INTERVIEW with Marina Otero, by Laura Ginestar

About Marina Otero

Marina Otero (1984, Buenos Aires) currently resides in Madrid. She is a director, performer, author, and teacher. She created the Remember to Live project, a lifelong work based on her own life. Andrea, Remember 30 years to live 65 minutes, Fuck me, Love me and Kill me are part of this eternal project, which will end on the day of her death. Her works have toured worldwide, including in Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, Portugal, Singapore, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Greece, Poland, Israel, Sarajevo, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. With Fuck me, she won the ZKB-Theater Spektakel 2021-Zürich Audience Award. Remember 30 years to live 65 minutes earned her the Best Dance Direction award at the Young Art Biennial 2016 (Buenos Aires). She also coordinates workshops and seminars in Argentina, France, Peru, and Spain.

The internet connection is unstable for both of us, making it difficult to get the online interview underway. There is construction noise in the background. The sound of drills and distant voices occasionally seeps into the call, adding to the initial chaos. Still, after a few attempts and some patient troubleshooting, we manage to see and hear each other through the screen. Marina is drinking mate—a traditional beverage that every Argentinian grows up with in hand, though its bitter taste isn’t for everyone. With that small ritual in place, we finally dive into the interview.

Kill me is part of a larger project titled Remember to live. What can you tell us about this very personal project?

Yes, Remember to Live is a project about my personal commitment to life. In one of my first works, I asked myself: What am I in this world for? I felt the urgency to understand the body as both an object and a subject, as something that comes into the world to do something, to fulfill a commitment, a promise of love with life. And from that promise, the idea for this project emerged: to transform, in some way, a personal part of myself, from my subjectivity, in order to speak about a universal existential question. I also asked myself: from where should I approach such a universal topic, when identity is so deeply rooted in individuality? 

Moreover, there is an idea of sacrifice in each work. I sacrifice the idea I have of myself in order to move, to experiment—so that it takes me somewhere far from any preconceived notion. I always try to deconstruct those ideas tied to a fixed identity. I want the body to transform, and through that process, for identity itself to be reshaped. I always want the body to go beyond, to break through in some way, to enter into crisis—so that it can be transformed. 

Kill me stems from a moment of collapse when you receive a psychiatric diagnosis. How did you come to the decision to create a performance from that experience?

The starting point was an already ongoing crisis related to a specific moment in my life: moving to Madrid, being in a toxic romantic relationship, constantly traveling… and with all of that combined, I entered a crisis that eventually led to a diagnosis of BPD, or borderline personality disorder. Although I was already working on the idea of “crisis” in relation to what I was going through, it was probably at the moment of the diagnosis, more clearly, that I decided to hold an audition where I invited female dancers. It was important that they were women, because madness is mostly conceived as something deeply linked to women. I wanted to somehow highlight that social perception. The cast consists of four women and one man, who plays Nijinsky.

So, you wanted to work with female dancers, but also with dancers who had some connection to mental health, correct? Why was this an essential requirement?

Yes. I wanted them to have some connection to psychiatric diagnoses that I could work with, especially on a physical level, based on their experiences. Because there are things that can’t be expressed with words but can be expressed through the body. First, I began working on the text based on the interviews I did with each of the dancers, lasting no more than 20 minutes. After that, I focused more on the physical dimension, rather than their intimate world. Deeply diving into the intimate world is something I can only do with myself—I have a certain impunity with myself that I can’t have with others.

Moreover, while there are elements of their personal experiences, there is also fiction. This is important because, in this way, their personal contributions are always protected by the fictional framework of theatre. And that helped, because it was a very delicate subject matter. In the performance, there is a scene in which we mock the DSM-5 (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and for me, this is essential because my work is based on mixing fiction with reality, but it primarily draws from real-life experiences.

It is possible to fictionalize something starting from an idea or very little information, but then I seek for the people I work with to be affected by life, because that is what I work with. Where life becomes more important than fiction, and fiction only serves to organize and present something. That is what I believe in. But as I mentioned before, there is always a protective layer concerning other people. 

I wanted to ask you about the presence of Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the most prestigious ballet dancers of the first half of the 20th century. Why did you choose Nijinsky as an inspiration for this piece?

What fascinated me about Nijinsky was his megalomania, his idea of being god, his desire to be a god. When I was young, I read his diary, and I was really drawn to that megalomaniacal madness. I also connected with it because, in wanting to be the core that sustains this artistic project of multiple works, Remember to Live, I was interested in exploring it in some way. Furthermore, Nijinsky brought us closer to a disorder with which none of us had any connection: schizophrenia.

On the other hand, bringing a dancer from the past (played by Tomas Pozzi) represented something impossible in a way. This also challenges the concept of “reality” and makes the performance feel more delirious. That aspect interested me—that not everything had to seem realistic. While my work with myself is grounded in a sense of reality and truth, I also like to break that and let fiction emerge in different manners.

You state that Kill me is about madness for love, but you have felt the need to use the term “mental health” in order to meet the art market’s expectations. What do you mean by that?

What I criticize about the world of the art market is the way some complex situations involving the vulnerability of minorities are used to sell a project. However, to give space to these situations has a positive impact as well, because it decentralizes the hegemonic discourses. I think the conflict lies more in how these situations are presented. If we turn into a market, how do we want to exist within it?

The irony is that if I talk about madness, it might not be seductive to the market world, whereas if I talk about mental health, it seems to fit better into the art market. It highlights the hypocrisy that sometimes exists. The distribution or sustainability of an artistic project often ends up depending largely on the way things are named. For instance, I prefer to call it “madness for love” rather than mental health, but perhaps that wouldn’t sell as well. 

And as an artist, how do you deal with this, with the pressure of having to make your pieces “something sellable” in order to survive in the world of theatre? You have referred to it as a condemnation previously.

Yes. A condemnation, but one that I take advantage of, right? It becomes a condemnation because there is something profitable, something that works for you, but at the same time, it condemns you. It’s complex because of how I approach each work. I don’t just sit down at the desk thinking “oh well, I’ll write, and it will flow.” Not at all. I struggle with every project. Actually, I don’t know if it’s something I unconsciously search for: the tragic dimension…

However, at one point, it’s good that the work can be sold because before my works were only (auto)destructive. Now, the fact that these works are sellable allows me to continue working as an artist, while I am able to protect myself more, in terms of materiality. Because if I’m poor, crazy, and a female artist, I’m in trouble. That’s why being able to benefit economically from my work allows me to do therapy, to stay contained, healthy, and keep making performing arts projects.

Lastly, a question I ask all the performing arts makers I interview: Why the stage, the theatre, as the space from where you tell what you want to tell, as a means to express yourself, to live?

First, fiction. Fiction allows us to break down ideas such as identity -which, to me, is what ends up condemning us more than anything else-. Beyond holding on to things related to memory, the past, and each person’s history, fiction gives us the possibility of exploring identity, becoming others, and maybe through that, finding ourselves. Fiction offers us that possibility: to be someone else, to imagine. 

But at the same time, I’m very rooted in the present—the present that is eroding because it is being lived. That is where the body comes in. Theatre is also about the body, the present body. It is not the same to think of the body as a historical document as it is to experience the body that is being worn down in the now, in the present moment. I really enjoy working with the body as a testimony of the past, as something archived or recorded—but also as a living, present body. Because even if a piece speaks of a body from the past, there is still a present body that cannot be broken by anything.