Júlia Truyol: "I am fulfilling my plans and also my dreams"

BarcelonaJúlia Truyol (Palma, 1987) is one of the driving forces behind La Calòrica, but over the years she has forged a career that goes beyond the company and demonstrates the actress's voracity for taking on different challenges. She now faces her first dramatic leading role with Contra Antígona, directed by Andrea Jiménez and performed from May 21 to June 21 at the Sala Fabià Puigserver of the Teatre Lliure. The show brings Sophocles' myth to contemporaneity with a peculiarity: at each performance, 14 volunteer spectators will go on stage with headphones to become part of the play.

We have seen you a lot with La Calòrica, but in recent years especially also in projects unrelated to the company, such as the series El cuerpo en llamas (2023), the monologue Llogatera (2025), and soon in L'òpera dels tres rals, which will open the Grec Festival. How do you combine this duality in your work?

— With great anguish. The only thing that causes me insomnia is suffering from a calendar error. At the same time, I live it with gratitude, for me it is a stroke of luck and also a necessity. La Calòrica is my home, it is family and many times artistically it means having a letter to the Three Kings. But at the same time I need to work outside, see other people, breathe fresh air and get things that I then bring to the company. For years I have been very protective of my personal career, I fight for it a lot.

You were born and raised in Mallorca. Was the calling to be an actress implicit in the decision to leave the island?

— I had a very established plan. First I had to convince my parents – especially my father – that I wanted to study theater. I was a very good student, I liked languages. They knew I had an artistic streak, but they were very afraid of instability. My plan was to go to the Institut del Teatre and build a career, playing secondary roles. I didn't have great ambitions nor was I interested in fame. I hadn't considered whether I should stay in Barcelona or not; the thing is that with this profession, if you want to have a more or less stable job, it is very difficult to live in Mallorca. 

Shortly after the Institut del Teatre, you became part of the Kompanyia del Teatre Lliure. You closely witnessed the crisis stemming from Lluís Pasqual's direction and his resignation. How do you remember that period?.

— I joined the Kompanyia after some very difficult and at the same time very stimulating auditions. I experienced it as a gift, one of those things I will never forget. When they called me, I felt like a new chapter of my professional life was beginning, and it really was. Now, it's true that I suffered, just like my female colleagues, quite insufficient management from the executive team. Immediately there was that strange separation by gender, and the male actors were given the show In memoriam. We reported it, although afterwards we were told that there were opportunities given to our male colleagues that would come to us later. We gave them the benefit of the doubt, understanding that it was a long-distance race. In parallel to this, thanks to the Kompanyia, I accessed training and artists that I would never have imagined.

Do you now feel that you are following that established plan when you started?

— I am fulfilling my plans and also my dreams. I am living a very sweet moment. I find myself in a stage of maturity and I am starting to take things in a different way. I have achieved a professional accomplishment and a certain stability that doesn't mean it will last forever, but which not everyone is lucky enough to access. I relativize certain things and I have started to prioritize. For many years, I have structured my life around my professional career. Now I don't always feel like it's like that. It is also true that I have a work schedule for a year and a half in advance, and that is a great luxury. 

With the years have you gained tranquility?

— Yes, you don't always have to carry that anxiety that is inherent in our work. This has to do with having reduced the nerves of youth, but there are also fewer first times. Now I have to look for them more. It doesn't mean it's worse, but different. If you only work, it's precious, but you stop knowing how to explain certain things. If work always comes first, everything is more endogamous and homogeneous, you go to fewer places and relate to fewer people. Actors live through work, but there are other areas that also need to be watered. I try to braid personal and professional life, because I had a time when the top priority was work, above friendship, family, and partners.

Has the stability you have achieved over the years come at the expense of surprise and novelty?

— Perhaps with time it is more difficult to surprise, or to be placed in new contexts, but right now I have two projects radically different from everything I have done: a tragic protagonist in Contra Antigone and a musical show in The Threepenny Opera. New doors have opened for me that are firsts, and what's more, with people from outside the Catalan theatrical ecosystem such as Andrea Jiménez and Marta Pazos.

What is it like working with Andrea Jimenez?

— We have been preparing this show since July, doing research work and looking for the dramaturgy of the myth, because the idea was to place it in contemporary times. One of the things I appreciate most about Andrea is that she has always preserved the performers' play space. It has been an intense process, she is a very disciplined director and demands a lot of discipline. She likes to take big risks until the last day, we have trained to work in uncertainty, also because it is a participatory show in which 14 people from the audience go on stage at each performance. It is one of those absorbing experiences that you can only do one every few years. 

How is your Antigone?

— On stage, we ask ourselves whether today we need individual heroics or not, how tragedy destroys us every day, who takes care of it, who steps forward to sustain a system and who does not. But, in reality, whoever comes looking for answers about all this will not find them.