The play begins in a different way. They tell us not to turn off our mobile phones , to keep them close at hand. What's more, we connect to the Privacy Wi-Fi network. This is the name of the play and the common thread of a theatrical experiment that has passed through London, New York and Mexico before and that now comes to the Marquina Theater in Madrid with the adaptation by Esteve Ferrer . On stage, Chema del Barco, Canco Rodríguez, Juan Antonio Lumbreras, Rocío Calvo and Candela Serrat. And Adrián Lastra as the headliner. We spoke with the Vallecas-born actor about that fine line between public and private and, of course, privacy. Rather, from the lack of it.
The story is inspired by former CIA worker Edward Snowden, although in this case it revolves around a writer who has just been dumped by his partner. This is the starting point of a journey that Lastra likes to call a “theatrical event” . “It is not a comedy or a drama, although there are parts of that in the play. For me it is a theatrical experience. We break the rules of the theater,” says the actor to Hypertextual. The presence of mobile phones breaks one of those rules, another is direct interaction with the public. “I insisted at the beginning of the functions so that the public really be spoken to. That it is not noticed that there is a character on stage and that people think 'Adrián is talking to me'” .
The spectators are part of a function that surrounds them with screens, “this thing from the Matrix, this universe” as Adrián says, who tells them what cookies are, how they work, the data that we give away to technology companies and even identity theft. The dilemmas about the use of social networks are launched through holograms of characters such as Ari Ezcra Waldman, author of the book Privacy as Trust, or Jill Lepore, Harvard history professor. Adrián Lastra affirms that the objective of the work is not to tell people what to do, how they should behave on social networks or what their relationship with technology should be. They simply expose what is the reality in which we live.
Face to face with Adrián Lastra
Of course, one of the objectives of this “theatrical event” with a large didactic part is to make the viewer see that is more exposed than they thought . Some go knowing it, others discover it. And others are surprised despite knowing it. At one point in the play, some people from the audience are chosen to go on stage and have a date with an Adrián Lastra who tries to rebuild his life after leaving him with his partner. The writer signing this piece was one of those people who stood face to face answering Lastra's questions. Some questions that had already been studied through an analysis of social networks before the start of the work – when buying tickets, the organizers give the option of sending your user on social networks.
And that was how Adrián Lastra learned that the editor had played for a soccer team in Mexico –even the name of the team–, where she had taken a photography course and the languages she speaks. Photographs of the Instagram account appeared, even one in which an ex-boyfriend appeared. A situation that can be embarrassing but that reflects, in the end, the moral of the work. That privacy is relative; and we are the ones who give away all this information. Perhaps a photograph of an ex-boyfriend's birthday party has to come out in front of the entire Marquina Theater for us to realize it.
Question: What have been the reactions of the public after seeing Privacy?
Answer: “Reactions at the moment we can see few due to the masks but I have seen fear. When I went out to the street after the performance, people told me 'what a yuyu', 'what a bad roll'. He has laughed, they are left with more. With that we are exposing our lives to who knows who so that they mock our privacy. I thought that people were going to stay more for the comedy, but no, they stay with that. ”
Q: Do you think people are aware of how social networks work?
A: “People, when you tell them things in the show, it is as if you explain to a smoker how bad it is to smoke. If they read a book or go to a therapy to stop smoking, they are saying the same thing to them. their mother says about how bad tobacco is. But a professional is telling them it, they say it in such a way that they convince them that they don't want to have those lungs. There is a psychological factor. When they see their life reflected in this scenario, We tell them something that is starting to scare them a bit. Surely everyone knows what cookies are but when we feed them like we do here, it is very different. All the information we give is very well mixed with the butter of the comedy”.
