Albert Triola: "We have had to learn to live with little"

BarcelonaWith three decades of professional career behind him, actor Albert Triola (Mataró, 1973) knows the Catalan theater stages very well. He has worked with Dagoll Dagom, Guillem Clua, Sergi Belbel and Josep Maria Flotats and has been part of productions that have marked our country's billboard, such as Agost(2012) and Smiley (2014). Now he faces a new challenge, that of performing his first monologue. He does so directed by David Pintó in the production El lladre de llibretes, an adaptation of the homonymous novel by Gianni Solla about a helpless teenager in Mussolini's Italy. The production will be staged at the Versus theater until May 3.

Why was it important for you to do a monologue?

— I said yes, probably out of recklessness. For many years David Pintó, who is my partner, had been telling me that we had to work together. I kept putting him off. Last year I had a slow period of work. It was a bad time, and then David came across this novel in the No Llegiu bookstore in El Clot. He fell in love with it, told me to do it, and I said yes. He has given me a gift, I wouldn't have done it on my own. I always hesitate a lot, he's the one who gets things done.

Plays about fifteen characters. How have you worked on them?

— Now I will always have great respect for people who do monologues, because the work really multiplies exponentially. It has taken me many months just to memorize all the text. I've been doing it little by little, it was the only way. And then there's also the work of understanding all the characters, giving them a body, knowing how to build them and knowing where they're looking, because really nothing exists, I'm all alone there. It's been like climbing a very high mountain from a small path, step by step.

The protagonist is Davide, a 16-year-old boy. You are 52. How do you connect with him?

— This is the wonder of theater, which has no limits and allows me to do everything with conviction. Davide is illiterate, lame, has many deficiencies and at the same time a very beautiful inner strength, curiosity and a desire to learn. He had a very limited future, but with the help of some deportees he learns to read. A new world opens up to him and he ends up having a beautiful ending, which no one expected. In a way, it has connected with Albert as a teenager because I also struggled to fit in at school. I became invisible, and discovering theater during adolescence was revealing. It opened the doors to a world where I could express myself.

Is it a job that you can only keep if it is vocational?

— Totally. When you start, enthusiasm gives you a lot of strength, but it's a really very hard job. Lately, there's a lot of talk about growth in the number of spectators, which is true, but actors and actresses live in brutal precariousness. Twenty years ago, I had picked up jobs where I earned more than now. Everything has frozen, much more is produced, seasons are shorter and rehearsal times too. There is a lot of uncertainty and you always have the concern of starting from scratch. There are people who are on the front line, at the tip of the iceberg, and then all the rest. We have had to learn to live with little. 

You have been working since 1997. In what ways has the theater sector improved over these three decades?

— There are infrastructures and public theaters that we didn't have before. There has also been a lot of growth in Catalan dramaturgy. It's beautiful that our authors can tell stories from here. I think, for example, of Smiley, which was a very beautiful project, because it started small and then connected with the audience, it grew and was very well-received and celebrated. 

How important is work to you, when it comes to defining yourself?

— My work defines me because it is absolutely vocational. For me it is a way of being in the world, and it really gives me a lot of excitement to go on stage. As I get older, I live it with more intensity each time, because I know how difficult it is to get there. Every time I go out I think: “Wow, enjoy this because you don't know when you'll be back”.