Both for their joint and individual careers, Joan Gràcia, Paco Mir and Carles Sans have been awarded the Max de Honor award. The SGAE College of Great Law grants them this recognition “for their splendid and prolific career, full of successes, until reaching a prominent place in the history of performing arts; for creating its own scenic language and seal, of a universal nature; for his mastery and genius in the art of mime, and for ennobling and exalting both comedy and gestural theater”. At the Liceu, the theater where two and a half months ago they finally said goodbye to the public, Tricicle answers questions from La Vanguardia.
What does the Max de Honor award mean after a career that began in 1979?
CARLES SANS: It is an award that comes from the profession and, yes, it is exciting, although in all these years we had never even been nominated for the Max awards, something that seemed strange to us. We had to withdraw for this to happen.
JOAN GRACIA: They haven’t given us many awards. Yes, we have received recognition for our career, but not for our shows. And at first they were not institutional awards.
C.S.: But in the end, yes. I have noticed that in a race they give you the prizes at the beginning and at the end.
When they started, the international mime of reference was Marcel Marceau, who did some poetic shows and went with his face painted white, and you turned him around.
PACO MIR: Marcel Marceau had a problem: he was a genius, but his imitators were hideous and boring. So, to avoid the comparison, we stopped painting our faces and said that we were mimes-clowns. We connect with a more hooligan line. Our precursor is Jacques Lecoq, whom we never met, but he had taught Boadella, Anna Lizaran, Albert Vidal, Joan Font… They are people who have influenced us and we have come to Lecoq through them.
In 1982, with Manicomic, they took the step to professionalization. When does the international jump arrive?
J.G.: The first outing was to a festival in Brescia and then with Exit, the show about the world of aviation, we performed in Paris, at the Teatro de la Ville, where we also took the following shows. In France we have been very loved, because the culture of the gesture is close to them. Internationalization began almost without realizing it. People told us that we had it very well thought out because, since we didn’t speak, we could go all over the world. But it was never premeditated and it worked because of the gesture and the type of humor, which is universal.
But surely there are sketches that in some country must not have worked.
C.S.: It’s more the type of humor. The slip with the banana skin is laughed at by everyone. But we have gone further by curling the loop. The concept has worked, but it is true that some gags have not laughed at them in the same way. In the Anglo-Saxon world, for example, the most hooligan gags are not liked.
And do they all understand each other the same?
P.M.: He told us an anecdote in the Ivory Coast with the sketch of the shepherd and the dog. We went there with Clowns Without Borders and performed in sanatoriums and mental institutions. And no one laughed, because the dogs there are like rats: they don’t go with the herd, they don’t have a name, they don’t wear a collar, and we had to reinvent the number, making a target act as a dog, and then it worked. Humor needs a reference.
What is the most successful sketch?
J.G.: There are quite a few: the one about tennis, the one about the dentist… But the one that opened us up the most to the public was the one with the song by Julio Iglesias I’m a knave, I’m a gentleman, which is a tribute to Jango Edwards.
P.M.: Now, if the song lasted 3 minutes, the sketch lasted 8.
Are there any that you are lazy to do?
P.M.: Since we are skilled, if we are lazy, we don’t do it. We could get lazy about Julio Iglesias’s and what we do is just a tasting, and that’s enough. With a 15-second brushstroke, the audience is already laughing.
Is your success also due to the fact that there are three different profiles that complement each other?
C.S.: We are three different components, mixed, with a chemistry that has worked. It has been magical. In the creative processes, which are more complicated, we are three guys who think, who propose, but who we cannot impose. Everything is a negotiation, and sometimes we thought: “My God, let’s see what will come of all this.” On some occasions, when we premiered, it didn’t quite work, but we had to go on stage to be able to evolve the show.
They give off complicity.
J.G.: There is complicity, but above all a lot of acceptance, because the three of us have the goal of being liked. We have changed some shows to please the public more. With Slastic we made a fantastic and very expensive inflatable set, but it was a difficulty for us, with some brutal limitations, so, when we had done the dress rehearsal, we decided that it was going out. Our aim has been effectiveness, and that has also helped us overcome tensions.
How was the farewell party at the Liceu?
P.M.: It was better than we thought, because the response from the public was overwhelming, with a shower of affection. At first it seemed like a very big theater, but in the end it wasn’t that big and we found ourselves very comfortable.
J.G.: There are no big theaters, there are empty theaters.
C.S.: With the pandemic it seemed that our farewell had faded, and the truth is that recovering those five days was a great success.
Catalan version, here