Every weekend in Mataderos, the homeland where her anthological “dancing panther” came from, Rita Turdero, Moria Casán shines with a singular and intense light of her own, nothing less than the Julius Caesar of William Shakespeare in the free version of José María Muscari. A historical-literary personality that seems tailor-made for the public figure of the Argentine hero. The quintessential English bard knew how to create a character as complex, ambiguous and controversial in his political motivations as in his human passions: the greatest republican or the best of dictators, disdainful and lover of the common people, brilliant statesman or egocentric blind in his ambitions of power.
In turn, Muscari seems to be inspired by and nurtured by classical sources such as Suetonius, the historian who immediately characterized Caesar as a hopeless womanizer but also “the descendant of Venus in a barbarian’s bed” or the “queen of Bithynia” in reference to his love affairs with men, of which the most scandalous was the one that associated him with the Bithynian king Nicomedes and that supposedly made the people cry out when he returned from his greatest warrior conquest that “Caesar subdued Gaul and Nicomedes to Caesar.” Like César, it is enough for Moria to plant her monumental figure on the stage to silence the set, so that they idolize her and to demonstrate in each of her appearances -even if they are fleeting- why is “La One”, “TutankaMoria” timeless, “La One DerWoman”, “La Mucha”, “Endemic Fury”, the cult erotic object of generations and the Puto Mayor, the sacred queen that the LBTBIQ+ community loves to adore.
First of all, I want to thank you for accepting the interview for the supplement with unprecedented speed…
-Oh my love! It’s a pleasure for me. I have been by and for the marginality of society for years. I define it as marginality. I myself am a marginal, spiritual outsider. For me that you as a community approach me, that you interview me, it is level and takes off, it is a pampering to the soul. I feel that I have protected, in some way, from my own conviction and from my own spirituality, the sensitivity of all of you. Now you protect me, so we feed each other with love.
What led you to accept Muscari’s proposal and the role of Julius Caesar?
-My motivations are absolute momentism and my imprint. One day he calls me Muscari and tells me that Telerman is going to summon me to play Julio César at the San Martín, which happened right away. I had already played Julius Caesar seven or eight years ago in ad honorem performances at a full theater and with a larger cast because there were two or three more characters. Marco Antonio, was played by our beloved Norma Pons.
How did you build the character of Julius Caesar and how much of you and how much of Muscari on stage?
-Everything belongs to everyone in the construction of something. I am an absolute autodidact of my staging, of myself on stage and everything flows and nothing influences. Neither a construction influences me, nor put things in me, nor sacralize Shakespeare or Julius Caesar. From the moment I read the text it is organic, from that moment I am already Julius Caesar. That doesn’t mean I walk all day like Julius Caesar. Luckily I don’t have that kind of stupidity. I don’t ask myself where I come from or where I’m going because I don’t have a school. I have a street, a sidewalk, a curb, a back yard and a front yard. Since my debut they threw me naked on a stage and from that moment I cover myself with my own light, with my own wisdom. It is as if your parents left you and threw you in a police station or in a church naked. I was born on stage naked and I only have my light. This is the only way to explain that I was able to overcome youth and the age based on physique. I didn’t stay with the body, or with the sexy minón, or anything. That’s why from the first moment they gave me the sketches with the comedians and I finished off the jokes.
Why do you say you debuted naked?
-I debuted as Carlitos Chaplin and ended up making a striptease. The first time I entered the theater, I did not know that I was going to act. I had to prepare everything in 40 minutes. I was pupping myself. And I came out of nothing less than playing a character like Chaplin, in black and white, from silent movies. I am from another solar system. That’s why I’ve also been a great hermaphrodite since I started. Like the character Julius Caesar. I was always male-female and hermaphroditism. I have a half-drag-queeneesque presence and at the same time I have something of a woman’s baroque.
In Shakespeare’s text – whose structure Muscari respects beyond a few additions – Julius Caesar says less than 150 lines and is assassinated in the exact center of the work. However, your presence dominates. Why do you think you produce that effect?
-I cause what is called stupor, in the language of law it is called reverential fear. When people see me they are stunned, they don’t know if they see a poster, if they see a Porcel y Olmedo movie, if they watch a television program, if they see the Deceased Correa, Gauchito Gil, Indio Solari. I’m like a mix of characters. Some say that I am like Diego Maradona, others that I am not like anyone. They mix a ritualistic thing of dead people and living people.
On a personal level, what does the work generate for you and how do you connect it with contemporaneity?
