Interview
by Diana Taylor, June, 1999
Translated
Marlène Ramírez-Cancio
What
I’m going to tell you is something that’s going to sound kind of exotic, but
which is really the result of my past fifteen years working onstage. I’ve been
tying together the loose ends of a rarely studied and very obscure world: the
theater and acting techniques of Mesoamerica. Since I don’t know of any studies
that deal specifically with Mesoamerican theater, how can I deduce that there’s
a Mesoamerican acting technique? So this is what I’ve been working on over the
past fifteen years. Alfredo López Austin, in his book The Human Body and Ideology: The Conceptions of the Ancient Nahuas
(which is the first great systematization of the Mesoamerican worldview),
refers to the soul as three entities: Tonalli, Teyolía and Ihíyotl, three souls
in the body. One, which is here on the back of the head, is called Tonalli.
There is another one in the heart, called Teyolía, and another one in the
liver, called Ihíyotl. Each of these souls has its own functions and protective
deities. But there are important differences. The Tonalli is the soul that
enters and leaves the body; this is the soul that travels while you sleep at
night, and then comes back. This is the soul that leaves and comes back every
time you sneeze, or whenever you yawn, or when you’re startled, it leaves.
That’s why it’s not good to sneeze and keep talking, because when you sneeze,
your Tonalli leaves, and you have to wait a little bit, and then it comes back.
At that moment, anything can enter your body. However, the soul of the heart
and the soul of the liver only leave your body when you die; those two souls
will exit only at the exact moment of your death. You will release them like
humors. It’s a different worldview and understanding of the human body. When
you divide your body in a different way, which isn’t the way you’re used to
dividing it, you feel other things. When you name your body in a different way,
you feel it in a different way. Every part of the body is appointed its own
function. So for instance, the hand, which is the number five, in Nahuatl is
called macuilli, meaning “open hand.”
But at the same time, the inner part, or the function of the hand, which is to
grab, is also named by the hand—“that which grabs.” “That which hits” is the
fist. The function is in the name. Really, The
Human Body by Alfredo López Austin is a book you can read your whole life.
It was the springboard for my work on all these ideas.
Over time, I began to notice that
something was happening to the characters I was developing. Suddenly people
started asking me, “How can you look so much like President Salinas, or Carlos
Monsiváis, or Marilyn Monroe?” And I’d say no, it’s not that I’m identical,
because it’s not enough for you to just wear the mask or the costume of a
certain character to look like him. The question is rather: What goes on beyond
the costume?
I started to see where I could take it,
and then in López Austin’s book I found an interesting function of the liver
soul. For example, the Mesoamericans attributed the function of memory to the
heart. You remember with your
heart. In fact, the Latin root for
“remembering” (recordar) is “to pass
once more through the heart,” isn’t it? And not necessarily through the brain,
which is the ultimate organ for the West. This soul of the heart is the soul
that remembers, while the liver soul is the malignant soul, the soul that
disguises itself. It is the “nahual.” That’s where I started to put two and two
together.
It
sounds totally absurd to say: “Act from your liver.” Nobody would understand
what you’re talking about. How can you act from your liver? But many years ago
I realized that, whenever I was really angry, when something had happened to
me, even something stupid—like the gas for the hot water heater hadn’t been
delivered, but I had to take a shower to go to the show, and I’d get angry—when
I’d get to the theater with that rage, my emotions flowed incredibly well
during the show. Weird, huh? And I would always say, “Rage is a great emotion
for actors, because it opens all the channels of expression.” And then of
course, I associated rage with the liver, with bile.
Now
I’m reading a lot more because the topic of Nahualism is very broad. I asked
López Austin what Nahual meant to him. Nahual is something so broad, because
Nahual is something we all have, each one of us has his or her own Nahual, that
is, your own animal, which is the animal that corresponds to you by birth, by your
day, time, year, and place of birth. The Aztecs would read a child’s Tonamatl
right after birth. Who will this baby
be? This was the tradition, and when children were born they would have their
Tonalamatl read, to find out about their destiny, their occupation, and their
purpose in life.
