"First of all, I am an actor and have been since my tender childhood. I was Tree 4 in kindergarten, The Miser in Primary school, and The Little Prince in ESO. In Bachillerato, I moved on to university theater groups in Valparaíso and then, later, I started studying seriously." It's noon and the strains of Willie Colón and Rubén Bladés's Pedro Navaja begin while, leaning at the bar enjoying "a vermouth with olives, soda water, and a touch of that bottle over there," actor and playwright Felipe Cabezas recalls his early years falling in love with theater in his native Chile. Twenty-two years ago, he made the decision to cross the ocean to settle in Barcelona: "Suddenly I went from living at my mother's house in Viña del Mar to the Gothic Quarter... without a peaceful transition!" he laughs.
Specializing in mask theater and commedia dell'arte, Felipe Cabezas confesses that he finds it impossible to talk about himself, to explain himself and his life, without alluding to his relationship with theater. "That close connection between my person and my work has given me some problems over the years. I connect very intensely with my characters and, for that reason, I am currently working to create boundaries between fantasy and reality."
Boundaries that, on the other hand, he has somehow managed to transcend thanks to dedicated work on stage and what has been his great venture, along with his partner and mother of his two children, Isabella: one day opening a theater in the Raval of which he is artistic director. "Sala Fènix is eleven years old now, and when I talk about my things, about what has happened to me, I always separate them into before and after its inauguration."
Sala Fènix works to attract small-format productions with an international vocationAn alternative theater space of reference in the city, the venue on Riereta street that the regular and his partner direct with a mix of overflowing imagination and unyielding commitment offers a program that combines various thematic lines. Through an intimate format, often based on alternative and far from accommodating narrative proposals, on its small stage, aspects such as historical memory, feminisms, mental health, or anti-racism come to life. A work in perennial evolution with which Felipe enriches his vital experience and, with it, inevitably, his art. Even more: "Something tells me that a new milestone in my personal history will soon arrive, but it's just a hunch for now," he warns.
A journey on and off stage
Perhaps this leap forward has to do with Fènix's process towards internationalization, weaving a network of contacts that allows uniting the production of the venue with those of other places and, at the same time, importing talent from outside. "To show Barcelona how they do theater in Valencia, Burgos, Bilbao, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, because something I like about Barcelona as a city is that it is cosmopolitan, and I don't understand why, in contrast, the cultural world, the theatrical more specifically, is so localist. For this reason, we are working to open a port that attracts small-format productions with an international vocation and we have been collaborating with European projects and touring with our work for some years. Now I feel it is time to launch that project." With a tank full of ideas, experiences and dramaturgies, the time has come to finish starting the machinery: this journey has just begun. And it is not the first.
"Something that has always made me proud, and that I always tell whenever I can, are the trips and adventures I've had with my shows," asserts the local who, for a time, performed three consecutive theatrical monologues about historical figures of Italian comedy and, "with these and with my masks," trod stages in the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Argentina or Luxembourg. "Each trip was like a medal on my lapel and I keep a beautiful memory of that time. I think traveling doing theater is the most fabulous thing there is. On those trips I felt important, I was in beautiful theaters and I found a universal value in my works. I still keep looking for that feeling in local theater, which is much more difficult for me despite playing at home."
A city where to die
The actor Felipe Cabezas remembers his first days in Barcelona with special affection. "I walked and walked, memorizing each of its streets, shops, and landscapes, madly in love like a teenager with his first love. Now, after these years, the relationship is more mature, but for that very reason, deeper. When I travel outside of Spain, I introduce myself as a Barcelonian, though with nuances, because in the end, life is that, nuances. I am Chilean, but half of my life I have lived here, where I have gone from being a 22-year-old to a 45-year-old father and, in that time, I have developed my career, I have become an adult with all the learning that entails and the mark it leaves on the soul," says this enthusiast of neighborhood life made of conversations with local people, cheap bars serving delicious homemade food, bulk wine bought at the corner bodega, and Sunday rumba. He summarizes it as "living Barcelona without pretensions and with simplicity."
The antipodes of what he detests: "nationalisms, supremacism, elitism. That is something I cannot stand and that is nothing more than fascism, no matter what political, cultural, or regional aspect it comes from. I believe we have had a few years of nationalist extremism on both sides in a miserable war of colors," he laments. "When I arrived here, this intense feeling did not exist, or at least I had not experienced it, and today it is a weapon. I believe we live in a time when, in some way, you are forced to take a stand, and when you do, you become the enemy of the opposing side. And I don't want to live like that. I prefer the cosmopolitan, 'charnega,' open, and plural Barcelona over the elite. I leave the elite to the poor in spirit. Paraphrasing another popular saying: nationalism is the virtue of those who have no other," declares the regular, who identifies with Pepe Rubianes "and his famous phrase in which he introduces himself as Galician-Catalan. I always say that I was born there, but I will die here," he states, finishing his vermouth while, in the background, Rubén Blades praises the attributes of the goddess María Lionza, accompanied by Willie Colón's orchestra.
—What is certain is that you cannot die without having tried the delicious gastronomic offer of this Bar. We have a delicious assortment of tapas, portions, sandwiches or, if you prefer, a menu.
Something that could be hunger, for food and for prolonging the bar chat, lights up in the eyes of Felipe Cabezas who, after thinking about it for a moment, opts, "right now for some anchovies and then some portions." And, after a few seconds of silence, he adds, smiling:
—And if it's in good company, even better!