An exposed privacy
Adrián Lastra begins his work with a broken heart in a psychologist's office. There begins a string of reflections, lessons and confessions. We see a character with almost no presence in social networks that little by little begins to witness the power they have. It falls into their networks, never better said, with the publication of a selfie under the watchful eye of an influencer (played by Juan Antonio Lumbreras) who turns that photo into a single reflection (too much) retouched by Adrián Lastra. For things like this, the Madrid actor thinks that the platforms have affected more worse than better. “I whiten my teeth, I make my eyes clearer, I'm going to remove this curve or put this one on. (…) Why do we dedicate ourselves to putting filters on. You don't look like you, and the worst is that's what it's about, that you don't look like yourself. ”
“What hurts me the most about social networks is that people want to be someone else ”
Lastra insists that “your imperfection is perfect” even though they want to sell us just the opposite. That we are a mirror of people who are not us. “What hurts me the most about social networks is that people want to be someone else. They follow an imitation pattern to be Chiara Ferragni or María Pombo”, says Lastra, “and it seems that it is It's very easy to be an influencer. You see your Instagram and that of an influencer and it can be the same. Forget the number of followers, the filters are the same. ” The reality, on the other hand, is very different. How many people can be influencers or streamers like Ibai. Or how many people become footballers of all the children who want to be footballers, he wonders.
Question: Has your relationship with social networks changed since Privacy?
Answer: “From Privacy, I am not so active anymore. Maybe it is also for the moment that I am, you do this interview with me in two months and I tell you that I am doing the same. But now I am not very focused on networks I have not changed my behavior regarding the use of cookies or to uninstall the devices that I have connected to Wi-Fi at home. I have not changed it because as I put these details in the end I am left alone, I am left in solitary confinement”.
“Yes it has given me more rejection, more fear. With the algorithms of Instagram, for example, there are times that you wonder why this content works and this one does not. You start asking yourself questions about the algorithm and it gives me one thing … What lists are they (the platforms) that make part of my time focused on knowing how to fight Instagram. And I don't want to. The one that takes 10 minutes from my life seems unbearable to me. ”
P: You have a profession in which your life may be more exposed. How do social networks fit in your sector?
A: “There are many colleagues who are not active in social networks or who do not directly have social networks. They do not like networks and maybe they use it to publish 4 or 5 photos. One of my friends, and also an actress, has had WhatsApp since 2 years ago. In the end he had to fall into the trap that you have to have WhatsApp. ”
“For me, personally, I know that my life is exposed because we move in a world in which your private life is almost public. Not because of what you show on networks, but because you are on television and what you show on Instagram, Your house, your piano, your partner, your family, with that you are already exposing all these people. Should we hide? I have no idea. I know very well what I upload or not. I know what social networks are. I know there is a very large group of people who are following you to see 'your life'. Because you are not going to teach shit. ”
Q: Have you had any bad experiences with social networks?
A: “Look, I don't have a lot of hate on the networks I use, but a lot of hosts fell on me because of a video that I uploaded on Instagram in quarantine. We were confined and several groups could already go out, such as parents with their children. And they came out the images of many people together in the park. I got angry and uploaded a video saying my opinion. The one that fell on me. Friends wrote to me saying that it is very easy to say it because as you are famous and rich (he looks astonished) … but People live in 50 square meters and want to go out. What I have learned is that in social networks it is better to be quiet. And I love people who fight and stick with their hate. Not to me, I am lazy … “.
Should we turn off our phones?
At the end of the work, a “dialogue” between Adrián Lastra and Edward Snowden . And a question “Should we turn off our phones?” Knowing what to do after Privacy does not have an easy answer. For the dilemma of accepting the reality in which we live, or disconnecting completely. “They ask questions for you to get out of here saying what a shitty world we live in, or the world I live in has been exposed to me because I hadn't seen it 360 as I had seen it here. From here on I'm going to try solve things, “says Lastra.
And that Privacy only raises a small part of that reality that Lastra says that if we want to show it in its entirety, “we are screwed.” But it teaches enough that viewers learn something or ponder a lot.
Esteve Ferrer's adaptation does not answer the question of what to do with our privacy or with the information we give to technology companies, “we create doubts, we don't tell you what to do,” says Lastra, but it does raise questions on the air. “This is the world that you have, look in the mirror. It's not that bad either, is it?” .
