Belén Rueda arrives in Barcelona with Salomé, a co-production of the Mérida International Classical Theater Festival and Pentación Espectáculos. Written and directed by Magüi Mira and with music by Marc Álvarez, it can be seen at the Goya theater until this Sunday, March 24, with nine performers on stage.

What is this new Salomé that Mira has created, based on everything that has been written about that New Testament character?

I met Magüi as a director when we made Penélope in the middle of the pandemic, in 2020. In this profession we are lucky to meet people who will stay in your life. What fascinates me about her is how she recovers women from history who have come down to us defined in a certain way and she gives them a twist and humanizes them. So, it’s impossible to say no. Furthermore, as a director she knows how to enhance that virtue that you have when you are editing.

How do you feel playing this character who had John the Baptist beheaded?

And then Herod, who beheaded so many people, ordered her to be killed. By getting into the depths of her, Magüi’s Salomé has been a discovery. Dance is a very important part, because of the movement and what it means, and for me, who studied classical and Spanish, it has given me the opportunity to mix all those things. What Magüi does is add.

How does it add up?

For example with the character of the Baptist, played by Pablo Puyol and, instead of shouting in the cell, he makes him sing. With Luisa Martín, who plays my mother, she achieves something very dramatic, giving it a tone of brutal acid humor that is not easy to do. With me it is the drama within the dance. What Salomé has given me is a lot of freedom as an actress, even though we are talking about a woman with very little freedom.

Does your Salome dance the dance of the seven veils?

That was the second thing Magüi told me: “I know you have it in your head, but there will be no dance of the seven veils.” But there is a dance of seduction. And everyone’s movements are choreographed, especially those that involve a lot of violence, so that we can convey that without hurting ourselves.

Isn’t your Salome capricious?

Upon being rejected by John the Baptist, she takes revenge, but that goes much further. For her, he means a new time. We say it continually in the work, because he preached a new time that meant a way of living, of relating, of coexisting different from the one they had. She loves the Baptist to escape from a prison, her palace, which also subjugates her.

How do you alternate cinema and theater?

It is not a decision or one that I like to alternate. Now, when a project comes to me from, for example, Magüi, I am completely open and eager to do it. What happens is that the theater needs times that force you to clear your agenda a year in advance, and in series and movies they tell you that we start in three months, and maybe a year passes. Times are not managed the same in theater as in audiovisual, so sometimes it is very complicated, because I am very serious about commitments. Then there are scripts that come to you and you want to do them, but it turns out that it coincides with someone else. And so I ask that we try, so we can do both.

Movie coming out soon.

Yes, filmed here in Barcelona, ??Free Fall, which will be released on May 17. It is wonderful, with a young Catalan director, Laura Jou, and with J. Bayona’s production company. Here I am a very special woman, Marisol, the opposite of Salomé, because she is a very prepared woman, very successful, and she thinks that she is in control of everything. And there comes a moment in her professional career and her private life in which she manages to understand, very late for her, that she has no control over her life, neither hers nor anyone else’s. History is like a kind of destruction in order to survive.

Have you worked a lot in Barcelona?

I am fascinated by being in Barcelona because it is very curious: almost all the actors from here go to other cities to work and, on the other hand, my longest career in film has been here. I have been fortunate to work with a surprising generation of new directors from Escac. I told them: “How come you are so talented? Please give us all the recipe. I worked with J. Bayona, Guillem Morales, Sergio Sánchez, Oriol Paulo… My goodness, what talent they have here!