Conchi León: "I still struggle to understand forgiveness as a gift to oneself."

BarcelonaThe day her father suffered a heart attack, Mexican Conchi León (Mérida, 1973) began to write. From that urgency emerged a text that delves into her childhood memories, marked by the harsh domestic violence perpetrated by her father and her inability to confront them as an adult. Young lion, which premieres this Sunday in Girona as part of the Temporada Alta festival, travels to the artist's most extreme memories, but without losing his sense of humor, observing his family with a critical yet tender eye and attempting to heal the deep wounds they left him.

The show speaks directly to his intimate life, specifically his childhood. What was the writing process like?

— It was quite complex. It meant going back to my childhood, a place so swampy and violent, both by my father and, to a certain extent, by my mother, since I had normalized the violence and sometimes reproduced it myself. There were rainy afternoons, delving into memories to find a balance between the bad and the good. It also meant meeting that big-eyed girl who survived all of this and can still tell it through humor, broken memories, and resilience.

Why did you decide to turn the violence perpetrated by your father into a play?

— Because fiction, at that moment, was the only space I could reconnect with Dad and forgive each other. The urgency of his final days, combined with my physical distance, left little room for healing our story. Writing was the way. This work is the journey I took to see him again and speak to him again.

What was the most difficult part of the creation process?

— To stop constantly judging myself, to trust the criticism of a playwright friend for believing it was a story worth telling and not just the voice of a resentful daughter who hadn't overcome childhood traumas. I also had a hard time reading the play to my mom and sister. I didn't want to hurt them; they're the people who matter most to me in that story.

The play focuses specifically on the role of the mother, who forgives her father everything. What idea did you want to convey about forgiveness?

— Throughout my childhood, I felt time and again that my mother—after a beating—had forgiven my father. Later, they asked her to forgive him so he could get out of jail—imagine the level of beatings, only to end up in jail. After a few days, my mother signed the pardon. All of this settled in my childhood mind. I still struggle to understand forgiveness as a gift to oneself.

There are some very difficult situations, like when you were a little girl and were hit by a car, and your father decided to take you out of the hospital. But you describe it with humor. Why do you do this combination?

— Because I believe in what Molière said: "Let's make them laugh, let's open their mouths so we can purge them." Humor is a constant in my writing; it's also part of my heritage. My father had a wonderful sense of humor; I suppose I learned it from him in some way. I think tough themes connect better with the audience if we give them a bit of humor. I understand that some plays allow for this and others don't. In my case, since I act in the play and I'm also a cabaret performer, I like to add humor to the dramatic equation.

How do you remember your family and your father now, after going through these experiences through the theater?

— As people who lived through circumstances that were once normalized. Domestic violence wasn't unique to my family. My neighbors, my friends, even my teachers experienced it. My parents are dead, I can no longer speak from memory alone, but my father was also an abused child, my mother was an abandoned child. We were children who experienced both. I'm learning to look at them with tenderness, and to move forward to heal all that memory through writing.