The six Best Leading Actor nominated performers talk about their varied roles and share their impressions of the current profession with LA TRUTH readers
Baptized as the Azahar Awards, their gala is the celebration, the excuse for performing arts professionals from the Murcia region to come together for a day, celebrate and defend the industry’s needs. Awards presented by the association MurciaAEscena, chaired by Nacho Vilar, who will turn twenty in 2022. A round figure who will be remembered next Tuesday, October 25, from 8:00 pm at the 5th Azahar Awards ceremony, at the New Circus Theater in Cartagena.
A gala hosted by Esther Hidalgo and directed by Adrián Quiñones, who, along with Jessica Cerón, Fernando Caride, Bárbara Vargas, Sergio Alarcón and Teresa Franco, is also one of six nominees for Best Lead Actor and Best Lead Actor. The actors talk to LA VERDAD days before the award decision is announced – which will be decided by a vote of all members of the association – about the projects for which their work has been recognized with this nomination and the present of the profession in the region .
“It will be a theatrical gala under the umbrella of comedy with musical theater numbers, flamenco music and a touch of humor,” says Adrián Quiñones. The performer from Cartagena (1995) has been nominated for his portrayal as Gallo in the children’s musical ‘Los musici de Bremen’ by Nacho Vilar Producciones, a production for which the company received 11 nominations. “He is an old rooster who has been kicked off the farm and has to find a life. Then he meets three friends who decide to take the journey to Bremen together. They will never get there, but the most important thing for them is that they joined,” Quiñones says of his role in this adaptation of the Grimm Brothers story. An actor who appreciates the nomination and recognition for children’s music theatre. “It’s a genre that focuses not only on the little ones but also on the family. It’s a good option to enjoy together and that is increasingly appreciated,” says the actor, currently working on ‘Glubs’ , by Nacho Vilar and other lyrical music projects of his own.
And on the other side of the plot of ‘The Bremen Musicians’, full of joy and good values, ‘Malnacido’, the theatrical monologue of the Los Menos company for which Fernando Caride (Murcia, Spain) also participates in the Best Leading Actor category . 1970). The actor gives life to Manuel Blanco Romasanta. With a laborious Galician accent, the artist transports the audience to the province of Ourense, in the year 1852. Manuel Blanco Romasanta is a serial killer who murdered at least thirteen people. During his trial, he tells the story of his life in which he was mistreated and humiliated and claims that the crimes were not committed by him, but by a wolf that lives inside him.
A text based on the story of a real character from Paco López Mengual from Molin. “In the monologue, I start out as a blind troubadour narrator who contextualizes the story to later become Romasanta throughout the performance, until the blind man reappears and asks the audience to pronounce a verdict”. The actor and publicist is confronted for the first time with a monologue in a work “quite demanding interpretatively and physically, because Manuel imitates the scenes he narrates”.
“Being among the top three protagonists is a prize in itself, even if it sounds like a cliché. It is a reward for months of work,” concludes the actor, who can be seen this year in the film “Sofia will return” by Joaquín Lisón, who also directs the play.
Sergio Alarcón (Murcia, 1971) completes the men’s list. The actor, like Caride, also stands alone in front of the stage. He does it to embody Blanca Pedro Cano’s painter in ‘Pedro Cano’. Paint the journey’, a creation by Nacho Vilar Producciones, directed by Jorge Fullana. A challenge “great, the greatest I have encountered in my life on an interpretive level,” the artist believes. “Play someone who is alive and who is also in the stalls…”. The painter, who did not want to see the rehearsals so as not to contaminate the performance, “went three times to see the performance and is delighted, he has been very involved in the project.” Considering what has been seen, the result has been “beautiful. It is very difficult to imitate the character without falling into parody. To do this, you have to do it from within yourself, trying to find its essence,” says the actor who, thanks to the joint work between him, Jorge Fullana and assistant director David Terol, achieves a great physical resemblance to the painter.
“For me, the price is to work. I am fortunate to be one of the actors who works the most in Murcia, an achievement in a profession that is a roller coaster,” he says.
The actors who pull the strings, or directly to the puppets in the puppet theater, have also received their recognition in the Azahar. Bárbara Vargas is nominated for Best Leading Actress for ‘Chatungla. Una jungle de chatarra’, a show by Teatro Silfo, which he performs together with Sara Sáez. The idea arose during incarceration, a time of incarceration when the show’s director Fabrizio Azara created a series of dolls that were born to give objects, jars and other materials a second life. “Our first role was to guide the animals. Little by little you interact with them, just like you do with the audience,” explains the actress, who sings, dances, exudes onomatopoeia and only one word in the entire work “magic”, which “defines Chatungla well,” says this woman from Granada (1988) who, after traveling through Cáceres and Italy, found her place in Murcia, from which “the great pool of current actors” stands out.
Among the numerous nominations for ‘The Bremen Musicians’ is also Best Leading Actress, thanks to the role of Jessica Cerón (Alhama de Murcia, 1992) as Perra, an ‘enchanting’ character of whom she is very proud. “It’s a show that comes in by ear and also by eye, because of the plastic decor. The original music composed for the work -by Belter Souls- is very dynamic”, he emphasizes about this work in a version by Juan Montoro Lara in which he shares a cast with the nominees Adrián Quiñones and Sergio Alarcón.
For Cerón, the world of the performing arts in the region is “very united, especially as a result of the pandemic. What has happened has led to increased communication between government departments and private companies. We would like to work more in the Region”, says the interpreter.
Teresa Franco (Cabezo de Torres, Murcia, 1996) belongs to that group of actors who decide to go to Madrid to try their luck. The actress, nominated for her role as Adela in ‘Bernarda Alba, el musical’ – a work in which she is deputy director, a position that contributes to that of the co-director of the company, made the decision on August 36 for “the experience”. “I thought if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t do it, because in Murcia I have everything and I would feel comfortable. I saw that need at the level of education. I think in Madrid it is much more complete and there is more variety”, explains the performer of this musical version of Federico García Lorca’s play ‘La casa de Bernarda Alba’.
«The idea of the work was our TFG at the Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático de Murcia. I was looking for a solo to sing and I found the musical. A video on YouTube that looked terrible, a version by Michael John LaChiusa that premiered “off Broadway” and was not shot in Spain, seemed very curious to us». A growing project with multiple agreed bowling lanes. With the nomination for the Azahar awards, Teresa, like everyone else, feels that “little nudge” to work through every day in a long-distance race.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
