Dominican actress Cecilia García is drawing acclaim for her lead role in "Perdida Mente," an Argentine play about a judge who develops Alzheimer's disease. The production premiered successfully last weekend at the Gran Teatro del Cibao in Santiago de los Caballeros and opens this weekend at the Sala Ravelo of the Teatro Nacional Eduardo Brito in Santo Domingo, with a special guest performance on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.
Additional shows are scheduled for September 18 and 19 at the Sala Ravelo.
Written by Mariela Asensio and José María Muscari, the play made its Dominican debut on September 4 at the Sala Julio Alberto Hernández, also part of the Gran Teatro del Cibao complex. García stars alongside Olga Bucarelli, Karina Noble, Laura Rivera and Pachy Méndez, under the direction of Carlos Espinal, with a score by Dante Cucurullo.
A drama, not a comedy
García said she had many expectations going into the premiere because the subject had not been treated onstage in this way before. She said seeing the reaction of the Santiago audience, and their emotions and takeaways, meant a great deal to her.
She said the script performed in the Dominican Republic was identical to the original text, with only minor changes made because the Argentine version had leaned more local. She said the staging itself likely differed, since what she had seen online of the Argentine production looked very different and much more jocular, and she suggested the Argentine team had used comedy as a selling point rather than treating Alzheimer's as it should be treated.
She said her production approached the disease with seriousness and respect, and audiences responded in kind, even though there were plenty of moments when people laughed hard, because tragedy sometimes provokes laughter as a way of avoiding it. She stressed the piece is not a comedy but a drama with intelligent humor, and that in Perdida Mente, nobody is laughing at anything.
The character of María Inés
García plays María Inés, a judge accustomed to controlling everything who begins losing control of her own mind. She described the character as a woman who had to adapt to her new reality and found the courage to tell her loved ones, even though each of them reacted differently. She called María Inés a brave woman who, by the end, is surrounded by the same people she had from the start: a daughter she rarely saw, a sister she was not close to, an assistant and a legal representative who had always had her doubts.
She said building a character who swings between lucid moments and moments detached from reality was the greatest challenge of her career, since the line between the sublime and the ridiculous is extremely thin.
Asked which parts of María Inés felt closest to her own personality, García said the character's dominant, entrepreneurial side during her lucid moments resembled her own, though she has never experienced the lapses the character goes through. She said she noticed that even in those absences, the character always carried a hint of tenderness or concern for others.
Praise from critics
Critics have said the role "seems written for her." García said reading that assessment felt gratifying, moving and something of a responsibility, and that it confirmed she had not chosen the wrong vocation. She said the character showed her an instantaneous duplicity, with shifts that could happen within seconds, something she said she had never experienced in her professional life.
Five women, five stories
García pushed back on the idea that Perdida Mente is a play about Alzheimer's. She described it instead as a story about five women with five lives, in which Alzheimer's is an eccentric episode in the reality of a judge who had run all of those lives. She said the play does not treat the disease as theory or medicine but shows what happens in the mind of someone living with it and in the lives of those around her.
Memory, aging and human fragility
Reflecting on what she has learned about memory and aging through the role, García said growing older limits certain things while enlarging others, and that it reveals who your true friends are. She said human fragility can run even deeper in people who do not have the condition portrayed in the play.
She recalled a line her character speaks when gathering her loved ones to show them her condition, asking them never to let her stop being seen as a human being, since being human, the character says, means looking at the stars, sending rockets to the moon, singing, writing poetry and doing philosophy, and that they must never let her become nothing.
Asked how she thinks she would react if she ever faced a similar situation, García said losing one's memory must be a difficult process because it does not vanish all at once, and that people with the condition may feel more present than they appear while being unable to express it. She said her own memory has never failed her, although she has no family history of the disease.
Audience reactions and a 50-year career
García said many people who have lived through Alzheimer's with a relative have approached her after performances to share their stories, or their fear of facing it themselves one day. She said the play moves every kind of audience toward emotion, honesty and courage.
After more than 50 years on stage, she said she still gets nervous before every performance and would quit the day that stopped happening. She said she is not searching for particular roles at this stage of her career, but takes on characters she likes and has the freedom to turn down the ones she does not.
A message to families
García, who has also worked as a singer, comedian and producer, called Perdida Mente one of the biggest achievements of her artistic career, crediting Espinal's staging. She said the Argentine production had been the only one staged internationally in the play's ten years before it reached the Dominican Republic, first in Santiago de los Caballeros and now in Santo Domingo.
She urged families caring for someone with Alzheimer's not to miss the play, saying they would recognize themselves in many of its aspects. She said the production carries a raw honesty, comparing people with Alzheimer's to children, since neither hides the truth nor tells lies.
