Roc Bernadí: "I, who am so Catalan, missed doing my work in Catalan"

BarcelonaHe hasn't reached 30 yet and Roc Bernadí (Barcelona, 1997) has already made a name for himself on the Catalan scene. As an actor, he has starred in large-scale musicals and, as a musician, he is half of the duo Svetlana, who will be back on tour this summer and will release a new album in 2027. We meet at Sala Beckett, a few streets from where he grew up. Until May 24th, he will be there performing his first monologue, Hold me until I fall asleep, an intimate and poetic coming of age written by Cesc Colomina and directed by Guillem Sánchez Garcia. Afterwards, he will be part of the dream team for The Threepenny Opera directed by Marta Pazos to premiere the Grec Festival and inaugurate the season at the Teatre Lliure.

Theatre lovers will know you from your roles in Groundhog Day and Blood Brothers

. For Generation Z, you are half of Svetlana. Do you live dissociated between two very different facets?

— Absolutely. This is the word I use most with my friends lately: dissociated. I think it's a very generational thing, too. And it's a bit of a double-edged sword, because it allows us to do many things at once and concentrate to the fullest, but sometimes you accumulate scratches or worries and, suddenly, you explode. But well, apart from being dissociated, I live very happy doing things I love.

Do you experience it as two faces that have no contact?

— They are two very different facets, but extremes sometimes meet. Everything is part of me: Svetlana, which is something more spectacular, with humor, irony, music; and this monologue, which is something much simpler, intimate, sober and also questions me a lot. The character I play in Svetlana is born from certain wounds, life experiences and my identity, which correspond a lot with the Beckett show.

You are from Poblenou. With Svetlana you started performing in places in the neighborhood, like Can Felipa, and you did theater because near your home you had the Aules del Daniel Anglès school. Did you have a kind of revelation?

— I had always loved music, dancing, singing. Since I was little, I felt called to get on a stage, I remember myself a lot notes, always wanting to be the center of attention, which is something I really like about myself, but it also imprisons me a bit. Why do I need so much affection, so much recognition? We are already working on that in therapy, as you can imagine. Entertainment and especially things that generate reflection on what the hell we came to do here, in life, is what gives me meaning. And at Aules I felt much freer, more accompanied, and I had the feeling of belonging to a group. When I went to school, I was the only boy who danced and I wouldn't call it bullying as such, but I remember having a bad time, feeling very alone. I ended up quitting because I think it overwhelmed me.

You debuted with The Awakening of Spring at 18 years old at the Teatre Gaudí Barcelona and you entered La jaula de las locaseven before graduating from the Institut del Teatre in 2021. It feels like the entry into the professional world went very quickly...

— Yes, it was luck, and I knock on wood. I've also had moments of crisis, with covid, of not having a job, of what the hell am I doing with my life. They called me for the casting of La jaula because they couldn't find the actor and when they hired me, I felt a great contradiction: immense joy and also the feeling that I wanted to do theatre for real, and that was a variety show, a theatre empty of content. This prejudice has followed me for a long time, and that's why we are now doing this interview at the Beckett.

Were you looking to make a theater without the artifice of the musical?

— Theater of truth. I had the prejudice that in large-format musical theater there was no soul. My vital learning was to meet Àngel Llàcer and the entire company of La jaula de les locas, and understand that you can be in a large-format, commercial, and musical show explaining something from the heart. I broke a prejudice within myself and since then I have been an activist for musical theater: perhaps you don't like it, but it's not just entertainment.

Do you empathize with the review that the character from Hold Me Until I Fall Asleep makes when they hit their thirties?

— Yes, I empathize with it a lot. It's a monologue that reflects on the life experience of a boy, practically without artifice, it's all content. I think it's a work by faggots and a work that can also appeal to people who are not faggots. Because it talks about the repression of desire in all its aspects, all the things that build you from a place outside the norm.

Is homosexuality still experienced from trauma?

— I don't experience it from a place of trauma, but because I've done the work. That's why we wanted to bring light and empowerment to it, not just speak from the wound, although sometimes it's inevitable, because there have been traumatic stages and it's honest to give them visibility. Obviously, we are talking about a reality of privilege, a first-world reality, we are already aware of that, huh?

You're approaching thirty in a sweet professional moment, aren't you? Do you feel like you're reaching maturity?

— Totally, until now it was a bit ha-ha-ho-ho, the great importance of friends, for example, and now the matter is getting serious. I have all four grandparents alive, but you see that they will leave at some point and you will be taking your parents' place. And it seems that things are expected of you, like being a father, or having children, having a house, and that you have to abandon the dreams or the things that I thought I would do when I was 20 years old. It's a small grief. I really like being young and the lack of control but I also like growing and learning things.

Are you in a place you would have imagined?

— If I told Roc at 18 years old that I would go through what I have gone through, he would fall on his backside. I have also discovered that when I had the most impact at a national level, with Aladdin, it probably wasn't the moment when I was happiest or felt most fulfilled. I am discovering that creation is truly the engine that drives me.

You went to Madrid at 23 years old and at 25 years old you performed for two seasons Aladdin, a Disney franchise musical in Madrid in front of 1,300 people every night. What did you learn there?