-Something very strong happens to me with Julius Caesar and with Muscari’s intervened text. It has power because it adds the staging of current audiovisual elements: Tinder, screens, social networks… It is an updated, hyper-technological and hyper-sualised Rome with music by Nathy Peluso. The screens serve us as scenery and the scenery is silent. Now that the world and human relationships have become a kind of great video clip and that appears represented on stage.
What do you think this version of Julius Caesar contributes in terms of the struggles of sexual diversity and current political key?
-It seems to me a success that the masculine roles are interpreted by women and the feminine ones by men. There is a disruption of the classic that is to show gender diversity in the fact that there is no gender. And that love also prevails along with the power that weakens or strengthens depending on how they handle it. It is beautiful that it is presented in such a true and unpretentious way, as comprehensive and in a genuine neighborhood as Mataderos.
That aspect respects the spirit of Shakespeare who was addressed to an audience and had a very popular language…
-The most popular thing on the planet. If Shakespeare saw all the Shakespeares that are being made or were made and he couldn’t see, even the ones made by so-called purists of the genre, I think, he would be intoxicated by this real Shakespeare, staged in a real neighborhood.
They have tickets sold for the entire season and the theater is delirious in each function. How is this phenomenon explained?
-It seems that the public was ecstatic and entered a trance state watching the work. It’s like trans, it’s a mix of modernity and at the same time it goes through many things. It is very strong to perform it in Mataderos and what happens at the exit that fences are erected and all the people shouting when the artists pass by. It was the show that I had to do because I’m kind of a male-female mounted drag queen. Everything I have as a figure, and all the people who accompany me like the court of the monarchy that flatters and betrays and the text of Shakespeare are timeless.
You go through the fence, parade like a pagan goddess, get in the car and go to the Multiteatro to do “Bruges”…
-A lot of people ask me how do you get out of there and do “Bruges”. It’s managing energy because my school was the magazine theater: two performances every day, three on Saturdays and Sundays. I am an artist and I don’t have the sabotage that actors in general do to fail in success because they can’t enjoy success if they have it while others succeed in failure. I am referring to the two as the same impostors: success and failure. I demystify success and failure. At one point in the play, Portia tells Bruto “Deconstruct, you tremendous stagnant asshole.” I am constantly under construction because I constantly give myself feedback and now I am in a new era that began with the pandemic. Now I am little more than a teenager, I am the age when I started the theater.
In the 90s you were ahead of the times with a work about and starring women and now you have given a twist to “Bruges” with iconic additions to our community.
-A bomb! With María Leal and Mihanovich, the work has surpassed its ethical values. It has a truth that crosses and transcends all time, but the girls are divine and the classics Vidal, Cárpena and I are enjoying this success of sold-out locations that has been going on for 31 years. Do you know what I notice? That many people do not enjoy because prejudice kills them or kills them, what will they say. If you go on stage you have to be independent of the opinion of others. In general, I think that actors are so exquisitely sensitive that they twist with their own emotionality and that prevents them from enjoying themselves. We always say with Sofia: there is no more prostitution than getting on stage, but spiritual prostitution. I de-dramatize it, demystify it. There are very few actors who enjoy the profession, most suffer from it. I enjoy it, I am a serial enjoyer.
In “Moria is Moria”, María Leal told her love story with Sandra Mihanovich. How did it come about and what were the preludes to the 2021 interview?
-People open up to me in a very special way. It must be because I don’t mark with my finger, I don’t judge. María Leal, who is a divine minaza and I love her, she told me, “I’m going to give you a gift, Moria. We are going to do an interview as if we were alone.” You relax and tell what you want, I told her, and she told that. The doors that María opened, for the community and what it meant to her as a human being and to reposition herself as an actress who had fallen prey to a lot of things, not just “Grande Pa” was immense. Her look at her has changed so much that it makes her live a very happy moment and I thank her very much. Her relationship with Sandra was sotto voce, but the fact that she tells it on TV talks about how the mine has impressive ovaries.
“Julio César” by José María Muscari with Moria Casán, Marita Ballesteros, Alejandra Radano, Malena Solda, Mario Alarcón, Mariano Torre, Mirta Wons, Vivian El Jaber, Fabiana García Lago and Payuca. yesSaturdays and Sundays at 5 pm, at the Cine Teatro El Plata (Buenos Aires Theater Complex).
“Witches” with Moria Casán, Nora Cárpena, Thelma Biral, Maria Leal and Sandra Mihanovich. Wednesday to Sunday at the Teatro Multitabaris Comafi.