'Honesty': A battle between Miriam Iscla and Dafnis Balduz about the limits of intimacy

BarcelonaActors Francesc Cuéllar and Lola Marceli met six years ago while working on a daily series. Central Market (RTVE), where they played a mother and son. Production ended in 2021, but they both wanted to continue working together. From that desire, a new project was born. Jusqu'ici, tout va (2022), Cuéllar's first film and the seed of the show HonestyThe film, which premieres on Saturday, December 6th at the Temporada Alta festival in Girona, will then run at the Akademia Theatre in Barcelona from December 12th to January 11th.

"At that time, we both came from doing work for money, not for pleasure, and we wondered if doing artistic things you don't believe in is more harmful and damaging to the soul," explains Cuéllar, who now directs her own show. The film's starting point—which is also that of the play—is the conflict between two friends, a veteran actress and a young director. The day before filming a nude scene, she refuses to do it because she doesn't think it's honest, and he refuses. "The director belongs to a generation that should understand this perfectly, but when expectations, ideals, desires, and a will for recognition come into play, feminist values falter," Cuéllar emphasizes.

Produced by Hause & Richman and the Akademia, Honesty It's conceived as a dialectical battle between two intelligent people who love each other, but whose bond begins to crumble due to this disagreement. On stage, Míriam Iscla plays the actress, and Dafnis Balduz takes on the role of the director. "She reproaches him for the fact that women's bodies are always at the service of men, and especially at the service of their desires," Cuéllar points out, adding that the show delves into issues such as intimacy and vulnerability in performance. And although both the director and the actress initially share an ideology, when the moment arrives, they realize that perhaps they are further apart than they thought. "They both say they are left-wing, but he argues that he tries to find complexity beyond the..." only yes means yes"There are no good guys and bad guys; the audience might agree with one side and then, suddenly, the tables can turn," says Cuéllar, who has conceived the staging as "a tennis match where both sides win and lose all the time."

A theater with international aspirations

While the text plays with shades of gray among its characters, the set design, by Lola Belles, is based on the contrast between black and white. The clash between the protagonists takes place on a stage with a white circle on the floor and a circular white lamp on the ceiling. The actors are dressed in black, and all the objects that appear in the play—such as a contract—are the same color. Formally, Cuéllar explains that he was inspired by productions like those of La Veronal, with the aim of giving significant weight to the aesthetics and ensuring that the focus is not solely on the text. "We wanted to approach and play with a more international aesthetic, with the aspiration of creating Catalan-language theater that can be seen beyond Catalonia," says the director.Honesty"We want to work with the goal of creating a theatre that opens doors to the outside world."