{"id":303746,"date":"2024-06-12T20:03:17","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T00:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=303746"},"modified":"2024-06-12T20:17:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T00:17:00","slug":"being-lola-amores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/culture\/cinema\/being-lola-amores\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Lola Amores"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March she made international headlines when the Malaga Festival recognized her with the <\/span>award for best actress<\/b><\/a> for her role in <\/span>La mujer salvaje<\/span><\/i>. She was also awarded in Brazil and at the <\/span>Havana Film Festival<\/b><\/a> in New York. But the name of Lola Amores (Villa Clara, 1977) has been familiar to the Cuban public since long before. After years in the theater, in 2016 she leaped to the big screen in <\/span>Santa y Andr\u00e9s<\/span><\/i>, by Carlos Lechuga.<\/span><\/p>\n

These protagonists, along with <\/span>Una noche con los Rolling Stones<\/span><\/i>, directed by Patricia Ramos, demonstrate the quality of her acting work beyond the medium in which she operates. We talked with Lola Amores.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Lola Amores at the Blue Mall Cinema Palace, January 2024. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How did you get to the scene, to the life of an actress?<\/b><\/p>\n

That means a journey backward, very backward. I started doing plays in elementary school, without being aware that I was doing theater. I remember an adaptation of \u201cLittle Red Riding Hood\u201d in which, with tremendous emotion, I threw the wolf against a couch. I remember another one called \u201cLa Moneda,\u201d \u201cLa Visita llegar\u00e1 a las once,\u201d where I played a character who received a Russian pioneer and spoke a little Russian, I thought. In primary school, we did a lot of plays.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then in junior high school, I participated in festivals in the province, Villa Clara, which took us by bus to different towns. We worked in different conditions with children, as I was also a child. It was a very nice experience. And from there little by little I did other things. I sang in a trio, recited poems, and wrote short stories in contests organized by the librarian.<\/span><\/p>\n

Already in senior high school, we wanted there to be a House of Culture in my town, Vueltas. We carried out a cultural campaign to achieve this: choreography, plays… A huge group of us went to take the ISA tests. There were fourteen spots that year, and I was able to get one. From that moment on I stayed in Havana and another stage began.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Filming of \u201cLa mujer salvaje.\u201d Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How did you get to El Ciervo Encantado in 2000?<\/b><\/p>\n

When I was in the last year of college, we didn\u2019t have a teacher for graduation. A group of girls entered into a project by a directing student named Sergio Barreiro. And Nelda Castillo was Sergio\u2019s directing teacher. There we approached her and she worked with us a little. It was a first approach to the work of El Ciervo. It was for a short time. But it was very important because there we began to connect.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a while I graduated and my dad got seriously sick of cancer and died in the hospital, and at that time she contacted me to be in the group. I feel that going from an experience as strong as my father\u2019s death to starting at El Ciervo was as if my father himself left me in a place where in the future I could develop creatively, a place where I connected deeply.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wanted to feel it like that and I really came out of that very painful experience, to that other very creative experience, where I channeled the pain, where I began to search within myself and develop an entire aesthetic taste, an ethical value, a way of seeing theater and seeing the work as an actress that has served me since then.<\/span><\/p>\n

In El Ciervo there was strong training and a different notion of characters; many times they were not called in that conventional way.<\/span><\/p>\n

The training is psychophysical. Nelda had done some research when I joined the group and continued to delve deeper with those of us who were with her. It was a very particular psychophysical work, which has to do with the release of tensions; we did it for a long time. It is a system of exercises that lead to a result later, but always without thinking about the result, going little by little, in stages, by scales, and going deeper into that process until one leaves more of the common places and goes deeper into the memory of one\u2019s own body, which is something deeper, I feel.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is sought is to get out of the representation, that is why we use the word \u201cbeing\u201d for the characters, although we call them characters to communicate socially. But for us, the word \u201cbeing\u201d made us delve deeper in that sense: of being, of not representing. The word for me as an actress is fundamental. Because I am a being that has a life of its own, that can improvise, that has its own ways of behaving, its texts. And that is so rich, so good for an actor, to reach that state of freedom. All that training allows you, that deepening allows you to reach those states of freedom and makes you at least try not to repeat yourself because you go along unknown paths, you give yourself over to what you don\u2019t know and you find things that surprise and entertain you, of course, because you didn\u2019t even expect it. It\u2019s very rich, very liberating, really.<\/span><\/p>\n

