when it premiered “Dracula”the musical of musical Pepe Cibrian and Angel Mahler that revolutionized the scene, Josephine Scaglione He was about to turn 4 years old. But at 14 or 15, he went to see her and split her head open. Or, rather, her heart. “I was very moved by the magnitude. I remember an intensity that she had not experienced. From the seat, I felt that emotion and the same thing that happens to me today before going on stage, which is like… my feet burn from going on stage, my feet burn, I don’t know how to say it, ”she says. In an interview with NOTICIAS three years ago, Scaglione told about the inner work that his decision to, against all external mandates, had meant to return to Argentina after Four-year Broadway run and Tony Award nomination through. At that time she used the phrase “to root myself”. She now talks about the burning in her bases and one thinks that, behind the scenes, the sap that rises through her roots is transformed into lava. “That’s my way of relating to the scene, when I’m on fire with what I’m doing, all I want to do is do it,” she says.
Scaglione was chosen to play Lucy in “Dracula, the Farewell”, which has just finished its only ten performances at Luna Park and begins a tour of different cities. She had already been part of the 2016 rerun, but in Mina’s skin. She is the only actress who put the body to the two protagonists of the work of the vampire.
News: Was it more of a challenge for you to take on Lucy?
Josephine Scaglione: No, the great challenge was motherhood and work.
Scaglione is the mother of Imanol, a baby who will be celebrating his first year at the end of May and with whom she says she feels absolutely in love.
Scaglione: Professionally, I had no doubt that I was going to be able to tackle the character with all my strength and power, because I’ve known “Dracula” since I was a girl, because I’ve already been through Mina and, therefore, I know Lucy very well. In addition, she is vocally in a place that is very natural and comfortable for me. But the challenge was how to get back to work with something so intense. Because Lucy is a firework.
News: Do you identify more with Lucy’s firework or Mina’s structured containment?
Scaglione: I think they both inhabit me, it depends for what and the moment. Anyway, it’s a very Lucy energy that I’m in right now; in this matter of going forward, that it is time to jump, after having been a mother, and go out and eat the stage.
News: Was it hard for you to make the leap?
Scaglione: Not really. I am very determined, I trust what I have already decided, so it was mostly an organizational issue but it was not expensive at all. Yes, maybe exhausting. But I think that the fact of being a mother puts me in a very vital place, where there is no room for any nonsense of my own, any extra mambo. It’s something like “Crazy, solve what’s happening to you because you don’t have time or energy to spare.” So it’s all a mess but, somehow, it becomes easier (laughs). There are things that used to take me time, effort or concern and now do not. I’m so in love with my son that I don’t care about anything.
News: Did your self-demand go up or down?
Scaglione: I lowered self-demand and self-criticism. When I gave birth and saw the feat I had accomplished, I said, “I will never criticize my body again.” Because, no matter how much the “you are beautiful” comes from outside, we are women and we are all crossed by the same dilemma, the same problem and the same vulnerabilities, it is an absolutely visual world that we live in and cruel. But from my experience with childbirth, respect for my body is another. There is something about honoring our body and our spirit that is more present now.
News: How to have a more loving look at yourself.
Scaglione: Absolutely, I believe that it is the true change, of course that the change begins with one, a phrase made but real, and I believe that it is part of the change that we want to see.
News: As opposed to “she recovered her figure 15 days after becoming a mother.”
Scaglione: Yes, I find that obnoxious. My figure never went anywhere, it mutated and now it’s another. I have nothing to recover. But they are ways of expressing themselves for years and years without even asking, only now are we asking ourselves those questions and giving ourselves those spaces as women. And I say women because aesthetics don’t happen to men in the same way.
He repeats that he has made and is making musicals but that it is much more than that and that he intends to delve into its multiple edges. She has been weaving her place as a singer-songwriter and feels that this is her most genuine refuge. At the beginning of the year she did a concert at the Cultural San Martín, where she presented her songs and she plans to record them.
News: Are there any fears you are facing right now?
Scaglione: The fear of not sleeping (laughs)
News: Earthly good.
Scaglione: The truth is that it is not a moment of fear, I think I scared them enough with how crazy I am in Lucy, the fears all ran away (laughs). This is a moment of certainty, of great joy, of great agitation, very intense but beautiful, so I am aware and living it with joy. Because it is not always like that.
News: Nothing is set in stone, they are statuses, or “I got to Broadway and that’s it,” or “I’m a mother and such.”
Scaglione: It’s like that, and that’s how I live. But it is loading and stiffening something that is actually more interesting than being fluid. Now it is this and I enjoy it, I appreciate it and I am going to capitalize on it because many very good things move personally and professionally.
Almost like in the first single he presented, “Furioso”, where he speaks to a sunrise and says: “The red of your blood makes me thirsty for everything you are, I’m going to walk wherever I want to be, I’m going to walk, quiet. Universe of color appears and there are plenty of words. Empty of tomorrow and after, I surrender to your silence. I’m going to walk quietly, I’m going to walk.” So it goes, with roots and volcanic lava on the feet.
