Joel Joan: "We Catalans suffer from the collective 'depression' of 'going about'"

BarcelonaAfter eight years of sharing laughs with the two of them Escape room and The great comedianJoel Joan (Barcelona, ​​1970) takes a 180-degree turn in his theatrical career and faces not only a dramatic role, not only a 19th-century Russian classic, but a major theatrical challenge: to play all the characters himself in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov. From February 24 to March 22, the Argentinian Nelson Valente directs this updated and concentrated version of that rural drama, a work by Simon Stephens, at the Teatro Romea (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) which starred Andrew Scott at the National Theatre in London (the hot priest from the series Fleabag) and earned him critical acclaim and awards.

Why an Uncle Vanya in the 21st century?

— You should ask Simon Stephens about that, since he's the one who did the adaptation. What he does is remove all the overly explanatory aspects of his characters. Chekhov's play is very long, everything is incredibly well explained. There was no rush back then; there were no cell phones. People went to the theater and, listen, let it last! These modern versions cut out a lot of fluff and you end up with a condensation of Chekhov that fascinates me, that I think even gives it a poetic quality that isn't as present in the original, because it wasn't intentional.

The play maintains the core of the original, the same characters and events; it's spot on. It remains a vivid portrayal of the aspirations and frustrations of characters seeking recognition, success, love... Do you get the feeling that we're in a time of dissatisfaction?

— Yes, exactly the same as in 1900, when it premiered Uncle VanyaFor example, climate-related frustrations already appear in this work; they already realized they were destroying everything, that there was no going back, and that they were already too late. Frustrations are a daily reality for all of us. We all wanted to be Marilyn Monroe and we've ended up... Well, I don't know about everyone, but I certainly have, in my case for sure. Damn, dreaming is free, and wanting to win the gold medal is a legitimate dream. Now, winning it, or simply being selected to go to the Olympics, is something that's ultimately out of our hands. Success isn't a formula where, if you're really good at something, you'll do very well. I think it's necessary to be somewhat good, but also empathetic, assertive, intelligent, and to seize the best options. A little bit of luck, a little bit of salt, and a little bit of everything, too. There are so many elements that lead us to frustration... And Chekhov, deep down, is a hornyThere isn't a single character... I'm lying: there is one character who is unbreakable, Sonia, Uncle Vanya's niece, who has a wonderful final monologue and concludes the play in a way that I find impressive.

Do you see yourself in this dissatisfaction?

— Yes. In this version, Alexandre, the professor admired by the family, is a film director who hasn't made a film in seventeen years. It's very difficult to make films; you need good material and then good connections. I understand that frustration perfectly. There are many things I would have liked to do but haven't because I haven't been able to. This character, for example, isn't at peace because his life is coming to an end and he still has things left to do, and he has a poorly managed ego. With all this, any viewer can empathize. There's a very beautiful line Alexandre says: "I'm terrified of dying. I'm not strong enough to die, Helena." You have to have fought throughout your life to be at peace when you reach the end.

It's an idea we associate with Joel Joan, that of someone who is always fighting, always building projects. You haven't found peace.

— I'll probably never find it. I'd like to someday, but I'm in the middle of a struggle with my life—a positive struggle, in the sense that it's not easy. I thought that as I got older and my career became more established, things would flow more smoothly. But I see that it happens to many people our age: we reach 50 working more than ever and earning less than we used to, and everything is costing me much more than I anticipated.

From the outside, we get the feeling that achievements can bring you peace of mind.

— Yes, my psychiatrist tells me this, and he's right. I'm learning to live, in a way. I've always known how to work because I'm a workaholic, but learning to live is something very different—learning to enjoy the little moments, friends, relaxing, not asking for more than you already have. The thing is, I still have a lot of bills to pay, so I have to come up with things, I have to do things like this. Vania Because I can't afford to stand still. And this drives me to be a person who never stops.

The unique aspect of this proposal is that you'll be playing all eight characters. Does this kind of challenge for a prodigious performer appeal to you?

— I'm not doing it for that reason. In fact, when I was given the play, I found it very complicated, both for me and for the audience, to understand and follow. I thought: this is a huge mountain, an Everest you have to climb. In the end, you are your own worst and best judge, and you're the one who has to be happy with what you do. Yes, the climb has been very hard, but now that I'm about to reach the summit, I can already see landscapes and things that I'm really looking forward to. I mean, I'm having a great time doing this play. It's funny because I've suffered through it throughout the whole process, but now I'm the master of the stage, I get along very well with the whole company, and everyone is doing a great job. Seriously, the challenge is there, but I'm not being cocky about it, even though I am cocky. What happens is that the play demands a lot of work, and when you work hard, the reward is greater. In this sense, I'm happy with myself.

For a large part of the audience that has seen you in recent years, since 2018 with the first one Escape roomDoing comedies in the theater, and also on television, is that how you take off the Joel Joan suit that we expected?

