Agustín “Soy Rada” Aristarán: “The word enjoyment is my constant”

The type is identified as “I am Rada.” but at this point it is evident that it is not one but many. Maybe “Rada” is something like a synonym for “unclassifiable.” He has just turned 40 and is in a great moment: he starred in “Matilda” (so much so that in January it returns to the billboard), he starred in the documentary “A film on tour” (Flow) directed by his friend Gonzalo Llamas Sebesta, he made his second tour of Europe and in 2024 he will be the protagonist of a project about which he cannot reveal anything. He assumes that he is multiple in his work, that now, by his own decision, he is a little more limited, pointing to acting. “But my life as a one-man performer continues and I continue to generate content from time to time, before I generated content on social networks almost pathologically,” he says.

News: I imagine that this “pathology” must have had to do with setting up his professional space, it became visible through the networks.

Rada: Completely. What I did all that time putting together so much content and so much diversification feels like the foundations of the house. I built a pillar for myself to be seen, so that people know me and that the public decides to buy the ticket or the casting director wants to see what I can propose. I wanted them to know me, but not at any cost.

News: In a note we wrote to him about five years ago, he said that when he got bored, he swerved, that he felt the need to steer all the time…

Rada: (interrupts) Yes, that’s what I’m doing now. It always starts with something like I’m starting to feel a little physically bad, I’m getting bored, I’m stagnating, and I say: “I have to make a change, I’m not enjoying it.” The word enjoyment is a constant in my professional life. Enjoy in the best sense. Enjoyment does not mean no sacrifice, no work, no resignation to certain things. It means you had a good time doing what I do and that I need to do it. Why do I do so many things? Because I can’t not do them. I once heard Alfredo Casero say that being an artist was the internal sensation of having something inside that burns you and that yes or yes you must make it a reality because if not, you cannot continue living. I feel that the artist is the one who moves and I can’t say if I am an artist, but I always remember that definition.

News: Sticking to the “philosopher” Casero, he falls into the category.

Rada: It could be, yes, It is very difficult for me to say that I am an artist because the word artist is a lot..

News: What is it?

Rada: Actor, clown, magician, musician, Bianca’s father, Fernanda’s boyfriend and partner, friend of my dog ​​Honorio, son of Roberto and Inés, brother of Manuel, all that I am.

News: It is defined from the link. It seems that his career is always in some way a network of links.

Rada: Yes, completely. The links are what hold everything together. I couldn’t not do the things I do with friends or loved ones.

News: Does the fact that emotions come together with the professional never generate conflict in your personal or work environment?

Rada: No, the rules of the game that all the parts that make up the professional team establish are very clear and my ego is also very elaborate, I did and do a lot of therapies.

News: Has your ego inflated?

Rada: Yes, of course and when it happened I had the intelligence to realize it and the link network that located me. It was in 2019, when Fernanda, my current partner, told me: “Not like that,” and she kicked me on her ass. Ego is understood as pedantry but at that moment it was not being able to stop working and seeking more and more applause and increasingly greater applause and increasingly greater recognition. There the ego was playing a very trick on me. Luckily Fernanda hits me on the ass, I go to Chile and 150 thousand people harass me, my body couldn’t do any more and there, if I don’t find my place…

News: What happened in Chile?

Rada: 150 thousand people booed me, it was very good. I work a lot there and they hired me for a festival that everyone told me not to go to, not for anything but because comedy is not for that place. The comedians who were there weren’t doing very well. My ego told me: “You’re going to be able to turn that around,” and off I went. And it didn’t go very well, they insulted me, they booed me. I finished my contract, which was 40 minutes on stage, I managed to adjust things a little but I left with a very bitter taste.

News: At what minute into the show did you realize that nothing was going to work?

Rada: In minute 3 or 2.

News: And what did he do to sustain himself 37 more?

Rada: I started to take out all my tools from so many years of working and managed to connect a little with the public, but not make a memorable show. Meanwhile, they told me like a cockroach to get off the stage because it was really going to rot. There I remembered what Chacobachi, who is a street clown whom I admire a lot, told me: “A clown can be displeasing, boring, but what he can never do is get off a stage without dignity.” And I said: “I’m not going to go down here with my head down.” I felt like I was in open heart surgery and I was the doctor… But the greatest feeling of loneliness I felt in my life was after that show. I understood that applause lasts the same as a booand that if I stayed punishing myself and crying because my career was ending it was the same level of ego as if I stayed saying “what a boss I am, 150 thousand applauded me.”

News: How long did it take you to settle in and how did you deflate that ego?

Rada: The next day, because I had a thousand commitments to keep. In parallel, there was a deep crisis, analyzing it in therapy, with my meditation, processing it, putting myself back together and moving forward, that’s what it’s about too.

News: And how did you convince your partner that that little monster was not going to appear again?

Rada: She saw it, in fact, she invited me for ice cream after five months and we went back there.

It seems to preserve intact that 6-year-old boy who was flashed by the Chacobachi street show in Necochea or the teenager who started doing his own shows and earning more money than his father. ”That is super alive, just like Agustín who was a father 17 years ago is alive, we are everything we were, but it is not from nostalgia. When I talk so much about gaming, it’s not that you come to my house and I’m playing with two little cars in the living room; I put the game from the creative, from the playful, to be able to create without any type of limits,” he explains. Because when you’re playing, he says, things happen that get out of control. There is the serendipity (the valuable discovery that occurs accidentally, according to the RAE, as its emblematic show was called), the magic.

News: Do you find it difficult to let go of control?

Rada: Yes, obviously, I’m doing a lot of work to release it and luckily, at least at work, I have a great team that means I’m already releasing it a lot.

News: At one point he fell out with magic but with his last show he returned to it. What do you relate that return to?

Rada: With returning to first love, with the fact that I am a magician, in essence, I am a magician. Also with a path traveled, to be able to contribute everything I learned from other branches.

News: Matilda’s experience must have been…

Rada: (interrupts) Transcendental, totally. My daughter, Fernanda and I acting in that play, in a play in which I did something completely different from what people see of me all the time. From the shape of the character to the genre or what happened, it opened the doors to endless places that I have wanted to occupy for a long time, so I am super happy. I was able to show the audience and myself a certain acting ability.

News: Regarding the reality that surrounds us, what would you like to do magic?

Rada: (thinks) I think if I had a superpower, I would like to adjust the balance of inequality a little, I tell you this from a place of great privilege.

News: Does that privilege cause you some guilt?

Rada: No, not now because I’m older. Of course sometimes I say: “Oh, damn, this is a lot,” but nothing more, no guilt. Guilt makes you sick.

The guy doesn’t stop working. Outwards and inwards.

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