After a long and varied career in television, theater and cinema that began in 1994 with the youth strip “Montaña Rusa”, malena solda premieres this weekend at the Teatro Regina one of the four versions of “Plagiarism”work where Jose Maria Muscari directs four different acting duos, who according to their own managers, embody “the same love”. There, Solda puts herself in the shoes of a political advisor in a relationship with a candidate for president represented by Inés Estévez. And in the days before her debut, the also interpreter of well-known soap operas and series such as “Gasoleros”, “Mujeres asesinas” and “Cuéntame cómo paso”, received NEWS to talk about this new venture, about “Argentina, land of love and revenge 2” —the new fiction of El Trece that already had several schedule changes due to its low rating— and its feminist militancy.
News: Let’s start with “Plagiarism”, his brand new theatrical work.
Malena Solda: The work is about love, beyond gender, emotions and the meetings and disagreements of two people. Inés Estévez and I play a homosexual couple, but there are four couples in total. In other words, depending on the function you go to, you will see the same text represented by a different pair.
News: What can you tell about your story with Estévez?
Solder: It is the story of a clandestine love in politics, where addiction and ambition mix with love and desire. I play an adviser willing to do anything to reach the top: and Inés, a candidate for president, ready to exercise power, even if she must pay a high price.
News: In the second season of “ATAV”, on the other hand, she plays a woman who manages her husband’s magazine theater commercially and with chiaroscuro in her relationship with the stars.
Solder: It is that no one is entirely bad or entirely good. Ethel was growing in evil and also in humanity, a little of everything. She has a lot of responsibility in the theater, because being in charge of it implies being in charge of the salary of many families; And they are also like a family with their employees, with all their peculiarities, of course. Because sometimes they are abusive, but she worries about her health, because she wants everyone to be well on stage. That is something that Horacio, her husband —represented by Juan Gil Navarro—, does not see much, because he is even colder. The nice thing about making a character is that it has nuances.
News: What challenges did this character imply for you?
Solder: The first was to be able to define her well, why she does what she does, why she is with Horacio, because if everything is wrong between them, you have to understand what unites them. At the beginning of the ’80s, the Divorce Law did not yet exist, but couples still separated. The other challenge was to move her from the place of victim in the bond with her husband and look for the part of her worthy of her. At that time, society was more macho than it is now, but I didn’t find it interesting that she started crying like in any other strip from the ’80s or ’90s. That when he treats her badly in front of others, instead of being depressed by her, she looks at him as if to say: “We’ll talk at home.” I always defended that and I think that with Juan we achieved it, because for that you also need the complicity of your partner, for him to respond to that look.
News: Horacio is the nephew of Samuel Trauman, the cafisho of the first part of the soap opera. Had you seen that season, set in the ’30s?
Solder: No, but when they called me I saw some episodes. Not all, because this story is quite independent of the other.
News: His character develops in one of the strip’s three plot lines: the world of revue theater. Taking into account his career, would you have liked to work on the other two axes: the difficult return to democracy, due to the consequences of the dictatorship; and the irruption of AIDS in the midst of the homosexual struggle of the ’80s?
Solder: Not that political stage, because I already covered it in the Argentine version of “Cuéntame…”, which takes place in those years and I loved doing it. The thing about sexual diversity maybe yes. Although the most innovative thing was to play a magazine theater producer surrounded by naked women, something quite different from what she had been doing. That was the most different thing for me, because Ethel also objectifies the vedettes.
News: How does your feminist facet feel about that?
Solder: I think it’s good to show it and make noise, because it helps to reflect and stop naturalizing it.
News: Did your relationship with feminism have a trigger or did it just happen?
Solda: Feminism helped me feel less alone, although it really did come naturally, over time. Plus the education and role models I had throughout my life, both for the positive and the negative. Motherhood also brought me closer to feminism.
News: In what sense?
Solder: When you’re a mother, you’re more vulnerable to a lot of things. Society demands the same from you as before having a child, that you look divine; and you’re not the same as before, because you sleep less, because your head is split in two, wondering if your baby is okay, because you have half the time to be just as efficient.
News: His son is already 10 years old. How does he get along with his feminist mom?
Solder: He is no stranger to what I tell him, he has it super naturalized. In part, thanks to ESI at school, where roles are now being reflected on, for example. Today’s boys are more open, more unprejudiced.
News: In 2006, after starring in several successful cartoons, he took a career impasse to do a postgraduate course in classical theater in London. How did that happen?
Solder: Several things influenced. Here I studied with Hugo Midón, Cristina Banegas and Julio Chávez, but since I started acting very young, at the age of 16, I felt that I needed more comprehensive training. I didn’t dare to do it here because it was already on the billboard and I felt very exposed. Feeling overwhelmed by a certain frivolous aspect that fame has also had an influence. Then, at a Mar del Plata Film Festival, I met Alan Rickman, who recommended a London academy that worked on the same technique as a 70-hour seminar with British teachers that I had already taken here and that I loved from what I discovered. of myself in the texts.
News: What did you discover?
Solder: That the words worked at an unconscious level and that, handling some of that technique, emotions appear that one does not know they have; and that by appropriating those words, one can transform them into action and provoke something in the other. Before I went to London, I felt that I was losing naturalness and playability for fear of ridicule, and without those things, an actor is nothing. But in that academy I went from doing 70 hours to 700, in which I learned everything and lost that fear. It was something comprehensive, where I studied different periods of English theater, I interpreted Shakespearean roles, plus other things such as historical dances, combat on stage with and without weapons, songs of the time, clown, mime, voice techniques, improvisation, flamenco and a relaxation technique called Alexander.
News: Upon his return, he began acting at the Teatro San Martín, something he was looking for, I suppose.
Solder: Yes and no. At the San Martín, where she had been since she was a girl, I made my debut with “La Celestina”, by Fernando de Rojas, which I had already seen at the Teatro Regio, with Elena Tasisto, Sergio Surraco and Julieta Díaz. I say yes and no, because when I saw it, I thought: “How nice it would be to make a classic from the Spanish Golden Age like this one!”; and shortly after they called me to represent her in San Martín because Julieta could not continue.
News: He once said that he prefers to work with female directors. Because?
Solda: Because there is a gender perspective with which I feel most identified. Eye! There are men like Jorge Bechara, the director of “Cuéntame…”, who do not have a patriarchal gaze, but there are others who believe that they treat you as equals and it is not like that. In addition, as in cinema the script usually goes hand in hand with the director, so they are very own stories; and that is why I feel closer to a feminine gaze than to a masculine one. Likewise, I like working with someone who thinks differently and looking for a common negotiation.
News: Going back to feminism, do you criticize anything?
Solder: I don’t stop at that, I would have to think about it a lot to tell you something. In general, it is positive.
by Sergio Nunez
