The body as a ship
Monday, 02 June 2014 18:19
Written by Josefína Alcazar
At the age of seven, Katia Tirado (Mexico, 1965) decided to be an actress. There she found the origins of her work in performance. As a child, she performed in a play, and entering the stage was such an intense experience that she began to tremble, standing before a black sea of faceless eyes. She had to decide in a split second whether to run out in tears to her mother’s arms or stop being herself and become a kitten, the character that she was playing.
From then until adolescence she did not find anything that approximated the intensity of that day, and she wandered aimlessly like an addict, seeking the invisible door that would relieve her from her miserable human condition and elevate her to the heights of the imagination.
Ten years after that decisive play she began to study acting at the University Theater Center at the National Autonomous University. She then realized that her main motivation was actually terror, the fear of existing. She felt that was too cowardly to live anything to its final consequences, and thought that this would turn her into a miserable, mediocre women in the late 20th century.
However the invisible door appeared, when she perceived her body as a ship that could immerse her in the space of the possible, and enable her to shed the heavy costume of terror, which was entirely composed of foreign images. She then believed that she was working with lies, that they were her substance, unlimited due to their very absence of conditions, and she began to work in theater. In that activity she met incredible people who provided her with tools, teaching her that nothing is a lie, that time does not exist, and that any act that takes place in space is an absolute reality with its own, changeable rules of existence and death. Among these was her beloved teacher Juan José Gurrola, as well as Pablo Mandoki and David Hevia.
From then until adolescence she did not find anything that approximated the intensity of that day, and she wandered aimlessly like an addict, seeking the invisible door that would relieve her from her miserable human condition and elevate her to the heights of the imagination.
Ten years after that decisive play she began to study acting at the University Theater Center at the National Autonomous University. She then realized that her main motivation was actually terror, the fear of existing. She felt that was too cowardly to live anything to its final consequences, and thought that this would turn her into a miserable, mediocre women in the late 20th century.
However the invisible door appeared, when she perceived her body as a ship that could immerse her in the space of the possible, and enable her to shed the heavy costume of terror, which was entirely composed of foreign images. She then believed that she was working with lies, that they were her substance, unlimited due to their very absence of conditions, and she began to work in theater. In that activity she met incredible people who provided her with tools, teaching her that nothing is a lie, that time does not exist, and that any act that takes place in space is an absolute reality with its own, changeable rules of existence and death. Among these was her beloved teacher Juan José Gurrola, as well as Pablo Mandoki and David Hevia.