In full artistic maturity, Pilar Gamboa It is going through an intense and diverse present, both theatrically and audiovisually, commercially and self-managed. While starring “The daughters”which after its premiere at the Maipo Theater began a new stage in the Plaza Walkthe actress is also preparing for the return of the fourth season of “Envidiosa” and the recording of the second installment of “Black Widows.”
In the work, directed by Adrian Suar In her theatrical directing debut, she plays one of three sisters (Gamboa, Soledad Villamil and Julieta Díaz) who, filled with humor and emotion, face the challenge of dealing with a mother with Alzheimer’s, exploring human contradictions and family ties.
News: What was it like going from Maipo to Paseo La Plaza? Initially they expected to do a three-month season and in February they started again in a new theater.
Pilar Gamboa: It was good. El Maipo, for me, was a beautiful place to open. It is a very particular theater, it has a mystique, from its workers, to that stage, many people enter, but at the same time from the stage it is not perceived as a stadium. And the transfer to La Plaza was again good, because it is even more intimate, the people are closer. It was like brand new. It is a very young work, it is only three months old. When you premiere, you don’t know if they are going to laugh or not, if the miracle of humor is going to happen, of what makes you laugh, if it makes the viewer laugh. The theater is completed with that look, it is a living fact.
News: And what do they receive from the public? It is a work that has a strong identification, we are all children or a mother, father or you have a loved one who went through the disease and at some point it touches us all…
Gamboa: What happens with the work is very exciting. Furthermore, it has Adrián’s view of the world, which I share and celebrate, of saying: “I laugh at what hurts,” and it seems to me that the work tries, through humor, to laugh at what hurts. It hurts when your parents grow up. It hurts when roles are exchanged and then you have to take care of them. The passage of time hurts, illnesses hurt, pain hurts and more than one parent. The bond between the sisters also appears. Each one talks about how she related to her mother. The premise of the play is beautiful: everyone has the mother they remember. And it’s a bit like that, as a mother, I was not the same mother with my older son as with my younger daughter.
News: What is Adrián like as a director?
Gamboa: He was quite exhaustive in direction, very thorough, with a lot of rehearsal, he opened the ground to play. The text by Ariadna Asturzzi, a contemporary, young Argentine playwright, is also very interesting. In general, in theater they are proven formulas, you see? They tell you: “This play was a sensation in London.” Well, I was also interested in the writing of a contemporary Rosario writer.
News: Julieta said that before rehearsals they got together to work on the bond.
Gamboa: We started getting together a month before we started rehearsing and that was key. I have been doing theater with friends for years, it was always my area of experimentation. I have two theater groups, Lava Skin and The Silence Company. The theater has some of the trust, of the links, it was good to be able to generate that meeting space. The assistant director was also essential in the process.
News: Adrián debuted with you as a film director in “30 nights with my ex” and now with theater direction.
Gamboa: I am your debut pet. Adrián has something special because you believe that he has already done everything, and he still has it left, he wants to do everything. For me it is spectacular that he has called me. When he called me for the work, I hesitated because I have two small children, ages three and five. The theater has many busy nights. But there is something about my bond with Adrián, which I love very much, and I also liked doing this for the group that had been put together.
News: You also talked about your self-managed projects, how do you combine it with the commercial?
Gamboa: Piel de Lava is the company that I have with Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa and Laura Paredes, we have been together for 23 years, we write, we act, we direct. It is a group of belonging. It is complicity in its purest form. Then I can go to a commercial theater play with everything I learned with my friends from group work. What I was doing in the commercial, whether audiovisual or now in the theater, is an experience that I also bring to Piel de Lava. There we are our own bosses, our own producers. I feel that I will never stop having Piel de Lava or Compañía del Silencio, which I have with Esteban Bigliardi, Esteban Lamothe and Susana Pampín. It’s my place in the world.
News: At what moment did you click that you were going to be able to make a living from this?
Gamboa: Since I was 19 I have been doing theater and working thousands of other things to survive and pay the rent. But I never felt a sense of frustration within me. Inside I always thought that at some point things were going to align. Obviously I didn’t like the jobs I had to do to earn money, but I never felt: “Oh, when is this going to happen to me?”, “Oh, they’re not calling me.” I was always very self-managing. He didn’t project great things either. Everything that happened to me afterwards, I never thought about. Acting and theater set me on fire and it is my most absolute desire. It was already full, I did shows, I traveled with the girls from Piel de Lava, it took 19 years until we were able to make money, but before that we were already earning enough to go to the grill on the corner and eat. We were happy. Things happened to me without looking for them. I started earning money late, around age 32, but it was always a profitable job in some sense. Emotionally not to mention, economically something always gave. Then everything aligned and there is the eternal gratitude of that privilege, that what you like to do makes you money, something that does not happen to many people. I wake up tired, breastfeeding, whatever, sleeping little, but I get up to go to work doing what I like, it makes me very excited to have achieved it. It’s a combination of a lot of work with some luck.
News: You mentioned the topic of guilt and motherhood several times, how do you work on it?
Gamboa: It’s difficult. I have better moments than others. I always think that I didn’t grow up with a mother who worked what she liked, I grew up with a mother who worked what she had to work and my mother passed away, but now I wonder what she liked. Maybe there are people who can’t even ask, who have to go out to work. My vocation was awakened. My children are being raised in a desirable environment, with a mother who does what she likes. Even so, at times, it gets complicated for me, especially not being there at night. At the same time, I can do things later that other parents can’t do. If you are a mother, you may already have a passport to eternal guilt. It is a lot of responsibility to raise people. I am lucky that they do not lack anything material and are being raised in an environment with a lot of love. Maybe they’re going to go to therapy, maybe they’re going to hate me, maybe they’re going to say, “You weren’t there that night” and what do I know…
News: I think of your character Carolina, in “Envidiosa”, who has a baby and makes a statement that she is overwhelmed by motherhood…
Gamboa: I took it out there (Laughs). It went viral a lot, but because motherhood is so romanticized, it’s always a shocker. They are human beings who depend a lot on your body, on breastfeeding. They also tell you: “A mother always knows”, and I didn’t know a damn, if her tummy hurts, if she is hungry, if she has gas, if she is sleepy, the pressure to breastfeed. For women, I believe that for men, being parents is also a key part of life, but for women it is psychological, emotional and physical, that is, it is an amount of body that you have to put into it, it is not that a baby is born and after 2 minutes it latched onto your breast and after 2 minutes it slept all night. There will be cases that do. It didn’t happen to me. There are a lot of things that I went through a lot with the birth of my first child. Each mother or each family does what they can, but you are so sensitive at that moment that it seems that they make you doubt: “No, I was not born for this.” And at the same time I already have this human being here who is the size of a fish and I have to take care of him, and your body has to become hegemonic again in a short time, and you don’t have to be sad because the baby sucks everything. There are many demands.
News: You talk about humor as a lifesaver. What happens to you with humor?
Gamboa: I can’t tolerate a lack of humor. I have a hard time with people who don’t have humor. I survive thanks to humor. Laura Paredes said: “What happens is that humor is a serious thing.” Obviously I love doing drama too, but I don’t conceive the world with solemnity. The things that I already see the threads of that want to excite me, I don’t like them. I like the slap, it’s a bit like what happens with “The Daughters.” You are laughing, but the slap is coming and the slap is also there, but you are cushioned because before you were able to laugh a lot. Laughter saves me.
