The hall of the Ricardo Blume Theater, these days, has become a bar from the 50s. Between songs, laughter, drinks and tears, Billie Holiday tells his story. Mateo Chiarella directs Ebelin Ortiz in one of his best characters. “I have been waiting for Billie for several years,” she says about “The Twilight of a Star”, a co-production scheduled for 2020. “Confinement made us show ourselves as we are. More vulnerable, without any hesitation”.
With live piano, Ebelin Ortiz sings the songs of the voice of “Love me or leave me”, a survivor of gender violence and a benchmark in the fight against racism. “Billie is a woman from the last century, but she confronts us today,” says the actress who once spoke about her story about sexist violence. “Something peculiar happens to me, it is as if I crossed a threshold where the character possesses me. And when I walk through that door to go out to thank you, it’s like she’s gone. I feel that it is her through my eyes.”
Ebelin Ortiz has studied the life of the star of the jazz who died at the age of 44 due to liver cirrhosis. “What I believe is that sick people, with addictions, what they are looking for is how to heal their wounds. I think both drugs and violence were a kind of addiction for her. She knows perfectly well that this man mistreats her. But she has had such a bad time, she has been a victim since she was little, then she worked in a brothel”.
The actress maintains that learning about Holiday’s life is pertinent. “The play is important because these characters make us see ourselves as vulnerable people and empathize with us. I’ve heard women say: ‘I don’t know why she puts up with it’. But you don’t know how violence begins. They speak from that place of superiority. Recently they wanted to leave us without a Ministry for Women. We have been in confinement and rapes and disappearances of women have continued. So, gosh, don’t tell me that can’t happen in your house.”
“They call us crazy”
Holiday closed his concerts with the shocking “Strange fruit” (1939), the song considered the first to protest the civil rights of African Americans. Almost a century later, Ebelin Ortiz smiles and tells what he does to talk about a topic that he sees every day, even in the political class. “You have to be prepared, take enough vitamins and prepare the body. I met a person who believes in reverse racism. I told him reverse racism doesn’t exist. Obviously, it turned into a conversation and you talk about it to death. It is exhausting because one speaks and they call us crazy, exaggerated”.
The actress, who once ran for Congress, questions the delays before complaints. “Freddy Díaz and Wilmar Elera should be out of control.” She says that, even if she does not have a position, she will continue “doing politics all the time” despite the attacks on social networks. “They are forming a group to come and make a scandal of me at the theater. I feel that they have given me more importance than I have and I think they are the ones who move candidates who are rather stuck to the right, to the extreme. Both extremes are terrible – it was not necessary for Castillo to come out to realize it – but there was hope. Even if I get tired, we have to keep talking about these issues”. (Ortiz prefers not to comment on Diego Bertie, with whom she starred in Mamma Mia! And she considered him her “best partner.”)
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