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“Twenty years. Long has been the wait. Too long. I have resisted because I expected it to me, because I wanted to me, because I knew that to wait was to survive. Because I looked up in my eyes, not yours. I am twenty years older and twenty years better”. They are the words of Penelope, the woman created by Homer, makes more than 2,800 years ago, in his poem “Odyssey”, and that during two decades waited for the return of her husband and set up your target by knitting and un-knitting. On Wednesday, Penelope will bring the hand of Belén Rueda, who will incarnate in the Festival of Classical Theatre of Mérida, in a version of Magüi Mira, in what will represent the debut of the actress in the monumental roman theatre.

Question in these times; how is it living situation?

-I had, as I think almost all of the world, a process; first denial, not to believe what was happening. But as it progressed the confinement I was taking it another way; seemed logical to me. I was with my daughters and we follow a routine, something that I think is very important: we did sport, we ate together, supported when either had a moment of letdown -although we were aware of being a privileged-, cocinábamos, read… I thought that Merida, as the rest of the summer festivals, was not to celebrate; I had already accepted the proposal of “Penelope”, and as the text seems to me so nice I decided to study it even if not done. I read several books related to the “Odyssey”, and several versions… I learned the text with the intention to stay for me, but when I was told it would be was a surprise and a joy.

Your love story with Merida is not a new…

-As a spectator, I have always liked to go to Merida and I have thought how it would be to act in this scenario; and I have to confess that I almost always was happy to be sitting among the audience. Stepping on that stage, with all its legend and all that has happened there, is much. When you think about it, it weighs a lot. Now I am realizing that when you’re submerged in a function with your colleagues, you’re giving form to something that has an intrinsic meaning outside of the place where rendered. Then adds to that scenario. And here is sum of what you are the site where what you are counting, that is spectacular and offers many emotions to the viewer. A long time ago that Jesus Cimarro, festival director, told me that I had to come to act, and the same to Tomaz Pandur, a director with whom he had a wonderful relationship and I felt very safe to tackle any job. His death cut short the possibility of going to Merida with him. But Cimarro told me after that Magüi Mira was preparing a really nice project and I said yes, because it is a director whose work I love. Came home, we were talking like three or four hours and I ended up deciding.

The time you tested “Penelope” tested also a movie. It is a privileged.

-The film -“The perfect woman”, by Arantxa Echevarría-, to be filmed in may. In the mornings, from ten to four, I have been with the play, and the five began the trials of the film, which is also a comedy. That is, going from tragedy to comedy Me I’ve been going crazy!

to be Able to live different lives and go into very different people is one of the incentives of your profession.

-Both Penelope as Lucia, in “The perfect woman”, are in addition to women of a certain age very interesting. And you already know that actresses of a certain age do not reach paper interesting because it told stories that may be of interest to all the world. But these two characters are very powerful and their stories are of interest to all. No matter the age or the sex.

do you Believe that the pandemic, and the confinement will have changed?

-Yes, yes. All, in different moments of our life, we give order to our scale of values., and I am convinced that we are many that we have reviewed during the confinement. We have missed people that we want, that you have not been able to visit or embrace. The pandemic has made us reflect on what is truly important. Sure that when time passes we’ll get into the same routine, but the dregs will be there; I am convinced that we will take of way different things. What is really important is the health; it is what allows us to live life as we like. This is what we learned, and also to appreciate the seniors and everything that can teach us by their experience and wisdom.

Began to study the character of Penelope before the confinement. Do you see now differently?

– it Completely! Penelope has come down to us as the myth of the submission and fidelity. But Magüi has done a very interesting review. The story of the “Odyssey” and the Trojan war are always seen from the side of the battle and the conquest. But when Ulysses leaves Ithaca behind there is a kingdom that has to be governed. And lack of there for twenty years. At that time, Penelope, of whom Homer says that it is a very smart woman that convinced, what you get in a world of men, in which women have no voice or vote. And how convincing is the hoax because at that time I can not tell you what to think nor govern as he had done a man. Has to invent a series of tricks to do what you wanted without that it seems that what I was doing. Ulysses has transcended as a great strategist in the battle, but I think that Penelope was a great strategist in life.

And what leads you to expect to Ulysses and not to lose hope for twenty years? What the love?

-They have always said that yes, the love. But in the waiting and in the resistance Penelope finds herself, and in doing so manages to somehow survive, you get to extend your status by the love of Odysseus, yes, but love is not living, especially when the person you love is not by your side. What you get in the strength that comes from knowing herself. His intelligence leads him to live the day-to-day and to resist; it is only by the love does not endure twenty years.

The big challenge when riding a classic is to bring it to the XXI century, in this case to make Penelope a woman recognizable today. What makes it contemporary?

-be an independent woman in a world of men with capital letters. Deception, yes, but independent; not the way in which we understand it now, because the freedom and the independence was not something within the reach of women. But he was a hero for how he lived his situation at that time.

many centuries Have gone by, and the fight for equality between men and women remains. How much remains to be done still?

-much, yes; we live in a country quite advanced in this field, but there are many others that are not. And soon, in addition, there arise waves of thought, which they want to go back. There is No lowering of the guard, is a long way to go… But I think men also have to do their revolution; we attributed the sensitivity, the ability to work in a team… Only if our behavior is of equality, without having to mark it, we will achieve true equality. Anyway, I see that there are things that my daughters give for granted while I still, for the education received, I have to think.

Impresses anyway that a text written twenty-eight centuries, we can continue to say both.

-Magüi Mira always says that we’re counting a “short story”. Uses this word, which I love, because it is like saying that we’re going to downplay it to give it to them: the “short story” is something very simple, for all the world to understand, but depending on who reads it, and the time gives you one or the other interpretation. And there is the magic of the classics, its force and its substance.

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