• Poetry and roof The dissident poet who recites on squatted benches

After 18 years working as a nurse, Iris Rico (1978) is clear that there is another profession that also heals, that of actress. The experience he lived in the emergency room of a hospital during the pandemic and what he feels on stage have made him see that making the public happy can be the best medicine. "Interpretation is another way to heal," he says.

Iris came to the world of the stage by chance, when a friend asked her to accompany her to the School of Actors of Assumpta Serna. That place had little to do with a hospital room or an operating room, but it caught his attention to such an extent that he presented himself to the tests. "I felt such an attraction to the camera that I realized I had discovered a late vocation. Something completely grabbed me. It was like trying a good drug," Rico recalls.

Assumpta Serna and her husband, Scott Cleverdon, handed him the script of a monologue, gave him a few minutes to memorize it and, with a bar counter as a stage, listened attentively. Iris was surprised at herself and the words the examiners said to her. "You're already an actress. Now, let's get to work." And so he did.

She was 30 years old and had a career ahead of her as a nurse, but she did not miss the opportunity to learn another and signed up for a course in camera acting. This was followed by others and, although she looked increasingly confident on the boards and received good reviews, she did not quite believe that she could have a future outside the hospital. "I once thought about leaving everything to be an actress, but I was convinced that it was just a whim," she says.

HIS FIRST ROLE

Within three years of getting in front of a camera for the first time, Rico became pregnant with her first child and stepped off the stage. When the little boy turned eight he went up again to open the curtain on the second part of his life, already as a professional actress. "I got a call from a producer who offered me a role in the play Someone Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It was small but for me it was like an Oscar movie. I acted with professional actors and for a season, at the Fernán Gómez Theater. Then, at the Calderón. It was a wonderful experience and my big break. It marked me to such an extent that I decided it was what I wanted for the rest of my life," he says.

But the pandemic made Iris Rico put this profession aside again and dedicate herself 100% to nursing. An obligatory option that was a before and after in his professional stage. "I had a really bad time. What I experienced in the emergency room left me touched to such an extent that it brought a change in my life. I clicked and decided I didn't want to go back. After a leave of absence, which I asked for to take care of my two children, I resigned from my interim contract," she explains. However, she could not leave her profession as a nurse because, as she says, "it is the one that feeds me". Even so, Iris is clear that it is only a job and that her true profession is interpretation.

Although he cannot devote as much time to it, he has managed to invest more hours. The actress passed a competition for a position in outpatient nursing that allows her to continue training at Theatre for the People, the school directed by Adam Black. There he works at a professional level performing in theatrical productions and free shows for the public. "Black is a master who has made me understand interpretation from my instinct. I've grown a lot with him. If you ask me what I am now, I tell you that I am an actress," she concludes.

On April 14, 22 and 25 and some days in May, still to be confirmed, we will be able to see Iris Rico in Maríalandia. A play written by Lucy Kirkwoo that denounces the murders of Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everad, the latter also raped by a policeman in March 2021 in London.

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