Dario Prieto
Updated Saturday, February 10, 2024-00:20
Interview Angélica Liddell: "There is a brutal sexual relationship between the public and me"
In the last work that
Angélica Liddell
(Figueras, 1966) performed in Madrid -'Liebestod. The smell of blood can't go away from my eyes. Juan Belmonte' -, she proclaimed: "Without you, God would not exist." In 'Voodoo (3318) Blixen', which is staged tomorrow and Sunday, he shouts: "You are an empty nightclub." That is, of love as 'fatum' from which it is impossible to escape heartbreak and revenge.
Liddell, who says he is working on his "disappearance" on stage, nevertheless delivers almost six hours of show at the Conde Duque Cultural Center in Madrid. 'Vudú (3318) Blixen' premiered last fall at the
Girona Season High Festival
, where the 'tour de force' (relieved by four breaks) caused practically no desertion. On the contrary, many believed they saw the best brilliance of Spain's most important theater creator in this black magic ceremony against a former lover.
All of Liddell's works are dedicated to a man, but in this case the presence becomes more explicit. She tells in her performance how he made fun of the love he aroused in others and also in herself. How he lied and used feelings for his own benefit. The music (Bach, once again), the 'tableux vivants' and
the spilling of liquids on the stage accompany the recitations of the priestess of dark art
.
The title also points to another of the references, in this case literary, that mark the direction of the work:
Karen Blixen
(Denmark, 1885-1962), who under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen wrote stories such as 'Out of Africa'. She is entrusted, along with many other creators, to stand up to the aggression of banality in life.
"We make a pact with the devil so that he gives us the gift of speech," says Liddell in this regard in his book 'Kuxmmannsanta' (The Broken Nail, 2022). «Writing is a gift given to us from the underworld. All the gifts of art come from that pact. In return someone must suffer.
The devil has promised me a work, in exchange I must wish for the misfortune of a person every day of my life
. I have to give someone as a sacrifice.
But for this you have to pay a high price: «It is well known that
he who wishes the misfortune of others invokes his own misfortune. That is writing.
Writing is our misfortune. We answer the riddle of the enigma, but we do not know the enigma that is in us. And on this mysterious matter he resorts to Sophocles' Oedipus the King, through a phrase from the soothsayer Tiresias: "You are the murderess you are looking for." Thus, "our gaze is appropriate until upon knowing ourselves it becomes dark."
"Yes, I write," says Liddell. «
I don't know how to write, but I write. Publishing is my way of keeping secrets
. Expressing intimate feelings does not mean narcissistic exhibitionism at all, far from it. Literature is that hole in the wall of a Cambodian palace that will eternally preserve a secret, guard it for the billions of people who will never read it. Writing with readers in mind is vanity. For a long time I have been working to banish that impediment from my heart. "I prefer to think about those who never read because they make me freer."