Ysmercy Salomón is satisfied. Perhaps that’s why she infects the public when at La Casona she asks for the applause, at the end of the piece. Her character, Vera, sings on a fantastic party and from the armchairs the applauses wrap up her rhythmically. Then, in the dressing rooms, happiness follows her steps: she has work, a lot of work, and that strengthens her health.
In a few weeks Ysmercy has been on the screen of the first-run cinemas as protagonist of Penumbras, that marks the debut of Charlie Medina, where she shares with actors such as Omar Franco, Tomás Cao and Omar Alí; in the Trianón theater, as part of the cast of Calígula, along with Alexis Díaz de Villegas, among other members of the El Publico troupe; and more recently, in the Adolfo Llauradó theater, playing one of four beings created by Rainer Werner Fassbinder for the work Gotas de agua sobre piedras calientes; both times directed by Carlos Díaz.
Before the first function of Gotas … Ysmercy had said that “the works of Fassbinder always have characters with psychologies that can seem complicated, but that actually are more common attitudes than we believe”.
Now her character, between complicated and common, must receive the public in the entry of the small room. That’s why the interview could not take place in that moment. Agreed indirectly, while the door of the dressing room opened and closed constantly and it was possible to watch – at times –the transformation of Ysmercy in Vera, the dialogue had to wait until the end of the work. And a pair of weeks after the premiere is a good moment to ask: how much has Vera of common and complicated, bearing in mind that is a transsexual who fell in love and has suffered?
Then, she starts by telling that to understand to Vera, to conceive the character “what I tried harder, in what I became more absorbed it was not in elucidating if Vera was a man or woman, man turned into woman, woman with a man’s past; but in understanding how far you go in the love for such deliverance, to change everything, to turn into the person wished by the dear one”.
“ It seems to me that the important thing – and that’s why what I try to look for it is not the sexual identity – this situation is in the one that is when you love to the point of stopping being, to be another person; beyond if you are a man or a woman”.
Clarified this point, she abounds in the process of search and construction of the character; how does it take what he finds in her of being a human being who falls in love, of woman and: why not? – of a man who is wrapped in a passion: " There was no challenge at the time of understanding the man – woman dichotomy, then the rest is justifies and becomes a whole; from the exterior point of view, you add the boots and the hat … I understand It in a comfortable way because one can feel perfectly all that, without defining the outside appearance that have been constructed about a specific genre. I do not believe in this dichotomy at the time of loving”.
And as actress in the face of a heartbreaking work she reflects: " For terrible that it could seem, these things happen all the time. Love is a feeling so immense that it has also its dark, possessive, cruel side; and not that’s why it is less strong, intense. I extract everything what I have lived from to grab this, because the most complicated thing was to understand, and in this sense the experiences of life make the character to be understood”.
She has that magnetism that does not leave her when she is out of the stage; then it moves to a corner of the dressing room. There two mirrors and their lights converge. Without seeming – not by far – cornered in this corner, she gesticulates with elegance but she does not do it theatrically; and she gathers her abundant curling, copper hair. The hands are reflected in the walls and stop gathering the wardrobe, the accessories; they remove Vera’s makeup to transform her again into Ysmercy.
Meanwhile, Enrique Pineda Barnet – the director of a anthological movie a bella del Alhambra, and more recently of other so polemic as Verde, verde – pops in silently to greet the actors and congratulate them on the performance. Between words as "delicious" and “I am thinking of coming back” says goodbye kindly. With him he takes, of course, the sincere gratitude of the actors.
The break serves as excuse to change room and staging. Few blocks from there, in the Trianón, Ysmercy is Cezonia; the faithful partner of Calígula, which returns to life in the Cuban stage from the text of Albert Camus.
“ When they ask me for this character I always say that I inherited it, it is a rule that I took from Mónica Guffanti. To speak about her also I return on the point of understanding, of justifying and of receiving communion, in this case with Cezonia. The point of contact between Cezonia and Vera is these limits we get to: in the first case, for love; in the second one, for believing in something”.
“And for the closeness to the power”, she points out. Also she points out that not only we have to understand it as political power; but in a wider sense, like capacity of action on the actions of others. “Cezonia had to pay a price. There was the danger of being too close to power. Calígula, even, tells her that she must die because she is the last witness of everything that has happened”.
“ Then, it is necessary to understand everything this character is capable of doing, how she goes to the bottom for what she believes in and how she pays the price that is necessary. Cezonia does everything that Calígula says, she yields to him, surrenders; and when one surrenders, it perishes, but it perishes with enjoyment. Not even the death paralyzes when you decide to deliver everything”.
“From another side, the spectator can see a victim of the manipulation; because Cezonia surrenders so much that does not see that she is being used. It is him who sees the work the one that is capable of understanding all this in its entire dimension; the one who is inside does not see it”.
This way the conversation passes, when November comes to its end and Havana knows that, with the beginning of the following month, it will be of Festival. A few days away from the 34 International Festival of the New Latin-American Cinema she will be in competition with the full-lenght film of fiction by Charlie Medina, Penumbras, in which she interprets one of the protagonists, Taty. On the contest she says:
“I would like, it would be a blessing that the movie travels, is seen, travels, flows, and that for this where travels take it, it runs with the luck that deserves. Nevertheless, Ysmercy is already satisfied. Since I managed to do the movie my satisfaction came. Even during the premier, the delight was of seeing the result of a completed work but that already gave me happiness from the day in which the shooting was over. Everything else: congratulations, of course”.
Almost in the end, when the examination stops and the conversation begins, she confesses: "I am pulling my hair. I am doing Gotas de agua … between Tuesday and Thursday; over the weekends, Calígula. Also I give classes of performance in ENA (National School of Art) and I am studying for a diploma in Locution for radio and television”.
In this moment the reference to her voice, movingly deep, is inevitable. She smiles, accepting the flattery: " … good, making use of everything that life gave to me ”. And rapidly she adds: “I would love doing radio, I have never done it but I am excited to talk without people seeing me. In television I have already done fiction and with the locution I would like to make use of good proposals. I mean, knowledge, all that come my way, and I ask for the whole wisdom that I could gather to choose well what to do”.
This Havana girl, born in Santos Suárez in 1981, graduated from the Vladimir Lenin vocational school and then enrolled at the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in 2004, feels that she chose wisely when she decided for theater since she found in Carlos Díaz the director with whom she wants to work with. “I wish I can shoot again with Charlie Medina. In television I felt very good with him, with Mariela López and with Tomás Piard. I enjoy what I have done with them, and on top of that: they paid me! ”.
On her relatively brief absence of the theatres she says: " I was one year without doing anything. Well, not without doing anything, in this time I did Penumbras and other things. But I was all this time out of the stage, far from the daily work, as now; that is something that was surprising, the daily, constant work. It was going to teach a few classes in Angola. That’s why it cannot be in Noche de Reyes ”.
“I am recovering that. Here it is possible to see me, with a scarf to look after my voice since it has suffered some. And although I got home dead tired, it is good that I have all this work now; because I am going to have a lot of health as long as I have a lot of work ”.
“ To me it is a joke, a pleasure to be able every night to love and to change. I believe that that is the key of why theater will never die. To have the opportunity to say every day: tonight my life will change. That is essential for me and I like it very much, every night makes me be alive in the theater; with my Pandora’s box on the back. ”
Author
Mabel Olalde Azpiri
