Brays Efe (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 34 years old) would have liked to work with Lina Morgan and see Chiquito de la Calzada live. “These are two people who haunt me because of how unique they were,” he says. He has a notebook with 1,001 films to see before he dies and he only has about 170 left, but he’s been putting them off for about 10 years. “There must be a reason,” he adds, laughing. The Efe speaks to the headlines and does not reject the issues. He could also talk about his love of auctions, sexist violence and humor as a traveling companion.
Ask. Tell me why we’re here.
Answer. I have summoned you to the Spanish Theater because I am working on a play by Pablo Messiez called “People, Places and Things”, written by Duncan Macmilan. With a list of actors headed by Irene Escolar, but if you put them all together, you’ve already run out of interview space.
Q. What person, place or thing are you?
R. I play Pastor, a worker at a detox clinic.
Q. I was told that he is addicted to things related to cinema.
R. I’m an object mythomaniac. Not just because they belong to someone but because I am a person who takes care of things. I like auctions and have books that belonged to David Lynch and recently bought something by Joan Rivers. I have several things about her because she is a character that has always made me laugh.
Q. Are you one of those who believe that humor saves everything?
R. He’s a great companion. Sometimes I’ve written tweets that end up in places they weren’t intended, because humor is the context. This is why I am afraid that Pablo Hasél is in prison. Living in a country where you can’t say exactly what you want in an artistic work worries me. I would like to make a joke about María Pombo, who is publicly denounced, without someone coming to tell me that by joking I am lynching someone or participating in a hate campaign. It may not be your type of joke and it may not be funny to you, but I want to be able to say it.
Q. How did your acting start?
R. There’s a point of casualness, although, having always loved cinema, it’s something I’ve been in contact with since I was little. I once worked as a camera assistant, I directed a short film during my degree (I studied Audiovisual Communication), I liked writing… but I had never imagined acting. One of the first jobs I did was clowning at communions and birthdays, which isn’t that far from acting, if you think about it. Logically a fundamental experience was ‘Paquita Salas’.
Q. How do you feel about Paquita?
R. What frustrates me the most is when they ask me when he’ll be back, because it’s something that doesn’t depend on me. I have always gotten along very well with Paquita Salas, and lately even better, because I live at a certain distance from her.
Q. Recently, in an episode of the podcast ‘La cena de los idiotés’, she spoke about her childhood, marked by gender violence.
R. I remember very big discussions at all levels, from my father, but also from my grandparents, uncles… and I think I was able to understand them later, such as the harassment situations. As time goes by I feel more comfortable talking about it, with more confidence, because I am more aware of what I have experienced.
Q. Now you can name things.
R. Following that program, a relative wrote to me and said, “How funny, I hadn’t read that situation that way, and now I can see that it was true.” And we’re talking about my father going to prison for gender violence. If as a family member you saw what happened and you can’t put a name to it… it just means that in all these years no one has talked about it in the family.
Q. Before we get back to rehearsals, do you remember what you were doing when Javis’ breakup was announced?
R. What day is that? Because I don’t remember, I swear. But I remember what he was doing when they started dating, because he caught me at the El Nike bar in Chueca and they both told me about it.
