Claudio Tolcachir: "Contempt has many forms"

Theater

Daniel Grao and Carlos Serrano in 'The Turing machine' by Claudio Tolcachir.

The theater that Claudio Tolcachir likes "does not resolve itself in applause."

That is why in 'The Turing Machine' he expresses the interpretive capacity of Daniel Grao and Carlos Serrano to make the viewer reflect on their own and other people's prejudices and contradictions.

They are not in London, but the streets around the Teatros del Canal in Madrid look like it on the day of the interview: umbrellas, gray tones, constant rain.

A perfect landscape for the renowned Argentine playwright

(Buenos Aires, 1975) to analyze his new work,

, together with its protagonist,

(Barcelona, ​​1976), and his partner on stage,

(Alicante , 1989), who embodies a series of characters that bring together all the prejudices that

.

Did you know the story of Alan Turing previously? CLAUDIO TOLCACHIR .- I did not know it.

Apart from that it was a bit encrypted until it was finally opened, because for many it was uncomfortable to talk about what happened.

And when I immersed myself in it I fell in love.

I felt like we had to.

Telling that story. Is he a character who pushes himself to the limit? DANIEL GRAO.- Yes. It is something that one does not dare to say, but he takes me as no one else has.

I think it has never happened to me, feeling that possession ... I had a lot of respect for him, especially after my first conversation with Claudio.

It was what stimulated and scared me: a stuttering guy, with a problem in his dealings, with difficulties.

The contradiction of a brilliant mind with a disability in the social and in the short distance.

You have to create that short in one.

You know as an actor that you have to go through a different expressive form.

How to get there I did not know.

But I fully trusted Claudio who puts the accent on the truth, on the organic, it will never be a shell.

And there has been something that has been reached even in spite of us.

It has not been agreed.

It was happening to our amazement.

It was something that if he left me, he took me.

And we have lived it like that, in a mysterious way. Was information omitted? Many times I say "let's not name that", "let's not say such a thing".

So always.

I think the worst thing when you direct is to start by saying to the actors "your character is like that and he has this function in the play".

Although later they remain with the face of wanting to know more things.

It is good that the trial is the breeding ground, so that accidents appear and see how they are resolved.

Because one can be prejudiced about how a character is going to function.

But then something else happens in person and that is very much tied to history.

The Argentine playwright Claudio Tolcachir.

/ SERGIO PARRA

Conflicts that were very marked by contradictions, right?

CT- Turing has so many layers ... There are moments in Benoit Solès' text in which you would hug him and others in which you would say "enough, stop".

That is the interesting thing.

It is not a self-pitying work.

Try to show all the nuances and contradictions that we all have.

We can be brilliant, totally incapable, make mistakes ... He is very honest what he does: he tells what Turing went through without adding what we should think of him.

The viewer is left with the opportunity to create their own particular judgment. Trials like those faced by the interpreted characters of Carlos Serrano, right?

CARLOS SERRANO.- I grew up in a generation that more or less was polishing the prejudices that mathematicians suffered.

But it was a challenge to approach it from the point of view of authority when I interpret the sergeant, with homosexuality perceived as something illegal;

from the point of view of the scientist, who has to work side by side with him, which is unbearable but very lovable.

It is a constant struggle to clarify all those prejudices. He was charged the same charges as Oscar Wilde, "gross indecency and sexual perversion."

CT- I knew the story of Oscar Wilde better.

For this work I saw her again and it broke my soul.

It is important to tell these stories, because although society has moved on, they keep happening.

Anyone who is different, or to whom we cannot understand, makes us laugh, it seems strange to us ... It can be from the side of mockery, which seems socially accepted for contempt, or directly not giving them work, not allowing your children go home.

Contempt takes many forms.

I was very lucky, without having fit into anything normal, to have been happy.

But one cannot think that it is the parameter of society.

If this play makes someone move and think "hey, what a complicated guy, but how alone he was, how generous he was" ... I think that there the theater plays a role, not in relation to Turing, but with its own difficulties .

Or maybe some Turing can be identified, because we all feel quite Turing.

The character of Turing has marked Grao as an actor.

The work analyzes whether the complaint he made was a mistake and that led to the discovery of his homosexuality.DG- That's very nice.

Let Turing himself bring it up to the public.

Why did you file that complaint?

What leads us to do things?

Is it a mistake because it ends badly?

Sometimes it is irremediable, because there was a need for something to change.

An "I am a prisoner of myself and of this system that does not let me be."

Maybe, coldly, having known that this complaint leads to that sentence and a suicide ... but at that moment maybe that something more visceral, unconscious, can more.

Every secret tends to emerge, sooner or later, in one generation or the next, nothing is forever.

The question, our micro contribution in life, would be not to gestate anymore, not to cover up more. How do you get the viewer to identify with Turing?

CT- The show begins with a Turing who wanted so much to study that he did 90 km.

cycling.

For me that is a very powerful image of someone.

It is a symbol of all life, of its difficulties.

And I find it so moving.

He is someone who costs him all triple because of his social status.

And at the same time there is the fire that burns him for his vocation, for what he sees, for what he wants to discover ... It is something contagious.

When you meet someone like that, if you manage to get through your difficulties, you notice something greater than him came to life.

That was our job in rehearsals.

Both for Turing and for the characters of Carlos he embodies.

It was sought that they were not roles, but that through them the world in which they lived could be seen.

They had to have dimension and life: ego, desire, fear, competition ...

Carlos Serrano (left) interprets various characters who cross paths with the mathematician.

It happened in Great Britain, but its end can be transferred to any society?

CT- It's difficult.

There are all kinds of Argentines ... Yes, there are cultures, axes of power that mark the line of what is valued and not.

For me it is valuable to find such materials.

This computer that you have someone thought and existed.

And it was used for war, and then the creator was forgotten and shut up.

All of that existed and has to do with your life.

You are not a stranger: it has to do with every day of your life. Every day contempt occurs ... DG- In the end, it is about the use of the system: his death was due to sexual prejudice, but it could have been racial.

That is mutating, but there it is in the human condition: the rejection of the different or on the contrary, the enemy.

But in any case there is the "I am the system, you suit me well, I use you and mud with you".

The use and dehumanization.

Behind that brilliant mind there is a being, with its contradictions, its mistakes and its heart.

We try to capture his humanity, regardless of what he did and how you judge him.

How awkward ours!

As a society, Lorca has come to mind like a flash.

Everything I would have written ... Once again, the ego killing people.

What could Turing have given us if he didn't die so young?

C. T .- Imagine.

He died at 41 ... Everything he would have discovered.

And where else would he have gone, because he began to unite nature and mathematics.

We have missed a lot of things that could have come out of his head.

In that sense, I don't think the theater ever has to give messages.

I aspire to give moments of life complex enough for the viewer to have to accommodate.

It is not my intention to take you to an emotional or intellectual place, by "you must think or feel this."

Like when you go to a family reunion, there is a "live moment."

And then, one day, you will understand what happened.

That for me is the ideal.

The theater that I like is not resolved by applause.

You take it.

And later you think.

"I don't know why I laughed at this, or why I empathized with this son of a bitch. Why did I feel sorry for it, or it didn't bother me ... If you have a bare wire, theater makes more sense.

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