Sylvia Majo Ichillumpa She was 31 years old when she discovered acting, at which point she gave up her career as a systems analyst at a bank to become an actress. With a very good star and without requiring a representative, he was part of successful projects such as “The other liberators” (2021), “Two sisters” (2020), “In the skin of Alicia” (2019), “Ojitos hechiceros” ( 2018), “Mystery” (2005) and “That’s life” (2004), to name the best known.
Now, it’s brand new “A bloody secret”a tragicomedy directed by Aldo Miyashiro, which deals with prejudice, something that she has experienced firsthand, according to what she told in an interview with La República.
Sylvia Majo stars in Aldo Miyashiro’s new play, “A Damn Secret.” Photo: La Pasión Cultural Association/Instagram
—What is your character in “A Damn Secret”?
—It’s Noemí, I work in a house as a domestic worker and my husband is Jesús, Reinaldo Arenas, the great teacher.
At the beginning, my character is very passive, calm, but then he brings out the demon he has inside, the claw, the strength.
—“A Damn Secret” is a play about prejudice. Which ones have you suffered?
—Make fun of my surname (Ichillumpa), which is from Cusco, and has a wonderful meaning: “The one who takes great steps.”
Also at work, many people confuse the character with the person.
-What happened?
—In a play, where I was also an employee, very submissive, there was an actress who thought I was like that. It was the first time I had worked with her.
He started treating me with the toe of his shoe. She would even say, “Just in case, don’t talk to me because I have a different social level. It’s not personal, but I don’t like to make friends with anyone because of my social level.”
Once, I remember he asked me for a perfume. I had bought my Chanel 5. “Ah, but is it sneakers?” she asked. “It’s original,” I told him. And she threw it everywhere.
—With “A Damn Secret”, what do you want to achieve?
—It’s something very personal because of the theme of classicism, because I’ve lived it and perhaps I still live it.
I have felt displaced by my last name, because I am not white, blonde, because I am a womanI have always been in some way living it, it is that mistreatment.
My character (Noemí) is not this employee who allows herself to be mistreated, she is not an employee who is mistreated and answers, confronts, reveals herself. That is what I like and that is what should exist, why are we going to leave? Everyone has their job and everyone is necessary.
—Do you explode in “A Damn Secret?
“You’re going to see me tear myself apart completely.” Not only me, there are several monologues that are very strong. I do not practice the emotional memory technique, I use other techniques to get there.
I have worked with students of extreme poverty in a program of the Ministry of Labor for several years, in San Juan de Lurigancho and El Salvador. There I have seen many very strong cases of physical violence. I don’t know why this work brings back memories of them, all that feeling comes out in rehearsals.
—How about having Aldo Miyashiro as director?
—It’s very good, because it gives us the freedom to create. The actors, the actresses, we are creative beings, creators, they don’t stop us.
There are directors who put you in the middle and tell you to move, do it like that, like puppets, I don’t like working that way and Aldo gives us that freedom.
—Was it difficult to start as an actress at 31?
-Not really, no. I went to study, the first year I did a casting directed by Aristóteles Picho. Then I did “Black Butterfly”, a small role and then theater. The truth is I’ve been lucky.
I once played a 70-year-old woman in “Nuestra historia”, a series on TV Peru. Everyone believed that she was that age. That was in 2015.
But I’m happy because I can play 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. That’s why I’m an actress, I don’t stop transforming myself and I’ve never felt limits.
“Do you also work as an actor’s director?”
—I went to the Tito Catacora casting, he accepted me and asked me if I could coach the actors who speak Quechua and Aymara. I know some Quechua.
Being an actor’s director means that I am by the director’s side throughout the shoot, helping with the acting. There are no Quechua-speaking actors, Aymara. There are very few.
Are you where you imagined you would be?
I never even imagined being an actress. I don’t even think about where I want to be tomorrow. I live the present as an actress should, in the theater, and that’s what they mean when they say they have a presence on stage, because you’re only present and it means living in the moment, listening to your partner, getting into what’s happening.
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