When
people would ask me how I developed my characters, I’d say well, I never
imitate, I don’t watch videos to see what gestures Salinas makes, I simply work
with what I remember of the character. Little by little, through the ideas of
the ancient Nahuas, I started making connections, because they say that the
Nahual is a soul that leaves your body and can steal another person’s essence
[sound of sucking]—or it takes a bite off their essence, and then takes hold of
them, of their substance. Each person has his or her own substance. If you
manage to [slurp], to possess it, then you can reconstruct that person inside
you and let it express itself. I see you, and I leave, and every time I think
of Diana, I think of that substance. I don’t think of the details of your eyes,
or of your body, but I have a substance that is Diana. And if I appeal to that
substance, and I use it through my liver, my Ihíyotl, my soul that’s right here
[points to the liver], then I can reproduce Diana, and not only can I reproduce
her, but I can think like her. If I let the substance that I stole from Diana
take its own course, it begins to have a life of its own, its own way of
thinking. During these past eight or ten years, when I’ve been performing many
characters, things have happened to me.
For example, I’d tell myself, “This woman will be against the
legalization of abortion.” Then I’d get up on stage, and the character would
say she was in favor of legalization!
And I’d say to myself, how can this be? I had planned for her to be against it,
and now the character is in favor of it—and I couldn’t go against the
character. Dostoevsky used to say that he constantly created characters that he
couldn’t stand, who would say things he didn’t want to say, but he couldn’t
betray the characters. I can’t betray the characters. Actually, what I’d
experience wasn’t exactly whether or not to betray them. The characters would
betray me. I wanted to say other things, and the characters would articulate a
different idea. Suddenly I’d be playing Salinas de Gotari, and he’d answer like
a man I didn’t know, he’d say things I didn’t know, but not like a medium that
goes into a trance, but I myself, perfectly conscious, even conscious of how to
make it funny, things like: “Sir, it’s not the right time, it’s not the right
time or the right circumstances to answer this question. But let’s go to the
men’s room, and there, with my heart in my hand, I’ll give you an answer.” Can
you imagine! I’ve never in my life peed like a man, much less in a urinal—oh,
because that’s what I said to him, I said “from one urinal to another, with my
heart in my hand.” Of course, it was a joke about having his penis in his hand,
but I was horrified, because I was in an everyday situation for two men, but it
was completely foreign to me. And there I was, replying with such ease, as if
I’d been peeing in men’s bathrooms my whole life. When the show ended, there
were people who thought I was a man. One time I was playing the role of Carlos
Monsiváis, and suddenly my responses were fast and agile, at times I felt I
knew secret aspects of Monsiváis. I started to think something was happening,
that I was handling other people’s substance—which wasn’t something external,
formal, but something that was really shared, much more internal. When you open
up that source, you can improvise much better, because the person speaking is that person, right there next to you,
another mind is responding inside you. The miracle of the actor is entirely
fulfilled: two people in one. Well, this is what I was going to tell you about.
The
Conquest According to La Malinche
This
is La Malinche, the woman I was telling you about, from the Conquest...
“Good
evening, dear urinal-goers. Today I have come to inform you, or to tell you, or
to narrate to you, what really happened when what happened came to pass. I
mean, that time when it happened, whose annals are so faithfully recorded by
Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. It so happens that we
were all looking into the black mirror of Tezcatlvisa, when suddenly the
Tlatoani, our Leader, says, “Look,” he says, he tells me, “look Malinche,” he
says, he says, “look,” he says, “go check it out, go, go to Veracruz,” he tells
me, “because I think what I’m seeing here is turning ugly,” he tells me. And I
tell him, I tell him, “Oh really? Why?”, I tell him. “Well cause I say so,” he
tells me. “Well,” I say, “if you say so,” I tell him, “what can I say?” And
then he tells me, he says, “Well, then go,” he says, “and see what you can tell
me.” And so then I went to Veracruz. It was amazing, because by that point,
this Tlatoani had got it in his head that he wanted wireless Papantla bungee
jumpers, to modernize the state or whatever. So I got there, to Laguna Verde, and
just imagine my surprise when I see these conquistadors walking my way, and
they were half-man, half-hotpant! And then I tell one of them, I tell him,
“What?,” I tell him. And he tells me, he says, “Nothing,” he says, “you tell
me.” “Oh yeah?,” I tell him, “you tell me.” He tells me, he says,
“Look,” he says, “we,” he says, “we want you to tell us.” “Oh...” I tell him,
“and what should I say?” I tell him, “Tell me what you want me to tell you, and
I’ll tell you,” I tell him. “Cause if you don’t tell me, then how am I gonna
tell you?” And he tells me, he says, “Look, just tell us where the water is,”
he says. “We’re looking for Evian water.” And I tell him, I tell him, “Evian quoi?” As if I couldn’t speak French,
right? And I tell him, “I’m the first cunnilingual translator of Mesoamerica.”
