Oriol Genís recommends discovering what happens in the Sonoran Desert

BarcelonaOriol Genís read El extravío de los signos, by Mexican anthropologist Natalia Mendoza (Periférica), because it was a recommendation from the company with whom this season they performed Oedipus and Antigone at the Teatre Nacional. The book "talks about the Sonora desert, immigration, deaths, people who disappear and are not found, and this links it with Tiresias and Antigone," explains the actor. "It's a splendid book, an essay that reads very well and is very interesting," he assures.

The author narrates a constant and ubiquitous violence but one that is never fully revealed, because it goes beyond the criminality we can experience in our cities but is not quite an open war. Natalia Mendoza uses all strategies to try to ground what lies beyond the impermeable umbrella of drug trafficking or organized violence: she talks about history, literature, testimonies, social theory, popular culture, Greek mythology, and mafia archetypes. "In the Sonora desert, there is a group of women dedicated to searching for relatives disappeared by drug trafficking, and she links this with the double death: when you die and when you die again because no one knows where you are buried, which connects with the classics and Antigone. And it refers us to the mass graves of the Franco regime; we also have the unresolved issue here," explains the actor. The author argues that "if it is not cleaned up, it can never be a healthy society."

Genís is in a very sweet professional moment; in fact, next season Sala Beckett is dedicating a whole cycle to him. And one of the premieres he has planned is Roig i violeta, at the Teatre Nacional, about the figure of Montserrat Roig. "Now I am reading La veu melodiosa. She is a writer who interests me greatly, and I also recommend her: discover or rediscover Montserrat Roig," he states.