Pepa Plana talks with EL PAÍS readers

Pepa Plana is going to perform the “most difficult yet”. The Catalan clown (Valls, Tarragona, 1965) has accepted the invitation of Cirque du Soleil and will take part in the new show that will premiere in the spring of 2012 in Montreal and with which, for a year and a half, she will tour Canada, the United States and Asia. Plana arrives at the EL PAÍS editorial office in Barcelona wearing a skirt printed with newspapers and a necklace with a red Chupa-Chups hanging from it. After posing for the photographer, she takes off her precious red nose, the same one that after about four or five performances she will give to one of her most special friends, and keeps it in a jewelry box. Now without a nose, she becomes a little more serious to answer the questions of EL PAÍS readers.

A clown differs from a clown in “the ease with which women connect with the most fragile part of our emotions. We have been allowed to cry more.” In fact, one of the reasons she decided to undertake the project with Cirque du Soleil is that the show “will revolve around the female universe,” the artist adds.

“The clown fails, he is pathetic, and he shows himself in front of the public with all his fragility and sometimes bad taste, but deep down what he does is put a mirror in front of the public. We see ourselves in this mirror and we recognize ourselves”. She is an “outraged” clown and she recognizes herself in the 15-M movement. Regarding yesterday’s demonstration she thinks that “it was impressive the strength that people can have when we come together. Something will change. It has to change”, she says.

Regarding the crisis “… it deeply saddens him how foolish we have been. For a while we were all rich and it was so nice … but we were deceived. We clowns know very well what it is to be in crisis”.

There is a crisis but the clown is now successful. She has never presented herself to any of the Cirque du Soleil castings but they called her because they followed her work and knew her performances. Pepa Plana’s job is pure naivety: “The clown is a born optimist, he lives in the land of YES, everything is possible and he never gets discouraged. He constantly encounters problems and looks for solutions and each solution is a new problem (. ..) The greatest success is his failure”. But it may also show the firmest path if things are to change, “there is a whole movement of disobedience that uses clown tools to confront the police and disarm by giving flowers, for example”.

El PAÍS – Antonio González