it affects us all.
