She studied with Efraín Aguilar, worked with Alberto Ísola and now won the Luces Award for New Actress: she is Carolay Rodríguez

Caroly Rodriguez He didn’t have time to celebrate his victory. At only 28 years old, he teaches theater to students at the Molinari School in San Borja and also to future soldiers at the Army Intelligence School in Chorrillos. Activities that she cannot miss even if she has won the Luces Award for Breakthrough Artist the day before, because like her taste for theater, she hides a great passion for teaching. “Some came up to me asking in fear: ‘Teacher, will you stop teaching us now that you have won a prize’? I only smile because I wouldn’t leave my students for anything in the world.”he emphasizes.

Sitting in the seats of the La Plaza Theater, where she made the leap to higher caliber works such as “La Barragana” and “La Doctora”, Rodríguez remembers her mother: “She wanted to be an actress, it was her dream to appear in the big theaters.” , but her chances of becoming one were zero,” she tells us, in addition to remembering the small presentations that she gave to entertain her when she was a child. ““He never told me to become an artist, but those actions made something emerge in me.”he remarks.

Naturally, that pleasure turned into recitations of poems in the schools where she studied in her native district of Puente Piedra, a place that saw her perform at the age of five when she played a character for the first time in front of the eyes of classmates, teachers and parents of family. That feeling of vertigo when facing hundreds of expectant gazes for her every movement, she still maintains. Even when she received the Lights Award in front of hundreds of faces that she only saw through the small screen during her adolescence, like Monica Sanchezwhom he still calls Charito.

It is just during the broadcast of an episode of “Al Fondo Hay Sitio” that an advertisement would change his life completely. “Acting classes with Efraín Aguilar! Call now!”. She did not hesitate, looked for his mother’s phone and dialed the number on the screen, only to find a figure that at 14 years old she had never seen except in his math notebooks: “…there are a thousand soles in total”. The solution was the same one he would use years later to keep his dream of acting afloat. “A crowd was organized to finance it”he tells us.

Having just opened the Metropolitano, he got on the bus heading to Miraflores to learn the basics of acting, which would continue the following year with a new workshop given at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Despite delving deeper into acting, the lightness of sporadic classes did not fill the void of taking his passion to a professional level; opinion that his mother also shared, but that she kept a secret from other people because of the shame of admitting that she wanted to study acting.

Another advertisement would show him the next step in his life: “New Theater major at PUCP! Study now!”. She discovered the details of how to prepare herself the next day, when she immediately began her preparation to enter university without knowing that she was only a month old. The time was enough, also the week she was given for the artistic exam. After going through the economic ladder, she entered with the goal of specializing in theater.

After his first year, continuing was unfeasible. Not even family support was enough. So she decided to take out a student loan that he pays to this day. He would use this experience to create years later the YouTube channel “Artista de Barrio” – known for the video that shows the actors’ income – where he uploads content about the world of acting to provide a guide to everyone who wants to. be actors, or don’t know where to start.

During his third cycle at the Faculty of Performing Arts, his first opportunity to be part of a play would appear, one outside the country, in Mexico, where he traveled with ten other students to perform Shakespeare’s classic play “To Love Or Not.” “To Love.” Upon returning to Peru after three months, He would debut here at the Ricardo Palma Cultural Center in 2017 with the comedy “What does Miguel have?”along with Haydeé Cáceres’ daughter, Trilce Cavero.

However, her great step on stage, according to Rodríguez, would be her participation in the play “El Caballo del Libertador”, where Alfonso Santistevan proposed that she be Alberto Isola’s only stage partner. “We all have someone who gives us that first opportunity, for me that person is Master Santistevan”he mentions, remembering that each rehearsal with Isola was like compressing each of the workshops he took when he was younger.

Then came other works and opportunities such as being part of La Maldita Compañía and the works “Tres historias de Teatro”, “Ausentes” (FAE Lima), “Empatético”, “El monster de Almendariz”, “Azul y Celeste”, as well as participation in television programs such as “I learn at home” for 1st and 2nd grades of secondary school and the Canal IPE series “A Distancia”. While in the cinema she participated in the film “El plebeyo” and “A singular romance”. All moments that contributed something to her personal life and also to the content of her channel.

The big moment would come some time later at the audition for “La Barragana” of 2023 directed by Chela de Ferrari, where she competed with 100 actresses for the role of Matilde. “He was not going to apply, he taught classes, he was on a project, he had two group workshops and other personalized workshops. It was impossible to learn the text, but I still took the plunge and moved on to a second phase that was just as difficult. I got up early to have extra time to present something good.”says the actress, who remembers taking her last trips from Puente Piedra to Barranco before moving to San Miguel.

After finishing the season of “La Barragana” and returning under the direction of Chela de Ferrari with the work “La doctora”, while she was carrying out some procedures at a notary’s office, the message of her award as a Breakthrough Artist took her by surprise. Containing her joy, and maintaining suspicions of a prank call, she incredulously accepted the invitation to the ceremony at the Hilton Hotel last Tuesday, April 2. “After the speech everyone approached me, they even told me that they would invite me to El Gran Chef. “I just felt like I was flying, it was something that didn’t seem real, not even when I had the prize in my hands.”says the actress, who inevitably thinks of her mother, who was the first person to find out about the recognition.

Now he is preparing again to present a play at the Teatro La Plaza during the July season. With more energy than he ever has, he grabs the booklet that occupies a large part of the seat where he also rests his Lights Award and a backpack that he carries with him when he travels on his own motorcycle. After fulfilling this dream, another one of hers appears on her horizon: founding her own theater education center, because she feels the need to transmit and help children who, like her, want to take their first steps on stage. of the theater. “Starting in acting is having in mind that each work can be the last”he comments before rehearsing again.