Then he tells me, he tells me, “No,” he says, “Evian water, of the pure kind”
he says, “they already told us you can tell us how to find the city that has
this water.” I tell him, I tell him, “Well yeah,” I tell him, I say, “but what
do you say?” [extending her hand for money] “You don’t say,” he told me, and I
tell him, “Okay,” I tell him, “you said it, let’s go,” I tell him. “Just don’t
tell anyone,” I tell him, “cause if you go around telling, then they’ll come to
me and start telling me ‘Why’d you go around telling?!’” “No,” he tells me, “I
won’t tell,” he tells me. “Okay,” I tell him, “perfect, if you tell me you
won’t tell, then let’s go.” So off we went, and we were walking to
Tenochtitlan, and we passed through Ixtapalapa, and everything was falling
apart over there. There wasn’t even any water left, but I didn’t even tell
them, cause if I told them then they’d tell me, “Why’d you go and tell them?!”
That’s why I said, “Look,” I tell him, I tell him, “go ahead,” I tell him. Then
he says, “Well, if you say so, I’ll go ahead.” Then we really got into a
horrible jam over there, and well, they told us we could all go to hell. “What
did they tell you?” I tell him. “Nothing,” he says, “what did you tell them?” “Nothing, what could I
have told them? I’ll just go around telling and then they’ll tell me.” “Oh!,” I
say, “you’re the one who’s been telling.” “No,” he says, “I didn’t say
anything!” “Listen, don’t even tell me,” I tell him. “Let’s go to the palace.”
And so we get to the palace, and there’s the great Tlatoani, and he was, well,
in a manner of speaking, he was saying something to everyone, and I tell him, I
tell him, “Oh Great Tlatoani, these gentlemen have come to tell you something.”
“They want to say something.” He says,
“why don’t you tell me?” he tells me. “No,” I tell him, “they should tell you.
I shouldn’t have to tell you anything.” “No,” he says, “you tell me.” “Well,
okay,” I tell him. “After all, I’m the only one here who knows how to say
anything. But anyway. They say they want to buy the city’s spring waters from
you.” Then he says, he says, “Well,” he says, “you don’t say. Let me see, hold on, I’ll tell you in a
second.” And he goes back there and meets with Lilia Patricia, his wife, and
you can tell they have a very good relationship, because he tells her, he tells
her, “Listen, they say they want to buy the spring waters from us, what should
I tell them?” he tells her. “Just sell them, you idiot!” “Oh yeah, I guess,” he
says, “right?” It’s great to have such a clear and honest relationship with
people. So he comes back and says, he says “Alright, I’ll sell them to you.” I
mean, they sold themselves so easily over there, so I tell him, “Tell me how
much they gave you,” I tell him. “I’m not telling you,” he tells me. “Well,” I
tell him, “why not?” And he says, “Cause you’ll go around telling.” And I say,
“What have I ever told anyone?” I tell him, “Who’s told you I’ve been telling?”
“Well, they just told me,” he says. And I say, “They shouldn’t go around telling
you! I never said anything.” Anyway. The point is that he starts saying the
spring waters had been emptied out, so the sewage channel of Mexico City, which
used to be like this [sloped] —so that all the shit and the filth and the
nastiness that comes out of the human body could go down— it turns out that by
now the great channel is like this [horizontal]. We’re the only city that pumps
out shit, and it’s incredibly expensive. But one of these days, all the shit
will come back to us, and that’s why I’m narrating the true story of the
collapse of the great Tenochtitlan. That’s the way it happened, and it was the
great Tlatoani’s doing. I have spoken. It’s a way of narrating the conquest
with very few elements.