Amparo Noguera: “The damage we inflict on each other as human beings is permanent”

In 2019, Amparo Noguera went to see the play “The Depressed Person” because she greatly admired the work of her Argentine colleague María Onetto (who died in March of this year). When she came out, she remembers today, she was surprised: “I was very impressed by her performance, the text, the genius of the piece, the monologue, the dramatic speed she had.”

Nothing suggested that, four years later, she would give an interview precisely because she would be the protagonist of the same work. “I never thought I was going to do it. If I had not seen it, I would have stayed with my interpretation, because it is very difficult to succeed María Onetto,” he says today with a laugh at the headquarters of the Teatro a Mil Foundation.

Directed by Argentinian Daniel Veronese, “The Depressed Person” is a monologue by the writer David Foster Wallace (known for his books The infinite joke and for the speech It’s water) which has a very clear black humor and deepens the relationship of a person suffering from this illness with their analyst and their parents.

The depressed person premiere on January 11 at the Teatro a Mil festival . This happens just when in Chile surveys indicate that one of the greatest concerns of people is mental health and where the mental health thermometer of the ACHS and the Catholic University has identified that 20% of women suffer from depression, almost four points more than in 2022 (for men, the figure is 6.8% today).

–What has it been like on a personal level, as a woman, to perform a work that talks about an illness that often affects women and about which there are so many stereotypes?

-Perhaps women suffering from depression might be called hysterical more these days, for some sexist reason. You can’t tell a man that “he had his period.” I don’t know, women are attacked more from that side. But the truth is, as an actress, I approach depression not from a female perspective, but from a human perspective. In fact, the title is The depressed person not “the depressed woman” or “the depressed man.”

-You demolish genres.

-Totally, I demolish genres. In reality, the text and the description of what happens to this character could happen to a man or a woman indifferently.

-What happens to this character that you think is important to highlight because it could happen to any human being?

-Talk about the character, not a depressed patient: there may be an excess of lucidity compared to reality. The character is capable of reading or believes she reads what others think of her personally and with quite great intelligence in this regard, because the mind works very quickly. He comes very quickly with counts and results, but I don’t know if these results are correct. In a way, the character is absolutely right, what she thinks she sees is entirely possible, but we also know that life is not like that and that she is not the center of the world. Having this excess of lucidity also produces an excess of selfishness and an inability to put oneself in the other’s place, because being a victim, the world revolves around you.

–Do you have empathy with the protagonist?

-I show empathy because as an actress, I had the obligation to show empathy, I had to be able to say this text going through my head and my heart with the same paranoia that the character is going through. In addition, it is a very intelligent text, very funny, people laugh a lot, the audience laughs with a lot of guilt because obviously we are making fun of a person who falls again and again, who suffers, and then we say ” how am I going, we’re going to make fun of this person who is suffering”, but we laugh because we say “it’s not possible that she sees things that way and has such high standards towards others and towards herself.

-What makes you think that?

– Without a doubt, the damage we inflict on each other as human beings is permanent. And what society does to each of us too. I don’t think it ever stops. The harm that your loved ones do to you, the harm that the people who loved you the most do to you, the harm that your parents can do to you without wanting to harm you, only with the obsession of educating you and wanting to think that they will hurt you. They provide the best tools. We are subject to this, that’s the marvel of Foster Wallace, he says it all clearly, only that there are people who resist it and others who don’t. There is none of us on this earth who is not subjected to this constant violence.

-In your personal or professional life, have you had a connection with depression? What’s it like to go from experiencing that connection to seeing him in the first person as a character?

-It’s complicated, because as an actress, I have to respect the dramatic rhythm of this work, directed by Daniel and authored by Foster Wallace. It’s fucked up, because I know the depressed people in the audience have seen it many times, I know I’m speaking in front of these people, but as an actress I can’t take it upon myself to pity them. because that wouldn’t make the work stand out, I just have to embody that spirit.

-But at the same time, theater can be a way to generate empathy…

-No doubts. The depressives who have gone to see it identify a lot with the character and I say “they’re going to kill me here” because people laugh or because I get into mental places where they say “no, that can’t be, stop, stop.” . » . People who have been more involved or close to depression don’t find it funny, but they don’t get angry either, they find it to be exactly that…

Chile is going through a deep mental health crisis. The increase in medical licenses, situations of school harassment, the prevalence of anxiety and depression, in addition to the consumption of alcohol and drugs, are some of the indicators that show this reality. It is for this reason that the government has made mental health a priority issue: it has allocated more than 19 billion additional pesos for the 2023 budget; The Minsal “Building Mental Health” program was developed and the Regional Suicide Prevention Plan was implemented in the metropolitan region.

Aware of this context, Amparo Noguera hopes that the public who sees The depressed person “Be empathetic towards people who suffer from depression, try to understand it and that it is not something that can be in the hands of family or friends. There is no dialogue possible because it is an illness and it must be treated as such.

I realized that people who have mental health problems suffer greatly and cannot be reached.

-In which way?

-In the sense that I can accompany her, I can take a walk, I can lend her a shoulder so that she can cry, but I will not get her out of depression. Mental health in this country must therefore occupy a fundamental place, just like general medicine. People need to understand that these are illnesses that can be cured, but that they are cured through medical systems, that they are not cured with love, unfortunately.

-What role does the work have in this sense?

-The theater, as Hamlet says, I don’t know if it repairs the world or if it works miracles, but it divides people between those who understand something and those who understand nothing. Maybe my contribution as an actress The depressed person It must be remembered that depression is a mental illness that cannot be accessed through illness alone, it must be treated clinically and this country must have an obligation to support mental health. We all suffer from depression. I believe that all of us who go for a walk or eat ice cream should treat ourselves in one way or another, all of us who exercise in the morning should try to give ourselves some energy, all of us who go to a party to have a few drinks with a friend, is trying to disconnect and relieve our daily lives. We are all looking for a way to survive.

-Do you think your sensitivity towards people with depression or other mental health issues has changed with this work?

-Yeah. I realize that people with mental health issues suffer greatly and cannot be reached. I also understood the entourage of these people who have mental health problems and who also need, in turn, other help. Moreover, it is stranger than curing a physical illness where you can give a cure and there is a result or where you understand why there is an infection, here you don’t understand why. We start confessing and saying “you are pretty, you wear your beautiful dress, you have a job, you have students, you have an interview” and none of that will reach the other person. The depth is enormous.

-You’ve become more empathetic, so…

-I think so, that The depressed person He did his thing inside me. And I think that happened alongside important social changes.

-What do you emphasize about social change?

– For example, this story about “no intimidation”, respect for a woman or a colleague, not to exceed certain limits. This is also why the work takes on a lot of meaning today, because it is accompanied by a context in which the pain of others is better understood. This whole mix of things, I don’t know if it’s made me more empathetic, but it’s made me recognize when I’m not empathetic, at least. Theater, in general, makes us empathetic.

The play “The Depressed Person” will be performed on January 11, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 21 in Santiago, Til-Til and Casablanca. All information is available here .