Diana Pla: "I want to live like my parents lived in the 90s"

BarcelonaIn recent years she has gone "from being Quimet Pla's daughter to Oriol Pla's sister" [the protagonist of theNow Sunday of this week]"She confirms, but Diana Pla Solina (Barcelona, ​​1991) has forged her own path in the world of physical theatre and circus. After performing since childhood in street shows and in plays such as Travy, after creating his own company and a single as Miss Things and MePla now directs El Petit Circ Laret, a newly created and free show that can be seen from December 12 to January 7 in the Christmas Circus tent in Hospitalet de Llobregat (Feixa Llarga street at the corner of Travessia Industrial). A classic circus – with Chinese pole vaulting, acrobatic bicycle, trapeze, hand-to-hand acrobatics, balancing acts, live music, and clowning – with a contemporary spirit.

The name of Circ Laret is a tribute in the clown Claret Papiol.

— It's more of a nod to my grandfather. The show is about the importance of clowns in the circus, and female clowns, especially. It's a circus that isn't working, or at least that's what the director thinks, who says that the circus shouldn't be funny, it should move people. People should go "oh" and "wow," but they shouldn't go "ha ha ha." He tells the performers they should look for more challenging things.

Does he want the "even more difficult" circus that we sometimes see on this same esplanade, where Cirque du Soleil usually parks?

— There's a moment when this whole circus thing is kind of parodied. For me, this constant "more and more and more and more" completely loses its essence and its small-scale aspects, which for me are the most important: talking about ourselves, about the people we are, about when we make mistakes... Why make it so difficult if in the end the hardest part is being a clown?

Oh, really? Why?

— Because you have to connect with something very deep and vulnerable emotionally, and making people laugh isn't easy. It's a skill that takes a lot of work to master; it's not just training. What I love most about the circus is that you can perform the classic disciplines, but it's not just about technique; everyone does it in their own way, with their own personality.

You said it's a circus that doesn't work. Does it play on mistakes?

— The mistake, when you embrace and accept it, is the clown. In the circus of "the most difficult yet," mistakes are not accepted. We make them part of the show.

Accepting mistakes in life is difficult.

— Absolutely. It's a learning process. I think we're happier when we accept that we're not perfect, when we accept mistakes, vulnerability, and errors. It takes the pressure off, too.

You've been doing theatre since you were little, with your parents' company, Teatre Tot Terreny. Did you ever think you'd dedicate yourself to this?

— It's always an option, absolutely. Since I was six or seven, I've gone through very different phases, sometimes more involved, sometimes more withdrawn. When I put pressure on myself to do this with my life, I think I'm less happy. However, when I think that I can do anything and be happy just the same, that I don't need anything to feel fulfilled—no one, not even a job—it helps me relax.

It's paradoxical because, at the same time, you're involved in collective creation.

— Yes, yes, I don't want to create alone, I'd die. But what I need isn't other people, with names and surnames, but people who support me, who love me, I need people who believe in me.

Do your surnames, Plan Solina, carry weight? It's inevitable that your parents, Quimet Pla and Núria Solina, come up in the interviews we do with you and Oriol, because for the general public you are family. Travy.

— I think what you see from the outside is so different from the inside! It doesn't have that whole image that everyone gives it. For me, it's my family, period. I have a family that's both functional and dysfunctional, like everyone else, with its pros and cons. From the outside, we've always been Quimet's children, and now we're Oriol's parents or sister.

How do you handle this?

— I keep a pretty good distance. I couldn't care less about all the celebrity stuff, but people make such a big deal out of it... They say the strangest things to me... People offer me work on the street for my brother: "Hey, we have a project and we thought your brother..." Or journalists call me because they want to talk to him, I swear. It's been really hard for me to get people to recognize me on my own, with my own career and my own path, independently of my brother and my parents. I think that's starting to change lately, and for better or worse, I think it has a lot to do with the feminist movement.

Hasn't text interpretation tempted you?

— I like it, and in fact I have a writing project with Lali Álvarez, but life hasn't taken up much of my time. I do envy Oriol in that respect, not because of the work itself, but because of how he approaches it. He really immerses himself in the character, he reads a lot, while I have other approaches. Female clowns sometimes don't fit into this world; our flaws are very obvious. It's hard to find female clowns who are very beautiful, for example, because not conforming to the norm is where our charm, our strength, lies.

Is your company like your own personal camera?

— Absolutely. Now I'll start preparing a new show, which will be called TumultLooking ahead to the end of 2026, my ultimate goal is to organize festivals. To do my own thing. vanMy colleagues, and go to France, or somewhere like that, to Zaragoza, to Seville... Now I'm doing four solo shows at the Teatro del Barrio in Madrid, and I'm so happy about that! That's what I like. Someone on the street said to me, "So how come you're not as successful as your brother?"

That's intense.

— But for me, success is having simple, small shows that fit in my van. Living like my parents did in the 90s. I live a super-nomadic life and I love moving around, going at my own pace. I don't want to take planes; I want to take things slowly and be with people.