Her name seems foreign and carries a redundancy: Melania, in Greek, is something like “blackness”; and Lenoir, in French, “black”. The paradox is that she Melania Lenoir, the one squared in black on her document, is blonde and white. This actress goes on stage in three projects at the same time: “Forever Young” (Picadero), “Shrek” (Maipo) and “Come from Away” (Maipo).
The last of the works tells the true story of a small Canadian town that, after the attack on the Twin Towers, had to house 7,000 people for 5 days. “It is very sensitive and sensible to do it at this time, because all of us during the pandemic had that feeling of feeling vulnerable in some way. I am very moved by each function, ”he says.
He discovered the magic of the stage and musical comedy thanks to his high school, which had a tradition of doing quasi-professional staging. She was dying to star, but she was experiencing embarrassment and shyness. She first was part of the choir and the dance corps. Years later, she got two lines of text. Until, in fifth year, she was chosen for the leading role.
“My whole process, both amateur and professional, was always one small step at a time,” he says. However, when he entered the Conservatory, he ran into the prejudice of the teachers around musical comedy. She then decided to be a “serious actress” and she abstained from that genre for years. “When I started studying, my dream was to be seen as a versatile actress and not be pigeonholed, because that is the most divine thing about acting,” she says.
News: It has many facets, is it like many people in one?
Melanie Lenoir: Yes, I am a yoga teacher, I worked in the mountains for many years, I am a cabin crew, I am deeply passionate about everything I do. Now I have just finished the costumes for my boyfriend’s (Bruno Pedicone) play, which is called “When the rain stops falling” (Border). I had a costume producer and, when I did “Chicago”, I would leave the theater with Eleven cloth bags and the producers, who were a bit of a star system, would tell me: “You can’t be Velma Kelly and go out with Eleven bags! ”. And I told them: “Well, the salary is not enough for me!”.
News: Contrary to the idea that whoever stars gets a lot of money.
Lenoir: Sure, I’m not complaining at all, but whenever I go to teach musical comedy schools, I say: You have to be very flexible as an actor and look for other sources of income.
News: You were talking about your desire not to be typecast, are you still fighting that?
Lenoir: Unfortunately it still happens, there is a place where I feel unfair. I really appreciate that “queen of musical comedy” thing, but on the other hand, I studied Theater at the Conservatory, I did things that anyone else who doesn’t have a distinguished career in musical food would be called an “actress”: theater of text, independent theater, cinema, TV. But it’s like over and over again the stigma is on musical food. And it is a stigma because the musical comedy actor, for a long time, less and less, was considered less prestigious. Look, not long ago, in an audition, a renowned director of text works, before seeing me, told me: “You’re the stick of musical comedy, aren’t you?”. And I already realized that there was a resistance, it is very difficult to overcome a prejudice. It was the pain of saying “what else do I have to prove”.
News: In 2020, he released his album Güera. What did it mean to you?
Lenoir: It was the most complex, hard, difficult and revealing artistic expression of my entire profession because I am always shielded behind a character and the album is me. I was at the end of a relationship and it helped me to be reborn, it was to say: “How art heals!”. But it still hurts me to listen to it, I haven’t been able to play it live yet. When you’re making art, you have to be very honest with those most uncomfortable, most sensitive, rotten fibers, and I was so afraid to bring them out.
News: Güera means “blonde” and the song that bears that name is a description of the discrimination she felt many times when she was called a cheta.
Lenoir: You say you grew up in the North Zone and, in two seconds, you’re a cheta. It doesn’t matter that my old man has been out of work for 10 years and that they broke his o… to send me to school. And I get prejudiced against myself, because I didn’t lack anything, but there were years in which the heating didn’t turn on and the shower had to last five minutes… and my mug on top, so blonde, so gringa, so güera, doesn’t contribute . At the Conservatory, because I had a mug, I was a cheta in two seconds. I even dyed it brunette. It’s a subtle discrimination and, on top of that, one feels that, if it’s because of a cheetah or a blonde, I shouldn’t suffer it, but I did.
News: Could we relate it to your experience in humanitarian flights, to what a person suffers just for having a certain nationality, for example?
Lenoir: Yeah, that was probably one of the most moving situations of my life. Working on the plane (which took Ukrainians to Barcelona), you are very operational and functional. But suddenly you see a 95-year-old couple crying, broken, because they are being displaced, they lost their home, their identity and their country… (gets excited) how unfair the world is, because of selfish decisions of people who will never relate deeply with how they are destroying. And, you talk to Enrique (Piñeyro), who has been working with Open Arms for a long time, and he tells you how unfair it is because they have been working with people in the Mediterranean for years, trying to get them to be received in Europe and with Ukraine, for having a face that they like it better, they make it easy for them to enter, and for people who get on top of a raft…
News: You practice Buddhism, how do you deal with this type of situation?
Lenoir: My whole spiritual part has to do with understanding. If at any time I feel prejudice in my heart, I try to identify it and see what is there and, deep down, there is a lot of fear. We are so afraid that we are all the time wanting to differentiate ourselves. There is a Buddhist teacher that I love, Pema Chödrön, who says that you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens. Many times I find myself disappointed, but instead of judging, I try to understand where the root of that pain is that makes the other act like this. Behind discrimination, there is fear.
News: Do you have pending accounts?
Lenoir: No, I always look for ways to carry out my wishes and desires. Now, for example, I am about to direct “Consent with Carla” (Calabrese), a very powerful text work, and it fills me with fear because it is an uncomfortable work.
News: Will you direct or will you also act?
Lenoir: It could be that I act, but I have been thinking that perhaps it is better not, that there are other actresses who may be better than me to do it. Because I care about telling the story in all its power, my ego is not ahead.