I learned a lot about the whole process in El Ciervo. As far as I could, as I always say. Putting all my endeavors and effort into it. And being there every year that I was able to be with Nelda, Mariela Brito, Eduardo Mart\u00ednez, Sahily Tamayo, Sara Susaeta, Mijail Rodr\u00edguez, Sergio himself was there for a while. There are many people with whom and from whom I also learned a lot. And they helped me a lot in my process because each one has a different process in that training. And each one contributes to that.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cLa mujer salvaje.\u201d Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I imagine that in some way it was a process that continued in 2012 when you founded La Isla Secreta with Eduardo Mart\u00ednez. With the particularity that you two establish a different relationship with the public, conditioned by the stage space, which was an apartment.<\/b><\/p>\n

When we left El Ciervo we had a training routine. The body asked for that work. Little by little we moved the furniture around, giving us space to train, getting comfortable. We then put a black curtain in the living room, which was very small. There was room for twenty people, if at all, tightly packed. Then we put in a wooden floor, some cushions, we put in an air conditioner, and some cans to make lights. And all of a sudden we had a small theater. We started making proposals that we then needed to show and we started inviting friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

The proposals were a way of working for El Ciervo and that we continue to develop. When researching a topic, we made proposals that were small exercises that were not rehearsed. And we introduced ourselves to each other, with costumes, text… That part is very entertaining because many crazy things are done without thinking. And those mistakes help lead the way. We made these proposals and we came up with a show. The first was <\/span>Oraci\u00f3n<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

We did many functions. We would have a chat after the show and the audience would stay to talk. We would provide tea, and bake a pineapple cake for the function and people would come and chat.<\/span><\/p>\n

That part was very nice because having the audience so close and then having the gathering, it was like welcoming them into your home, in your space and giving them what you had. But they also gave you the opportunity to come, to share with you so closely. They even talked about their experiences, their projects. You realized that you were not so alone, that everyone was on their little islands. We made a connection between several people, projects emerged, some people became lovers there, who met and are still together and they remind us of that: \u201cWe met in La Isla Secreta.\u201d How wonderful that is. At that stage many things happened to us, people came from everywhere, from all over the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

We had to do a show for the neighbors because they heard that something was happening and we said: \u201cLet\u2019s just do a show for them.\u201d And it was super nice because everyone went, dressed up to see the actors in the building and talked a little with us. We had a gathering and they told us their experience of what they had seen. And we also had many people like Eugenio Barba, who went to theater festivals, and passed by.<\/span><\/p>\n

With La Isla Secreta we were in Mexico, at the Matanzas Festival, with the two shows: <\/span>Oraci\u00f3n<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Jard\u00edn Adentro<\/span><\/i>. We made a Caf\u00e9 Theater there in that space, with readings for the Poetry Festival. We had screenings, we debated films, we did many things.<\/span><\/p>\n

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You speak then of a connection also with cinema.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes. While in la Isla Secreta I did something in film for the first time. It was a short film called <\/span>La Nube<\/span><\/i>, in 2013, directed by <\/span>Marcel Beltr\u00e1n<\/b><\/a>. I was lucky that it was Marcel, a very talented person, and that I also got to do it with two wonderful actors from this country: Broselianda Hern\u00e1ndez and Manuel Porto.<\/span><\/p>\n

Broselianda was the person who told me the first text on film, when we improvised. And I, imagine, nervous because I had never made films and it was also Broselianda, who for me \u2014 wasn\u2019t \u2014 is a great actress of Cuban cinema and theater. She was my guide, the voice of Broselianda. Afterwards we had a very beautiful friendship.<\/span><\/p>\n

That was the first thing, when I was still doing <\/span>Oraci\u00f3n<\/span><\/i> functions. It was a joy. At one point they cut something due to a mistake and Porto told me not to cut it. He touched me quickly: \u201cNo, no, in the cinema you have to continue, in the cinema you have to continue. It\u2019s then edited.\u201d I learned all those things with them. It was wonderful.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then I did other things in the cinema. At the [International Film and Television] School I made some short films. And then I did <\/span>Santa y Andr\u00e9s\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2016), which was more complex.<\/span><\/p>\n