Graduated in letters, journalist, panelist, media man, radial driver, actor, Franco Torchia Flee from the enchants, formula definitions and simple explanations.
Thought and artisan cult of the good use of the word, meets news in a Palermitano coffee thanks to the replacement of “As never before … again!”theatrical work that plays with the tradition of political humor and recovers the spirit of Café Concert, towards Alejandro Tantanian, Liliana Viola’s book, accompaniment of the teacher Diego Penelas to the piano and costumes of Pablo Ramírez. Torchia looks on stage next to the shocking presence of Juampi Mirabelli, the first man of Argentina.
News: Calling Franco marked him in his search for frankness and the truth?
Franco Torchia: I recognize that I am someone who seeks frankness, I can guarantee that, in fact a few years ago I did a program on Radio Splendid that was called “sniper”, I try to work with the truth. But I have to tell you that my name is Franco Torchia just like my father, he gave me his name in a confusing episode, with which there is a historical disagreement about it between my father and my mother. My dad today has Alzheimer’s and Dementia, he is hospitalized a year and a half ago, it is an Italian immigrant who arrived in Argentina in 1951 with 12 years. When I was born in 76 my mother had a very complicated birth according to the legend, then my father was just to score me and had no better idea than to put on the same name. There is also another mystery that I could never resolve, that of my second name that is Edgardo … There did not agree my parents, that was such a full relationship of disagreements! (series)
News: In “as never before … again!” I liked the presentation of his character as “Capocronic.” How did the concept arise?
Torchia: Capocronic is a word invented by the author of the work, Liliana Viola, it occurred to him that more than comic I am chronic (laughs). It is a sympathetic word game that has to do with what I do on stage, especially in monologues, because it is the work of a person who speaks chronicly, in a very fast and intense way. I am intense and verborrágico, I would even say that sometimes I am a linguistically stunned person. Liliana also had the idea of a great observation exercise, we know each other a lot, she is my friend.
News: Is it reflected in the tradition of chroniclers of national reality such as Enrique Pinti and Tato Bores?
Torchia: They are such immeasurable artists that I can’t even think of a comparison with them. But it happened to me that when we started to penetrate this show I began to have them on the head almost unconsciously. I think that is what happens in general with such great artists, you have them in your mental script even if you are not thinking about them. I began to paint them to be especially trying and then I realized. I saw Pinti in theater, Tato only on television, but they are always there.
News: How was your adolescence in the middle of the 90s?
Torchia: I entered the secondary school in the 90s, just when the Menem government began. I went to the National of La Plata, a university school that I entered through a draw. Even today is an institution considered elite, in its past are Ernesto Sábato, René Favaloro and other great figures in Argentine history, had all that sacred halo. I had a difficult childhood and a non -teenage adolescence, it is what I feel.
News: Does he say it because he had many responsibilities?
Torchia: For my sexual orientation too. The truth that I never felt young and I never sought to be, I never recognized a value to youth, it never found me as a synonym for novelty. In my way it was quite introverted, but also a very burning person. I militated at the Student Center, I did theater, but that was also a school for many rugbiers and I was already a fagot teenager although being fully was not possible. Only at the end of high school, when I already started the university, I slowly started being closer to me. Some time ago I told a colleague that it is a LGBT youtuber that I feel I lived quite bad three decades. I am 48 years old and from 30 I could be more in tune with me.
News: As a result of all this, how does this kind of nostalgia analyze for the 90s?
Torchia: Many things happen to me, I think it turns to 90 because it is a festive, colorful, frivolous decade … for using both the word frivolity we empty it practically. But it was also a very countercultural moment and that is an aspect of the 90 that is not usually pointed out, in those years it was clear that the power was the enemy and a glorious counterculture flourished. The first “Pride March” was in 92. In the visual arts it was insurmountable, look at everything that happened in the Rojas Cultural Center, the independent theater of that time is unbeatable until today. I think we have to review the 90s not from an easy and digestible vintage place but from a complexized vision to understand what were the powerful sources of resistance that there were.
News: The other 90 night, for example
Torchia: Of course, not that of the coastal discs but that of the spaces called alternatives. Nave Jungla, Morocco, El Dorado, places that invented everything and founded what today is LGBT night. The first Drag Queens and Drag Kings in Argentina went on stage in Boliches during those years. It is a very interesting time, but of course, they were bloody, hunger and super hard for millions of Argentines.
News: One of the most relevant things since the year was Milei’s speech in Davos and the mass march that was generated from his sayings. Do you think they reflect a change of cultural paradigm or are only the words of a particular president who has this kind of ideas?
Torchia: On the one hand it is a low quality tracing of what other political movements do in the world, what does happen with Milei is that with his speeches she went further than any other, no other president equaled the magnitude of violent burden in the speech that Milei has, at that point he is the best student of Trump and surpassed it. Because Trump when assuming his second presidency said: “There are only two genres” and that of course is very violent, condemnable, but then in all his speech he did not refer to the issue again, beyond the murderous policies of the LGBTIQ people who are implementing. It is infinitely more serious what Milei said and I remain short with this concept.
News: This time there was a reaction, but do you feel that things that at another time were inadmissible are naturalized?
Torchia: I think that only by virtue of the general anesthesioration that our society is going through through a lot of problems, we do not finish incorporating the seriousness of those sayings. Beyond the professional analysis you can do, the personal thing was super shockeante. I was returning to Buenos Aires from Brazil when I was spent the video of Davos and I was crying for my daughter, for my past as a twice abused child, it was something that had not happened to me for a long time. Power always caused me rejection. I had opportunities to approach power, but I think it is our enemy, always and politics throughout my life has generated discomfort, disgust, dissatisfaction, but never this level of anguish.
News: There was talk of bad interpretations. You studied lyrics, what is the real impact of words?
Torchia: Milei said what he meant because Nicolás Márquez and Agustín Laje wrote that speech and he read it voluntarily, there was no communication failure. This speech impacts with effects on our bodies. Two girls were assaulted in the street by a man who massacred them for being lesbians. To another couple of women a neighbor set the house fire for the same. A lesbian was stabbed in Salta. That speech is murderer, the word has almost as much capacity to kill like a knife because a lot of authority to a lot of aggressors who were crouched and now feel with the official permission to go outside and kill us. That is Davos’s speech, an extermination proposal. Milei wants to kill us, we cannot interpret anything else.