— It's just that all the characters I play, David from Dirty dishes Also, if you like, everyone is Joel Joan. Actors are who they are; we don't change, we're always the same. And that's the beauty of it, because the actor's point of view is what makes it funny. As a spectator, you'll like that actor because the acting choices they make satisfy you. People who follow me will be surprised, yes. But I've also done many dramas, and I love them. I love the silence in the theater when you're doing a drama. That painful, petrified silence, where everyone is waiting to see what will happen next, how they'll get through it—it has a lot of power. When moments of theatrical truth appear, time and space disappear. This is a play that isn't short, and yet it flies by. Chekhov was a genius. There's an intellectual headline for you.

It's a work with political undertones. When Ivan says about Alexander, "How did his life end? A soap bubble! He deceived me from the first day to the last. Now I see it. How could I have been such a fool?" He's angry because he fought for certain ideals and discovered a deception. It could be a reference to the Trial.

— We Catalans are a very Russian society. And very Soviet, too. I think we were perhaps Chekhov's Tsarist Russia at the time of the Trials, and now we're in that Soviet moment of utter disillusionment where there's no hope left. I know this from Svetlana Alexievich's books, where everyone has a kind of cynical humor, completely defeated because the system totally crushes them, and where hope is replaced by that "whoever passes a day, pushes on a year"—a great Catalan phrase that I don't know if it has a translation in any other language, but I doubt it, because it couldn't be more pessimistic. "Whoever passes a day, pushes on a year": life as a series of years you have to live without knowing why.

There's also that in the play, the "wait a little longer, wait," which is very Catalan. What do you think he was getting at, Chekhov?

— I think what I wanted to convey is that however hard and absurd our lives have been, in the end we'll understand that everything had a purpose. I don't know, in the case of Catalans, what we'll understand in the end. What's clear is that right now we have no strength because there's no goal. We've found ourselves incapable of taking the great leap, and that has led us to a kind of... depression It's a collective effort to keep things moving forward, and we were so naive to think Flick's Barça would pull through. But guess what? The Spanish will screw over Renfe, they'll screw over healthcare, and they'll screw over Barça, man, that's all there is to it. And now it's impossible to win anything, in the Spanish League or the Cup, because VAR, which was supposed to improve things, is doing the exact opposite. So, what do you do? Do you go out and rebel every day? Do we go burn down the Bastille every day? That's not our style. We're in a very Chekhovian moment, very Uncle Vanya-esque.

The work also has a glimmer of hope. They imagine they can change. That there's a carrot on the carrot on the horizon.

— The carrot is always there, dangling. It's always there, because we have to live with some illusion, but we're so terrified, we're so afraid of everything... In this sense, we have lost the pride of being who we are, of defending what we want to be, of fighting for our beliefs. But, of course, the moment you start to have a little self-esteem and love your country, your language, they call you a fascist, a racist, a supremacist, exclusionary, and everyone agrees that you are all of these things. But all I want is! I love my land, I love my country, my language, my people, and I do something very simple, which is to try to take care of it, to persevere in having our own independent state so we can develop normally, so we don't have that kind of monster that's devouring us. But a state is simply a tool; we will be nothing less than the nation we are now.

There aren't many actors who can headline a show and fill the Romea Theatre: Pere Arquillué, Jordi Bosch, Emma Vilarasau... Does this credit give you freedom?

— We'll see about filling it. I don't think it's at the level of the Vilarasau, not by a long shot. I don't have a theater with my name on it. But, obviously, the audience is my greatest ally, the audience that likes what I do and that I keep renewing, thanks to Dirty dishesBecause I'm always taking pictures with little kids. Or I take pictures for my grandmother, which is what photography is for, but it's never what photography is for. Since I've been dragging myself around this world for so many years and have done so many things, well, I'm starting to become a sacred cow. Not exactly sacred, but a cow for sure.

The play also looks ahead and asks: "This will be the world we will have left them. What will they say about us?" As a parent, are you worried about the future, the world we are going to leave behind?

— The future seems a bit distant to me, as they say. It worries me, obviously, but I think that before the First or Second World War, it would have worried them quite a bit too, and during the Cold War, because things could change at any moment. None of this is new. Climate change already started in the Neolithic period; we already wiped out the mammoths and the large mammals. We've been destroying the planet and waging wars against each other since time immemorial; man is a wolf to man. When I was little, I believed that humanity was always getting better, but that's not the case. And we shouldn't feel bad about that: the world is the way it is. My daughters don't make me suffer because we're going to be in deep trouble, but we have plenty of time to disappear completely.

The competition to direct the National Theatre has opened. Have you ever considered it?

— [Laughs] No, it's not my job. I think in most European countries, theater directors are cultural managers. I understand the trend of appointing directors to the National Theater in the sense that this director can put on something every year, and they have their little racket, well, congratulations. It would cause me terrible stress. I admire the people who program theaters because it's very hard work. What I like is making theater, not deciding what to do or what to do; I have a much better time writing and directing and, above all, acting.