Oriol Pla deploys his theatrical arsenal after the glory of the Emmy award | Culture | EUROtoday

In the final two months, the Barcelona performer Oriol Pla has acquired two awards that effectively mirror his immense creative character. First, on November 24, he received the International Emmy Award for greatest actor in New York for his function within the sequence Me, addict. A milestone by no means earlier than achieved by any Spaniard and that at 32 years outdated has definitively topped him because the central face of nationwide cinema and tv, after greater than a decade on the rise after working with filmmakers equivalent to Jaime Rosales, Cesc Gay, Elena Martín and Mariano Barroso or taking part in productions equivalent to Merlin, Netflix phenomenon. Shortly after the Emmy, on December 16, he and his household had been honored with the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts for his or her contribution to the evolution of up to date circus and the performing arts. His father is Quimet Pla, co-founder of the legendary Catalan firm Comediants; his mom, Núria Solina, violinist and founding father of Picatrons and Circ Cric. With them and together with his sister, Diana, he grew up doing circus and widespread theater since he was a toddler.

Those who solely know Oriol Pla for his successes on the display are amazed after they see him for the primary time on stage. This Friday, invited by the National Dramatic Center, he presents the Spanish model of his present on the Valle-Inclán theater in Madrid Sugar, which premiered in Catalan final season (with the title Gola) on the Girona Season High Festival and the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, the place he shows an uncommon arsenal of interpretive abilities. He strikes on the stage with the lightness of the acrobat, the self-confidence of the clown, the strategy of mime, the corporal self-discipline of the dancer, the ability of the street comic and the disruptive nature of the post-dramatic artist. He sings, dances, does pirouettes, cries, laughs, tells jokes and may communicate as if he had been given the accelerated pace of WhatsApp messages.

All of that is contained in Sugar. The present recreates the collapse of up to date man devoured by compulsive consumption: meals, alcohol, social networks, politics, sequence, journey, feelings. It is the shrapnel of instant stimuli and pleasures that up to date society launches and that unleashes an insatiable need. An nervousness targeted within the play on a shiny meals merchandising machine and personified within the fascinating character that the actor makes up, a mixture of harlequin, jester, white-faced clown, circus acrobat and tragic hero. “It is gluttony made a person. The inability to endure emptiness turned into a drive to swallow anything undigested,” the performer defined to EL PAÍS yesterday within the room the place the piece can be carried out, from tonight till February 15, whereas the technicians had been establishing the surroundings.

There are extra components on stage than the merchandising machine, however the actor asks that they not be revealed in order to not spoil the present for the viewers. He additionally insists, even supposing he’s the media star of the second, on all the time portraying himself with the playwright Pau Matas, co-creator of the present, additionally current on stage throughout the virtually two hours that the play lasts, quietly observing Pla’s battle with the machine and enjoying the guitar at some moments.

“My presence is a kind of calm counterpoint to the madness that Oriol’s character unleashes,” says Matas, with whom Pla has been collaborating since they met in highschool on the age of 17 and empathized together with his omnivorous nature. “First we were united by music. Then by scripts. Later by theater. We have done everything together,” recollects Pla.

Together additionally they wrote Travy, a scrumptious present premiered in 2018 produced by the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona and continues to be on the invoice, promoting out tickets wherever it goes. So a lot in order that subsequent spring (from April 30 to May 24) it can repeat the season by widespread acclaim on the Teatro de la Abadía in Madrid, after bursting on the field workplace final 12 months. No marvel: the play brings collectively on stage the 4 members of the Pla-Solina clan, identified artistically because the Travy Family, in an thrilling manufacturing that viewers expertise from their seats as if they’d been invited to dinner at their residence. It can also be an encounter between two performing currents: the circus and the favored theater of the mother and father versus the postdramatic types of the youngsters.

Tickets are already flying for each reveals. Not solely among the many theater’s common spectators, but in addition because of the attraction of recent audiences attributable to Pla’s media rise. His work within the sequence I, addict, through which its creator and co-director, Javier Giner, adapts the e-book of the identical title through which he recounts his technique of cleansing from alcohol and medicines, skyrocketed its projection amongst massive audiences till it exploded with the Emmy.

The new 12 months appears to be like as thrilling because the earlier one. Just after they introduced the Emmy nomination, Pla was ending filming his subsequent film, This soledad, directed exactly by Javier Giner, who makes his characteristic movie debut with this movie set in Bilbao and starring two younger individuals who attempt to overcome their desolation after breaking apart their five-year relationship as a pair.

In the midst of this rollercoaster of feelings, the actor nonetheless appears calm. He assures that alternating that media face together with his private theater initiatives retains him grounded. “I have always had the problem or the virtue, depending on how you look at it, of feeling interested in many different things. That has the advantage that you expand your limits, but also the price that perhaps you don’t fully delve into some aspects,” he displays. In any case, he affirms that irrespective of what number of audiovisual initiatives he has in hand, he won’t ever go away the stage: “Because I like them and because they are my home.” The home through which he grew up since he was born and the place he turned top-of-the-line actors of his era.