The year 2003 is about to end and in a television program they choose “Mister Chongo”. Mike, the presenter, will be the host of five participants who will do whatever it takes to be crowned. On stage, you will not only see what happens in the studio but also what happens behind the camera. This setback of the plot will become the peephole to spy on the potential and weaknesses of each candidate. Hernan Cuevaswho in addition to playing Mike is the director and playwright of “Chongos”, a play with which he will return to the Picadilly Theater in November and will later do the summer season on the coast, asks a question: what would you do to achieve your dreams?
News: And what did you do to achieve yours?
Hernán Cuevas: I think that in my particularity, being short, it is very difficult to be considered a serious actor and not be taken for humiliation. So Many times I had to accept some roles that did not make me happy, they did not do me well psychologically, emotionally or on an acting level. But I knew that with that I would have another visibility.
News: What percentage of times did you have to make those concessions?
Caves: I would tell you that 20% of all my jobs will have been humiliating. I hope that proportion continues to decrease. By taking the initiative from the direction and from the dramaturgy, I chose the roles that I wanted to play because I knew that I would not be able to do otherwise.
News: What was your first professional role?
Caves: My first job as an actor was in “Life is a dream”, at the San Martín Theater. It was a huge theatrical event, it lasted for two years. It was a tremendous cast, Furriel (Joaquín), Muriel Santana, Patricio Contreras, and in the middle was me. The director had a very particular vision of the oligarchies of that time, with short servants to be more exclusive, and he wanted a short actor. When that ended, I could stay in two states: either sit and wait for the next theatrical proposals or continue studying because I wanted more.
He chose the second. He says that an artist must be ambitious and curious, that he has to escape from the comfort zone. “Most of the projects I write are due to my curiosities bordering on madness, because I need to know everything about everything, see all sides of the coin,” he says.
News: How did it continue?
Caves: Later, I had a musical at the Margarita Xirgu. Then my name was Roberto Peloni, for something he directed. But many times independent theater is not enough to cover all expenses and I looked for a job that was not on the artistic side. So I was a telemarketer, in the AySA emergency and claims service, I received a lot of insults. I was there almost two years. I had to leave the faculty (UNA), which hurt me but also, on the other hand, I stopped going because with the experience I had – with the four works I had already done, INCAA had called me to do “Short Stories” , I had done a gig on television -, I felt that I had gained enough practice and that I wanted to go to other places of learning and look for things that would help me learn and calm my curiosity.
News: Is that how you started writing your own texts?
Caves: Yes, I do directing and dramaturgy out of a need to tell certain stories.
News: What stories are you interested in telling?
Cuevas: I like works where the character has a double face, where not everything is what it seems, where we can share that change with the viewer, and people always leave with a question. I don’t do theater to tell the truth, I do theater to ask questions.
Another of her works is “Violeta does not sink”, inspired by the life of an Argentine nurse who was on the Titanic and who not only survived that sinking, but also two other boat accidents, tuberculosis and a skull fracture. . She died of old age. “Then I asked the audience: ‘Was she very lucky or was she dumb?’ Because we can see her as a survivor who was hit by everything or as someone who, if she was there, things happened,” she says.
News: Do you feel like a survivor?
Caves: Yes Yes. First because I live in Argentina (laughs). Second because I belong to a minority and this is the only disability that people still make fun of. You help a blind person or you run away. With a short person, there is still elbowing. I have the joy of having been part of “División Palermo” and now I am no longer the nudge to say “look how low” but the nudge appears because they recognize me.
In some way that was his goal all along, to turn the social view he felt about his achondroplasia into a positive one. “The day I die I want to leave knowing that I was an actor, that I did what I wanted and that, although it was difficult for me, I was able to reverse this external view a little. If you can help that a little bit, I’m done,” she confesses. Form versus substance, that’s what Cuevas’ constant fight is about. As if what is first seen is the form, he opts to show and display the depth of his personality.
News: Your mother has the same physical condition as you and was the first in her family. She surely had more difficult times.
Caves: Yes, my mom and I are the only two people in my family with achondroplasia. My mom had many cousins her age and if some kid made fun of her when they went out, they would stop her. She was supported by her cousins and that gave her the strength to later be the one to make them respect her rights.
News: Did that social mistreatment cause you anger?
Caves: Look, it didn’t make me helpless because I have a voice and I say things how I feel them. The fact of being an actor conditioned me much more to have my power be the word, to have my fight be the word, to say “there you are with your insult, with your banal and humiliating aggression, I have words that surpass that.”
News: Acting allows you to become anything. But on the other hand, you work with the body and there are physiques du rol, how do you articulate those issues?
Caves: Let’s see… I was born with a physical condition different from the rest and I live and will live with that all my life. I don’t have the average look. My childhood was in the midst of Menemism, it was a time of a lot of cotillion. And my adolescence was in the Cris Morena world, a magical world, already knowing that I was different and that I could not see myself reflected in anything. So, when I was 11 or 12 years old, I liked to watch “Tiempo Final,” because I wanted to see Brandoni and Norma Aleandro or Ulises Dumont act. And my mom let me because she knew I liked acting. That invisible openness that my mother and my grandmother gave me to say: “We are behind you, walk calmly, everything is fine”, many did not have it and I will be eternally grateful.
News: We talk about social prejudices, what is yours?
Cuevas: I think I am a great judge of myself, seeing myself in my work. I am very prejudiced towards myself, but I don’t do it with malice towards myself but rather I ask myself if that is what I am trying to demonstrate, to give, to say. Just as when writing a text, I ask questions; I also do them when I see myself. When I was 4 or 5 years old, my grandfather told me: “Society is going to discriminate against you, they are going to make fun of you, don’t give it a damn,” and I feel that there is still a lot of that kid in me. Today at 33, I try to continue in that innocence and that is why my biggest prejudice is with myself to know if, when I see myself, that four-year-old boy is still there.
News: He was nominated for the Cóndor Awards as male revelation for his work in “División Palermo”. What does that series mean for his career?
Caves: It’s a prize. When you live in a country that has such limited audiovisual production, when you are part of a minority, when you have a particular physical condition and based on all that you have a job, I consider it a reward, because it takes 13 years to get there. here.
News: Is it more difficult to be faithful to values when you achieve greater reach and belonging to the media?
Caves: No, I think that with visibility comes something much more important, which is respect. And when you get respect, you can get a bigger word. I go more for that situation, to be even more aware and have my feet on the ground even more.
News: The series shows disability from another place, right?
Caves: I grew up in a time when there was no one short on TV, there were no other disabilities on daily TV. So for something like “División Palermo” to come and be part of that is an award.
News: Move the politically correct thing.
Caves: Look, when “Waiting for the Carriage” was released in ’85, the critics said how we are going to make fun of the old, the elderly, and death; It was a society emerging from the dictatorship. And today for me, “Waiting for the Carriage” is the best Argentine film. If “División Palermo” had been released twenty years ago, it would not have had the reception it had.
News: It is likely that we would not have understood several things.
Caves: We would have understood the message backwards.
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