Cristina Clemente: "When I was 14, they thought I had a tumor in my head."

Cristina Clemente(Barcelona, ​​​​1977) is a playwright. She has two plays on the bill, Lapland, at the Teatre Condal, and Women of Radio, at La Villarroel. Both until May 11.

She has lived and lives in the Baix Guinardó neighborhood of Barcelona. "I feel very much from the neighborhood." She went to the Font d'en Fargues school. "It was a pilot school. I did THAT when no one my age was doing it yet." She liked it a lot, "because we didn't call the teacher "Miss" and it was much more modern than other schools."

Theater came to her when she was six years old. "In Baix Guinardó there was the Penya Pots, a very neighborhood place that put on plays, all very homey. It was organized by Montse, who, in fact, was my babysitter. I think she was about 18 and she didn't even get paid. All the neighborhood kids who didn't have anywhere to go on the weekends went." But when they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would say: "A butcher." "Because I loved it when I saw the butcher collecting the livers and all that. A lot." goreMontse played an important role in my childhood. She had younger siblings and nephews, and she brought us all together. One day she took us to the movies. She collected coins from my parents' house, and when we arrived, we didn't have enough money to get in. And she said, "Cris, cry." And I started crying, and they let us in. I must have been about three years old. Now we're friends."

He has a brother who is a year and a half older. "On Sundays we would put on plays at home for my parents." They liked to make up stories. "When I was 13, my father managed to buy a car, a Citroën X, the cheapest on the market. And we went on a trip to Paris. The whole trip, my mother and I invented characters. We were inventing and acting the part the whole way."

From working parents. "My father was an accountant and my mother has had every job in the world. She was a shop assistant and later earned a license to become a clinical assistant." Perhaps that's why so many characters come from. "My mother instilled in me an obsession with work. And, in fact, I also do many different jobs. I suppose it's because I've had to deal with not having money. Fear opens up many fronts."

He worm from the theater

"At 13, I enrolled in the Timbal and started doing more theater." But she wasn't thinking about dedicating herself to it yet. "I did a science baccalaureate because I was very good at victims, but I switched to literature for the last three months because it was very clear I didn't want to do science. I started a degree in philology, and then I switched to the Institut del Teatre." At 18, she discovered playwriting. "I was taking some acting classes with Txiki Berraondo and we did improvisations, and she told me, 'I think you should write.' And then I signed up for some playwriting classes with Beckett and discovered a whole new world."

A Lapland, talks about Santa Claus. "We used to pay a lot of attention to the Three Kings' Day. In my house, it's always been, even now, the most important day of the year. On top of being poor, we didn't have any family. My parents are both only children. And Christmas Day was a normal day. But on Three Kings' Day, they bought us a lot of things." And Mom continues the magic with her grandchildren. "One year, she hung the presents from the ceiling of our house."

Women of Radio She talks about cancer. "When I was 14, I was hospitalized for two months because they thought I had a tumor in my head. In the end, it was nothing; it's a malformation I have, but they kept an eye on it. During those months, I had a girl with cancer next to me, and we became friends, and it really impressed me." Her mother made up a story so she wouldn't suffer. "She explained to me that I was there because I had a hormonal problem. I was very masculine, I played soccer, and I thought, of course, that's why I like things for boys more." Her theatrical side comes from her. "My mother puts a lot of drama into her stories."