Belén Rueda makes a stop in Barcelona with Salomé, a co-production of the International Classical Theater Festival of Mérida and Pentación Espectáculos. Written and directed by Magüi Mira and with music by Marc Álvarez, it can be seen at the Goya theater until 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 this character in the New Testament?
I met Magüi as director when we made Penélope in the midst of a pandemic, in 2020. In this profession we are lucky to meet people who 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 turns them around and humanizes them. Then it’s impossible to say no. In addition, as a director, she knows how to enhance any virtue you have when you are editing.
How do you feel playing this character who ordered the beheading of Joan the Baptist?
And then Herod, who beheaded so many people, ordered her to be killed. Getting into its bowels, Salomé de la Magüi has been a discovery. Dance is a very important part, because of the movement and because of what it means, and for me, who studied classics and Spanish, it has given me the opportunity to mix all these things. What Magüi does is add.
how does it
For example, with the character of Baptista, who plays Pablo Puyol and, instead of shouting in the cell, makes him sing. With Luisa Martín, who plays my mother, she achieves something very dramatic, giving it a tone of brutal acid humor, which is not easy to do. With me, it’s the drama within the dance. What Salomé has given me is a lot of freedom as an actress, even if we are talking about a woman with very little freedom.
Does your Salomé dance the dance of the seven veils?
This was the second thing that Magüi said to 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 the ones with a lot of violence, because that way we manage to transmit it without getting hurt.
Isn’t your Salome capricious?
When she is rejected by John the Baptist, she takes revenge, but this goes much further. For her, he means a new time. We say this continuously in the work, because he preached a new time that meant a way of living, of relating, of living together that was different from the one they had. She loves Baptista to escape from a prison, his palace, which also subdues her.
How do you alternate cinema and theater?
It is not a decision or that I like to alternate. However, when a project comes to me in charge of, for example, La Magüi, I am completely open and eager to do it. What happens is that the theater needs some time, which forces you to release the schedule a year in advance, and in the series and in the cinema they tell you that we start in three months, and maybe a year passes. Time is not managed in the same way in theater as in audiovisual, and that is why it is sometimes very complicated, because I am very serious about my commitments. Then there are scripts that come to you and you want to do them, but they coincide with another one. And then I ask that we try, to be able to do both.
The movie will be released soon.
Yes, shot here in Barcelona, ??Caída libre, which will be released on May 17. It is wonderful, with a young Catalan director, Laura Jou, and with the production company of J. Bayona. Here I am a very special woman, Marisol, the opposite of Salomé, because she is a very prepared woman, very successful, and who thinks she is in control of everything. And she reaches a point in her professional career and private life where she manages to understand, although it is too late for her, that she has no control over life, neither hers nor that of others. History is like a kind of destruction in order to survive.
Have you worked much in Barcelona?
A lot. It fascinates me to be in Barcelona, ??because it is very curious: almost all the actors here go to other cities to work and, on the other hand, my longest career in cinema has been here. I have been fortunate to work with an amazing generation of young chess directors. I said to them: “How come you have so much talent? Please give us the recipe.” I have worked with J. Bayona, Guillem Morales, Sergio Sánchez, Oriol Paulo… My mother, what a great talent there is here!