— A lot. I felt the pressure and that suffocated me a lot. It's also that I went there alone, and I had almost never lived alone. But I learned a lot with the executives and with the artistic team from Broadway, from London, from the way they work, the discipline, also the love for what they do. What I dislike most about the musical is the repetition. I like to do something for 3 months and move on to something else.

At the moment of winning the award for Best Actor at the Musical Theatre Awards, the speech in which you asked for better working conditions went viral, and you listed situations such as unpaid holidays, nine performances a week, a single day off, having days deducted when you cannot work due to voice loss...

— I owe a lot to that speech, a lot of visibility and opportunities. It was very genuine, because I was absolutely burnt out, just like all my colleagues. Also a bit from unconsciousness, because it wasn't the Goyas, it was some local musical theatre awards and I thought I could address the producers and tell them that what they were doing wasn't human. There was a naive part, because you also have to accept where you are: the big musicals have 8 performances a week, and you do it or you don't.

Have you accepted unworthy conditions, in theater or music?

— Yes, without a shadow of a doubt, because you are also starting out, nobody knows you and they give you about 50 euros and thanks. With Aladdin I was charging a protagonist's salary but there were colleagues charging the minimum wage and leaving their bodies there. With Svetlana we also had to rely on free favors, from friends who don't charge what they should, and five years later we are trying not to do it anymore, even though we are not a multinational company with millionaire income.

Then came Groundhog Day, which earned you the Critics' Award for best musical actor. And the following Christmas, a classic likeBlood Brothers. Did you imagine you could star in large-scale musicals in Catalan?

— No. I went to Madrid because there weren't many jobs moving here and there is more offer and, above all, open castings. Here to get into projects at the Nacional, the Lliure or the Beckett, the only way is to know people, which I find super unfair: at least in public theatre there should be open castings. In Madrid I went linking jobs and a part of me thought: I, who am so from here, who feel so comfortable in Barcelona and who am so Catalan, missed doing my job in Catalan... And in my delusion of grandeur of doing Aladdin I thought: I am only valued in Madrid. On the radio I heard them criticizing that Catalan actors leave for Madrid, and I thought: if I had no other choice!

Do you do many castings, here or in Madrid or on video? Because you've done few audiovisual projects...

— Yes, I keep doing it, when they arrive. I've only received one direct offer, and I won't be able to do it. In the audiovisual field, I haven't had such luck, and it's a world I'd like to get to know, I wish. I've done a couple of sequences in Un altre home by David Moragues, a beautiful film that has recently been released.

Do they recognize you on the street?

— Yes, but it happens to me rarely. Perhaps because of the Catalan idiosyncrasy, of looking and not saying anything. As the cartoonist Martí Melcion says in a cartoon, I have been recognized as a niche micro-celebrity. And it makes me very excited, the truth, this admiration. I was also a geek fan of Mariona Castillo, I used to play the songs from Mamma Mia on repeat in the car in the summer and now I've had the good fortune to work with her and with people I deeply admire.

Since you went to the Institut del Teatre and not to Esmuc, is it that music has been a coincidence?

— Yes, probably. I studied violin, I trained, and I met Julia [Díaz, her duet in Svetlana] at the music school. From a very young age, we made songs together from the same place we make them now, to laugh at what surrounds us, at what makes us angry, and especially at ourselves. During the pandemic, we broke the confinement, because we lived three blocks away, and we went to Julia's rooftop and spent endless nights teaching each other songs.

Svetlana is a very political project, of social denunciation and queer defense, in Catalan, with a festive pop style. How does that come out?

— Julia comes from the associative fabric of Poblenou, super-activist, super-politicized, and she's also very feisty. And I come more from the more festive, pop, musical side, and I also really like to put politics at the center, because I believe it's the essence of life. Both of us have this amalgam, these two souls.

Do you think the musical character affects the theater actor?

— Yes, I think so, but it's a character that defines me so much that I'm not willing to let it go. That's why I also value that they've given me this opportunity at the Beckett, which is supposedly for a serious actor.

Your next production will be The Threepenny Opera, which will open the Grec Festival, alongside a kind of dream team of the theatre: director Marta Pazos, playwright Marc Rosich, musician Dani Espasa, and actors such as Nao Albet, Eduard Farelo, Júlia Truyol...

— It's a dream, a wonder. Every day you go to rehearsal worried and anxious, with your insecurities, thinking how good your colleagues are, while you clock in at the Fabià Puigserver hall of the Lliure. Who would have told you, when you were studying here? I looked around and thought: "Holy shit, what incredible luck, that's great, that's cool", amidst insecurities, a lot of happiness and a lot of learning. Especially to stop judging myself when proposing as an actor, when creating and when failing. Perhaps you will never reach the expectation you have of yourself, but only through this acceptance do you find freedom.

Now that you have ridden a flying carpet, tell me a dream...

— I have many, all linked to creation. I would love to write a musical with songs by Svetlana. I would love to create a series. I would love to form a company. And on a personal level, I would love to find a calm and acceptance, a peace with myself, with who I am and with what surrounds me.