Confessione

When I was living in Buenos Aires, I lived near Congreso, the Argentine parliament, a few minutes walk from the Casa Rosada, the executive mansion of the President, and from the Museo del Bicentenario, which traces the political history of the country from its birth until today. The Argentine politics is a fascinating subject, as well as his greatest mystery, the Peronism. A label that somehow unifies a wide sort of opposed political strategies, for example that of Kirchner and that of Carlos Menem, the president who, from 1989 to 1999, shaped the image of the Argentina before the crisis. A country which was rich, neo-liberal, cool; a country who aspired to the ethical and aesthetic model embodied by its chairman. A president who brought the country to the brink of the abyss, and dropped it, without anybody noticed. That’s fascinating, in my opinion: how a president can distract his country and make the truth go unnoticed.

2.-To what extent do you think that reflects the current situation in your country?

The economic crisis we are experiencing in Europe resembles that experienced by Argentina a decade ago. In both countries a macroeconomic policy that leads to loss of monetary sovereignty has been pursued. Although there are differences in comparing the Dollar, a foreign currency, to the Euro, which is a common currency, whereby each country should, ideally, has power of decision on it. The truth is that the ECB is quite influenced by the decisions of the Bundesbank and the German political weight. As a result, the countries that suffer most from the crisis (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain) have very little autonomy in financial management, and that somehow reminds the dependence of Argentina to the USA and the IMF in those years. When a country has no autonomy in terms of monetary policy, it can only cut costs, privatize, dismiss the social system. Hence elected governments lose all effectiveness and prefer to declare a sort of “state of emergency” leaving political liability side of an assumed financial responsibility.

3.-How would you define your style of writing?

This play is very different from what I’m used to write. In open opposition to the political rhetoric (and therefore in some way to the theatrical rhetoric), the story is flowing clear, simple. It has been conceived as an Argentinian “unipersonal”, a monologue for one actor, easy to stage and easy to move, with no need of money to do it, nor complicate technical requirements.

4.-What is the theatre for you?.

Theatre is the only art in which the clash between word and body, between reality and discourse about reality, happens live in front of the public. Thus theatre is a powerful tool to explore the method of construction of reality through language.

5. What has Carlos Menem of Silvio Berlusconi and S.Berlusconi of C.Menem? And to what extent have you used both to create a syncretic character like “Menem” of Confessione ?.

There are many similarities between Menem and the figures of Silvio Berlusconi or José María Aznar, for example. They are all rich, powerful, friends of magnates and tycoons. They are all faithful to the liberal doctrine of the United States. They are all graduates in law, and, paradoxically, all of them were somehow beyond the law. And most importantly, they knew how to exploit their image, building through the medias an “attractive” character to the citizens’ eyes.