Clara Segura recovers ‘La Trena’: a song to freedom and sorority
Clara Segura, Cristina Genebat, Marta Marco i Carlota Olcina they star The Braida production of The Pearl 29 which returns to the Goya Theater from November 5.
The Braid by the French author Laetitia Colombani, published in 2017, it tells the “hopeful” story of three women of different nationalities who do not know each other, but have a common struggle: to rebel against oppression and change the fate that the society in which they live has reserved for them. They are the lives of Smita, who fights for her daughter’s future in an India separated by castes; Giulia, who faces the bankruptcy of her family workshop in Italy; and Sarah, who sees her successful career as a lawyer in Quebec threatened by breast cancer.
The work reflects on the immaterial ties that unite all women, regardless of nationality, through their life experiences, their difficulties and obstacles and their will to never give up. “They are three characters united by empathy towards other women, it’s a braid that holds thanks to the sorority that women have”, comments Genebat. According to Marta Marco: “the braid it also brings to the table the fact that we women always have to go up one more step to get not only what we want but to survive”.
A play written, directed and performed by women
Genebat, Marco and Segura, who have previously worked on assemblies like Blood weddings or The Mossbank Road Girls, they discovered that during confinement they had read the same novel and that, despite living in disparate societies to the book’s protagonists, they had felt very identified with their stories: “Her search for freedom, for her own voice, her obstinacy, her perseverance and her courage shook us to the point that we felt it was a story that had to be told out loud”, explains Clara Segura.
Marta Marco: “It’s nice that we can take on the roles of women of our age and be able to tell stories that challenge us directly”
“For some time we wanted to meet again to work together again, to tell a story of women like ours that we really liked, that reached our souls”, explains Genebat. And so they did, throwing themselves into the project to the fullest, Clara Segura took over the direction, and the voice that narrates the story, while Genebat and Marco took over the interpretation, together with Carlota Olcina, the translation and dramaturgy. The Braid it’s quite a challenge for three artists and friends who, separately, have to interpret more than 30 different characters: “They understand what I want to say, even though sometimes I don’t quite know how to explain, and I understand that it goes through their heads because I sense that they feel”, explains Segura. “Clara is an actress and has a lot of empathy and sensitivity with everything she tells us and makes us do.” Regarding the dramaturgy, the team wanted to claim, as Marco explains, the stories starring women in their forties: “It’s nice that we can take on the roles of women of our age and be able to tell stories that challenge us directly”.
Scene image from ‘Les noias de Mossbank Road’, performed at La Villarroel. Image: Felipe Mena
The publishing phenomenon comes to the theater
The work is based on The Braid, famous novel by Laetitia Colombani winner of the prestigious award Prize Relay in the year 2017 and what newspapers com The Evening or The Parisian have described as “an absolute literary phenomenon”. The book has been translated into 40 languages and has sold over a million copies in France alone.
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