elena roger He agreed to this note without knowing that it would coincide with a family situation that nobody wants: his father was hospitalized a few hours before. She is accompanying him at the sanatorium but she does not forget the interview, she proposes to do it as soon as her sister arrives and she goes out for a while to a quieter place. We offer to reschedule the meeting for another day, but she prefers it to be in the afternoon, before taking her son Risco to one of her activities, another commitment that cannot be postponed for her. It’s Tuesday. The next day she expects him to lend her body to “Paff” (Teatro Liceo), in the first of six weekly performances, lasting almost two hours each, with a deep, rugged, chilling intensity.
The question is: where do you get the energy from, how do you manage it? Energy is a word that defines it in a broad sense. As a teenager, she was part of the Costanera Sur group of Fundación Vida Silvestre; As an adult, she ended up building with her partner, Mariano Torre, the first self-sustaining home in Latin America, inaugurated in 2014, in Ushuaia; And today she lives in her usual neighborhood, Barracas, in a house also founded on the principles of sustainable construction, promoted by the architect Michael Reynolds.
Roger has little time, but he knows how to take advantage of it in a deep exchange.
News: How do you manage your energy?
Ellen Roger: With physical energy, my partner (Mariano Torre) helps me. Bah, “it helps me” no; we have to get rid of that “help me”. We both collaborate so that the other can expand, and each one goes out to cover issues that are needed. Now I try to rest as much as possible, because the physical and emotional exhaustion that the work takes is quite strong. Then there is mental energy, where you have to organize things, different jobs, when do I do it, what do I do. That medium that never rests. And the emotional energy at this moment is very saturated because there are many things going around, especially my dad, I wouldn’t know how to put it to rest.
News: In 2002, your father had suffered a stroke, was it a turning point in your life?
Roger: Yes, of course, you saw when you stop worrying about trifles, it’s the blows of life that make you grow. The possibility of total loss of that human being whom I love so much was so strong that it made me focus elsewhere. It’s like having children too, the focus changes you. Mine is already in the background. It is not that one abandons oneself, because in order for them to develop, we have to continue developing, but the focus changes and I am not saying this from a place of suffering, it is a choice.
News: Professionally, have you ever felt subjected to something you were not choosing?
Roger: Yes, it can be, I don’t remember specifically when but yes, sure.
News: When did “Avoid” In the United States, he said that he didn’t feel like it that much and he got very bad back pain, right?
Roger: Something grabbed me in the sciatic, I couldn’t stretch my leg or lift it, it hurt a lot. And the explanation that I found in Biodecodificación was the fear of moving forward and losing my place, I was between a rock and a hard place: if I left Argentina, I was afraid of losing my place here, not only professionally, I had also just met Mariano. And if I didn’t go there, I could lose that place. Making “Evita” in the US was something that I could have planned when I was younger, but when it came my turn, I didn’t want to leave Buenos Aires. However, the experience was very good. And I finished “Evita”, I got pregnant and started to put together my home life, I wanted to have a family. But yes, I suffered having to go to New York, perhaps because of my sustainable or ecological issue, a place of infernal consumerism, where sometimes one wonders that with all the situations that happen, how can they be so banal. I didn’t make sense of it. But being there, I saw that there are also a lot of people who are concerned about this.
News: We move from prejudices.
Roger: Total. Also, from a place of certain renown, one can also do things and talk… If I hadn’t done the degree I did, I wouldn’t be talking to you. You have to relax and see what the universe has for you to live. And trust. In the pandemic, I did a “plant wheel” with a shaman. She was telling us every month which plant to take. There was one that cleansed the respiratory system; another, the digestive: some were more spiritual, others, more carnal. When we finished, they said a word to us, like a return, and they told me “trust”. And now I remember that at that moment, I was coming and going from fears, like everyone else, and I said: “Yes, it is trusting, letting go and trusting”. Because we create the future with our minds and all that stress that we experience due to the fear that something that didn’t happen will happen is not healthy.
News: She seems to be a seeker, someone who has a variety of concerns and is inquiring all the time.
Roger: I would tell you that more than a seeker I am open. How many things come to us, how much information that due to prejudice, as we said, we do not take. The teacher is at your door, the issue is when you want to open it. You saw this about going down the street thinking about a problem and someone tells you something and you say: “Wow, that’s a message”, and maybe the person has no idea about it. It can also happen to you that you are not aware or open enough to understand that this is a message that can help you.
News: I remember a make-up artist told him about Michael Reynolds, the sustainable architect, and his documentary…
Roger: Clear! With a single word he opened my house to me, where I live today.
News: She was open and attentive, like when, 13 years ago, against all odds, she got off the success of “Piaf”.
Roger: Yes, because I felt that I couldn’t be “Piaf” all my life, and that I had other things to explore. That is precisely why we are back now and it is the success that it is, because I grew as a human being, because now I have other experiences.
News: What can you give Piaf today that you couldn’t give her then?
Roger: In principle, their entire age (Piaf died at 47), my children, of course. There is also something that I detect in this new turn, which is that I feel different as head of the company.
News: In what sense?
Roger: I feel more prepared, calmer.
News: Is this comeback what you expected?
Roger: Look, it could have gone wrong and it had nothing to do with the quality of the show. We all matured a lot and coming back after 13 years was very exciting (this is almost the same cast), we feel like we are a family. Everyone is in a less egocentric and more poised place, everyone, not just me. Before premiering, he told them: “I don’t know if this is going to be a success but we already have success, we are feeling all this while we rehearse.”
News: Where does your definition of success go?
Roger: It doesn’t go through success that people think is success. For me, success comes from feeling good, from doing everything I had to do, from accepting what perhaps is not conventional success and is another type of success, from being happy, from being comfortable.
News: Do you feel you have to keep proving?
Roger: No, I feel like I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, that I’m enjoying what we’re doing without feeling judged by myself.I feel like I’m fine. I do want to show a good performance, that’s why energy management, I like to be in good shape to be able to do what I like to the fullest. I always say that Piaf heals.
News: And he says that you heal Piaf.
Roger: Now that there is so much talk about family constellations, talking to the cast that we felt strong things, I said if we were not constellating the lives of those of us who are incarnating, and also that, through our performance, people can have revelations of their lives. I think acting does a lot of this, with the ritual it produces. SI feel that the theater is like a church, a spiritual place where we all get to see something, to feel, we are open to it happening and to the energies coming and going.
