No one expected it, but when art intoxicates you to the point of loving it like life itself, you let it go. In this state of communion, being mean is not even conceived. Cayetana Guillén Cuervo (Madrid, 1969), actress, presenter, president of the Academy of Performing Arts, has confessed for the first time the traumatic experience she had when she was only 6 years old. He had never said it until now but he has chosen to do so in the documentary Mapa a Pandataria, which opens tomorrow on the CaixaForum platform, a making-off of the theatrical show performed for the first time at the Merida Classical Theater Festival and which on February 14 it arrives at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid. “Nor do I want this to have too much prominence, I am just another telling my story. The work Pandataria talks about ourselves in this boat in which the stage is transformed and into which we must climb. And it is the boat that saves us but with the others”.
Cayetana explains in the documentary that after hearing how her colleagues opened up, she decided to take the plunge. “We have brought together people so diverse and so alike at the same time… The message is ‘look at us, we are very different, aren’t we? Well, we tell you about our wounds so that they can serve as an example, so that you can get up and continue and smile and do what you like in life and reach very high. Every member of this cast has achieved their dream and overcome their own story. And it is already starting to generate a community that can be joined by anyone who has suffered contempt, rejection, bullying, ghosting… We have all felt rejection and have been pandatari at some point”.
It’s not a fable. Or not at all: Pandataria exists, today under the name Ventotene, in southern Italy. The Rome of the patricians exiled adulteresses there and Mussolini took it back to keep dissidents out of his sight. La Cayetana, who co-produces the documentary with Cultura Inquieta, presented it at CaixaForum together with choreographer Chevi Muraday and it can be seen for free from February 1. This work – in which Elio Toffana and El Langui, among others, participate – is an exercise in catharsis that wants to connect with the viewer to help them untie their own knots: “These are stories of overcoming with a inclusive cast that shows diversity on stage, people who come from a very complicated background and are saved through the performing arts. People who come from Pandataria and who manage to leave the island to put themselves in the front row of life. Because it can Really. It is a multidisciplinary show that will shake the viewer from top to bottom and discover corners where he has never entered. I’m sure of it.”
La Cayetana, at the head of programs such as Versión española and Atención, obras a TVE, canonical performer and proud daughter of two legends of the Spanish scene such as Fernando Guillén and Gemma Cuervo, mixes and flows with urban artists of very diverse backgrounds: “ When we came up with Pandataria it was about talking about diversity and difference, because it is the only reality. You can’t deny it: if you don’t like diversity, you can live all day busy or with your eyes closed, but there is no other way. This is a crusade for love, consensus, dialogue, understanding the other’s reasons and contributing something to the world”.
His mother, Gemma Cuervo, intervenes in this making off, who makes an intimate reflection: even with the hours that she and Fernando Guillén dedicated to work, two functions a day, “there was never a lack of love at home”. Cayetana confesses again: she still hasn’t fully forgiven herself for repeating the pattern with her son: “I’m working on it. I think the new generations of parents have an obsession with over-protecting their children and we don’t do them very well either. My parents missed home a lot, but I was a happy girl. In my house there was always a lot of love; I don’t know how many hours of love, but the ones there were, they were great. Things happen in all families, there are traumas, intensity… Families are the origin of half of literature and drama, but I think that the new generations do a disservice to the identity and strength of the child . Well, now that Leo is a little older, I see that he has his own speech, I’m very happy about it”, she finishes with a smile.
His resume and his name are history of our scene, but his position at the tables or on the other side of the camera is clear. “You move me, you knock me down, you put me in balls, to do the pine… But I have learned the text”, he says in the documentary. Cayetana obeys the director’s orders without complaint, whoever he is: “It’s his project and I have absolute respect for hierarchies in my work. Even if he is 21 years old. Would be nice. I can tell him ‘I see this this way or that’ but if I decide to embark on something, I have to do what they tell me”. The resurgence of the movement
