Three actresses for “Una vida”: the 19th century work that Lima applauds as a Netflix series

One of the most influential novels in French literature reaches the theater in Lima, in a version that at the same time points to fidelity and free interpretation; contradictory concepts that in this case are complementary. Originally published in 1884, Guy de Maupassant’s “A Life” follows the wealthy Jeanne, whom we meet as a teenager when she returns to her home after finishing her education at a convent. What follows is a spiral of chaos that she does not trigger and that, for most of the years, places her in the role of its victim. It is not a play with roles assigned to a specific performer; Because of how director Laurent Gutmann conducts the staging, it took three people willing to share everything.

Macla Yamada, Amaranta Kun and Katerina D’onofrio play Jeanne, but they are also the young woman’s parents – the Baron and the Baroness – and her husband, Julien. But mainly they are Jeanne in all of her moments: when she submits to another’s will on her wedding night, when she discovers that fidelity is a dead letter, when her son is born. It is a story from the 19th century, but even so the public present at the general rehearsal, as this newspaper saw, lived it with intensity, holding their breath in the moments covered, as if it were the fashionable series on Netflix.

immortal work

“Why does this story matter to so many people and why is it such a well-known book? It is because despite it being a somewhat common life of the time, without anything really extraordinary; In the lives of all people there are births, deaths, betrayals, hopes, illusions. This happens in everyone’s life, but the way it is told… I think it is the viewer’s job to find the empathy they feel with Jeanne and with all these characters.“Kun said.

Yamada told El Comercio that the process of putting together “Una vida” has been intense because it was short and forceful; “a giant laboratory” of five weeks under the guidance of Gutmann, who came from France expressly for this work (in addition to directing, he adapted the novel). “It’s a challenge to jump from character to character and follow the story the way it goes, uphill,” he said. For his part, Kun said that it is the possibility of constantly changing characters that makes the story more feasible to tell; It is a dense, heavy story, but one that this particularity transforms into something “playful and pleasant.” D’onofrio, for his part, indicated that they rehearsed between seven or eight hours a day from Monday to Saturday.

“Jeanne is a woman of her time and her social class. Discovering her life, we want to believe that fortunately the women of our times are more armed to escape a fate like this. Will it be true? Is it possible to live giving up some hopes and dreams?”Gutmann said for his part.

But the actresses not only share characters, because throughout the entire work they act as narrators, where they say passages that are very faithful to the original text and give the work a tone of painful memories. In Yamada’s words, this change from character to narrator was complicated. “I think that has been the biggest challenge of editing the way Laurent wanted to present it. From the beginning he told us ‘none is going to be just a narrator, none of them are going to be just a character; Get that idea out of your head.’ This story needs that, that we be ready to play at the disposal of our partner.Yamada said. And in that game there are also silences, because even when the actresses remain silent, they act: the glances they direct at each other tell another story, that of a woman who passively observes her own life, who cannot do anything to change her destiny. .

Between the version that this newspaper saw and the one that reaches the public from Thursday, May 2, there will be changes, inevitable adjustments on the part of the director so that the work is even stronger. If the audience’s applause and emotions upon seeing it are any indication, then what’s to come will have even more impact.