The actress, musician and writer Clara Sanchis Mira (Teruel, 1968) stops in Barcelona for a few weeks with two theatrical proposals. In La Gleva, on Tuesday she premiered Wednesdays that seem like Thursday, a delicious monologue that Juan José Millás wrote for her, directed by Mario Gas, in which the actress impersonates Millás's personality and kidnaps the entire audience, gun in hand. And on October 6 she will present at the Sala Beckett Deserts Grow at Night, by José Sanchis Sinisterra, in which she acts and co-directs with David Lorente.
This work by his father is part of the Tardor Sanchis cycle, which the Poblenou hall has programmed to pay tribute to its founder. You can also see three other works by the Valencian playwright, The Reader for Hours, ¡Ay, Carmela! and Lifetimes, as well as dramatized readings. La Vanguardia speaks with the actress between the two works.
How do you approach Millás' text?
I was his student at the School of Letters when I was 25 years old. It was a wonderful place, with great teachers. I have always had this vocation for writing, which I have not abandoned. We immediately had an affinity with Millás and he encouraged me to write. It was a happy meeting. He taught me to have this perspective on the small and since then we have always been in communication. In fact I think there is a certain identification between him and me.
Reading you in your articles in La Vanguardia, somehow your shadow appears.
Of course, I am his student and there is a connection, which perhaps has to do with feeling both uncomfortable and comfortable with doubt, with paradox. We like to doubt together, which is something that I also share with my father and Juan Mayorga. I declare myself incapable of making a quick decision.
And one day he writes a text for you.
Before there was another one, God and the Devil, which we have not yet managed to do, perhaps because it is too uncomfortable. And three years ago he presented me with the first embryo of Wednesdays that look like Thursdays. It is a wonderful lecture by Millás, but it was missing a good conflict, because I couldn't say it, he should say it.
And there it occurred to them that the actress impersonate her personality.
Exact. And for her to enter the stage saying: “I am Juan José Millás”, shooting and kidnapping the audience: it is the dream of every actress. This approach further demonstrates that the borders between the real and the unreal are blurred, they are confusing. Identity is one of her great themes, and she confessed to me that the character of Asunción Ortega is the psychopath within him, because she has always had the vocation of a psychopath but has lacked courage.
He performs another monologue after Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.
And I promised myself not to do another monologue. But we have been falling in love with this text, like Mario Gas, who directs me.
What do you think of the selection of works by Tardor Sanchis?
I think it's great. Can you imagine I say no? (laughs) The cycle covers those territories through which my father experiments, with that mastery and that pen, which is impressive. He travels through different worlds, and when he conquers one territory he leaves it to go find another, because he has infinite curiosity. They are unique beings.
What will audiences see in Deserts Grow at Night?
David Lorente and I are in love with the short texts that my father wrote in his personal laboratory. They are very funny, although also poignant, surreal, complex. They explore their styles and with them we have built a journey through the language of dreams. They are texts from the eighties and nineties but very modern and also existentialist. The dramaturgy we have created weaves a thread that unites them. A character is devoured by emptiness and through another character we enter the world of dreams. Since the four actors are also musicians, a music band appears in dreams and, in the style of jam sessions, we fulfill our dream.
