The adventures of Carola Reyna and Boy Olmi in Madrid: theater, friends and a love with a city that embraces them

In Madrid, Carola Reyna and Boy Olmi They move with the serene breathing of those who believe that (almost) no one recognizes them on the street. They love, for example, getting on a bus, getting off without a compass and discovering, despite having spent dozens of seasons in this city, some secret garden. Like that of the Príncipe de Anglona, ​​an 18th century noble orchard in the La Latina neighborhood, only suitable for connoisseurs.

“Being here, I suddenly forget that I am an actress and that I am a person recognized elsewhere – Carola Reyna will say -. I have a lot of history with Madrid. A lot of history from my childhood, from my life, from my son, who has lived here for 10 years,” she says.

Carola went to kindergarten in the Spanish capital. “I had very itinerant parents, very particular, brilliant and very modern. Very strange – he defines them -. Here, in Madrid, I started going to school, I learned to read and write and, at that age, I had my first proposal to do theater.”

-I found out when I grew up, but it seems that I was very talkative and once, a producer asked my mother if I could act as the youngest daughter of the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music in the theater My parents said no and didn’t tell me until years later. I never forgave them. He was my favorite character.

In Madrid, Boy and Carola are strangers who feel like they belong there, as paradoxical as it may sound. And since they landed in Barajas, almost fifteen days ago, they have accumulated anecdotes of unusual, unexpected encounters.

Like Carola’s with her own son, Rafa, who lives here, in a medical center where both had ended up for various reasons. Or Boy’s, one night when he left a lighting test at the theater upset with his sister’s son, who was returning to Buenos Aires the next day and they had not been able to make an appointment to share some Madrid tapas.

“Happy birthday!” shouts to Carola a man in mirrored Ray-Bans who passes by the bar in Plaza de la Paja where we are talking. It is Fabián, the Argentine who transfers them when they fulfill work commitments.

“How do you know that today is my birthday?” asks Carola, surprised.

“It’s on all the networks,” responds Fabián.

Twenty minutes later, the person passing by our table is her husband. Ana Torrentthe Spanish actress who starred, as a child, Raise crows -Carlos Saura’s film- and older, Thesisfrom the director Alejandro Amenábar. Torrent is a close friend of the Olmi-Reyna family. They agreed to go to lunch together to celebrate Carola’s birthday.

It is the first time, in decades of career and thirty years as a couple, that Boy Olmi and Carola Reyna shine, simultaneously, on Spanish stages.

They do it in Espacio Mistral, the cultural center related to the beautiful La Mistral bookstore, the micro-universe of books and culture created by the Argentine Andrea Stefanoni just steps from Puerta del Sol.

“It is a center of creation and encounter that unites theater, music, dance, cinema and words in a single heartbeat. Its essence is living arts and thought,” are defined in Espacio Mistral.

From there the couple of actors appeals to universal experiences such as long-distance ties or one’s own identity.

Olmi, barefoot, performed on Saturday, April 18, the second performance of boythe one-man show that debuted in Madrid on Saturday the 11th.

Carola, for her part, on Friday the 17th put her body back – just as she did a week ago – to the protagonist of Okāsan. A mother’s travel diarythe work premiered at the Buenos Aires Picadero in 2023.

“It has never happened to us. Carola and I are responsible for our own shows in Madrid. This is also unprecedented – says Boy -. Each one with his own person who speaks in a very direct way about something that goes through us.”

At the same cultural center, he will take the stage on May 7 with The ice cream parlora search for emotional flavors from the hand of the Scannapieco, artisans of ancestral recipes of vero Italian gelato.

Carola comments: “I came to Madrid last year and did three performances of Okāsan. For me it had a lot of weight, a lot of meaning, to come precisely to the country where my son lives and speak in the work of a mother whose son went to live in another country. -he emphasizes-. Many Argentines came to see me, almost all of them were those who had left, they were those ‘children’ who emigrated. And with respect to the Spanish, it is incredible how they admire and appreciate Argentine theater.”

-Why do you think that happens?

boy: I came to Spain 40 years ago for emotional and family reasons and I see that in Europe there is a wealth that we do not have in Argentina in terms of the quality of the historical heritage. We have something else, which has to do with the youth of our country. And with that creativity that is a product of the variety of origins that make up Argentine culture. So it’s true: there are 400 shows per weekend in Buenos Aires to see in the theater. Here, however, is the weight of history. There, there is the lightness of youth to do and generate. Also, not having economic stability, in general, the way to survive is to generate something creative.

Carola: I think we have a cultural avidity, a spark that has nothing to do with economics. There is something that goes beyond whether I am going to be able to make a living from this, if it is what I have to do. That has great power, there is a conviction, a desire and a brutal search. For example, as an actress, partner and friend of actors, In Buenos Aires I don’t get to see everything I want to see from the enormous theatrical production we have.

-How do you perceive Spanish sensitivity? Is there fear that some of what they represent is in a very Argentine code and the Madrid public will not understand it?

Boy: No, theater, when it works, is universal. This comes from the Greeks until now. When you commit to something very deep in theater, it is universal and it is for everyone. Both of us, with our sole proprietors, are talking about the human essence, the bonds, the relationship between mothers and children, couples, love, life, death, the passage of time. In my case, the show seems absolutely self-referential because it is called boy and because it tells some key moments of my personal story, It is not an egocentric anecdote of the things that happened to me, but it is the discovery that very similar things happen to all of us.. And those things that happened to me find a resonance in my audience, whether young, old, Argentine or Spanish.

Carola: I also think that it is a time where there is so much paraphernalia in general, that theatrical shows that go very to the essential move. It’s like when you used to look for the big hotel chain and now you’re looking for the little cabin next to the stream, the natural thing.

boy: It’s admirable. In Carola’s work you see a woman alone, with two sticks and a piece of paper, and she takes you on a trip around the world. And in the case of mine, there is such absolute dispossession that I am dressed almost without costumes, almost without scenery. I am naked. Much more exposed than I was in my entire life.

-Does it occur to you to fantasize about the possibility of moving to Spain?

Carola: I always had quite a connection with my place. Until I was seven years old I had no fixed place and lived in many cities. However, I also have a son here, in Madrid. I don’t think I would come to live at all, but if I found a reason to spend enough time here, I could think about it. We also have a relationship of great Argentine love there. From what people show you to the bonds, family and friendly affections.

boy: I don’t know if I would come to live in Spain. I have a son there, I have friends. I created a space in Argentina that goes far beyond being an actor. I don’t define myself as an actor only and this is also what my show is about. Maybe I think more about going to live in my house facing the sea than in Madrid.

-How do you experience the social, political and economic climate that exists at the moment in Argentina?

Carola: I I recognize that coming to Madrid is a respite. Like when you’re about to sink into the pool and you take a breath before diving back in. I feel that here I take a conscious distance. I don’t disconnect, of course, but I give myself a little break from that minute-by-minute vibration of what happens, which is so intense and so ours.

boy: Look, I was born in 1955. From that moment on, I never stopped perceiving that I was in almost dystopian realities. Or a lot of violence or a lot of social or political anguish, which is part of our DNA as a nation. Today we are experiencing a particularly complex moment in Argentina, as it is also a particularly complex moment in Europe, in the face of wars, as it is also a complex time from a climatic and social point of view. That is to say, I believe that there is no place where today one can say: “You can breathe here.”