Surely there will be someone out there who thinks that Fran Perea and Victor Elias They are really brothers. The truth is that they were in Los Serranos more than two decades ago and that, since then, they have shared their lives in different projects until they became great friends.
After a couple of years focused on One+One is 7 which reviews the themes of that first Fran Perea album linked to the series, They have just released a play in which Fran directs and Víctor acts in a kind of monologue in which he reviews the shadows and lights of his life until he reaches where he is now.
#ISustained. Sonata for broken toy has a text of Pablo Diaz Morilla and, for now, we can see it at the Teatro Luchana in Madrid. We have talked about that with them, also about Los Serrano or Víctor’s future wedding with Ana Guerra.
#ISustained. Sonata for broken toyWhen did this idea arise?
Victor Elias: It was an idea that we had been developing since after the pandemic, more or less, and I think that, although Fran and I have been together in the world of music for a long time, redoing the One + One is 20, this year has brought us closer on the business side and we said, well, let’s get into this since we are together. That’s how we started to think about everything.
Fran, you lead. After many years working together there is a lot of trust, does that make it easier or more difficult to put oneself under each other’s orders?
Fran Perea: It was super easy, very, very easy. We respect and admire each other a lot and everything has been very smooth. The text arrived a little late and I had to give them a slap on the wrist at one point because they pushed him or we didn’t arrive, but beyond that, we love each other very much and treat each other with a lot of respect and it has been super easy to work with Víctor .
About putting your life on stage, with truths and lies, did you think about it a lot?
GO: No, what did happen to me is that we gave the format a spin, or I gave it a spin in my head because I had imagined something very ‘stand up comedy’, in a humorous tone and thanks to Fran we have brought it to fruition. a much more beautiful and poetic theatrical part. After talking to the author, having thousands of conversations with him, for hours and hours, when I read the text, I felt like it wasn’t my life. It was difficult for me to recognize myself. It is being a personal therapeutic process. The other day, Natalia Sánchez commented that it was not only therapy for me but for the entire public.
You say Víctor that you didn’t recognize your life seeing it from the outside, but for you Fran, what has surprised you the most about that life?
FP: Yes, I knew everything. Me and Víctor have accompanied each other a lot in life and we have been very connected, sometimes more disconnected, but we have always kept track of each other, we have taken care of each other and we were aware of everything. What I insisted a lot on was finding a playwright and telling his life in a more poetic way. The facts, which can be told as a ‘stand up comedy’ as he said or try to give it a little more depth through a dramatic text, a little more elaborate. Sometimes we don’t realize that what happens to us happens to many people and the fact of bringing Víctor’s life to the stage will help many people empathize with Víctor’s life and recognize themselves there. That is the great magic of theater and that is why that story had to be told like this.
Victor, now that you see your life from the outside, could you say that you like how it has been until now?
GO: Yes I like it. What I am is grateful to my life because each act, which, furthermore, the play is divided into acts, has led me to the last act. I don’t know how it would have been otherwise, maybe it would have ended in that last act as well, but not with the conviction now that I like what I have.
Fran, which of those acts do you empathize with the most?
FP: I empathize with everything in a brutal way because there are many parallels with my life. But perhaps the last act is the one I enjoy the most. It is where the function relaxes and Víctor tells where he is after all that life process. I am also very happy with where I am now and I feel very identified with my little brother.
In recent years we had you focused more on music, what has it been like to return to that role as an actor?
GO: I am still 100% in music. This return was a bit necessary for me as an actor. I never decided to be a musician or actor, things have happened. Yes, I was clear that I wanted to focus a lot on music to achieve that path that as an actor I had already half achieved. It’s been a brutal experience. You can do both things that are ways of expressing yourself. Going back to acting with a project of this magnitude that I had never faced before, is being quite cool. It has been like a quite important master’s degree.
The title talks about a broken toy, have any of you ever felt that way?
FP: Hahahaha… yes, of course, obviously, that’s why we’re talking about it here. When you have success like the one we had in Los Serrano, it accompanies you for the rest of your life and many times it is not how it accompanies you, because you place it over time, but there are people who have many prejudices or who If he doesn’t see you on TV it seems like you’re dead. Sometimes you have the feeling that nothing more than what you do is valued. You have to protect yourself and I think that we have known how to protect ourselves quite well, but that doesn’t mean we want to miss the opportunity to tell our point of view about that feeling, that feeling that they are using you for a while and then, if you are not there again, if you don’t have new colors, you’re no longer worth it. We want to dedicate our entire lives to this and we are doing it and we feel quite satisfied.
GO: The other day I was talking about it with Ana, with my girl. She told me that I had never felt like a broken toy. The show makes a lot of reference to the fact that the broken toy is not the toy, it is how people see you. It’s people who force you to feel this way because you could be doing something else. I am lucky that with music I have done quite well and I have been seen at a mainstream level in music, but if I were in a more hidden part people would wonder what happened to him or what happened to him. Broken toy is not the individual, it is society that sees that broken toy.
So, if you have felt like broken toys at some point, the message is that those toys are rebuilt, because they are not doing badly for you.
FP: What needs to be changed is the verb, what was, no, who is Víctor Elías? or Who is Fran Perea? If you are willing to investigate, you are sure to get wonderful answers.
Fran, what was the last thing you said to him before going on stage at the premiere and the first thing after leaving?
GO: First of all, I had notes.
FP: The entire weight of the performance falls on Víctor, but he is accompanied on stage by Javier Márquez, a wonderful actor and I told them to communicate a lot with the people because it is essential that people understand what they are being told and that they have the complicity that they have on stage. When leaving… there are always notes because if I am there, what one wants is for the work to get better.
Thursdays in Madrid until the end of January, but with the possibility of seeing it in other places afterwards?
GO: Yes. Now we are in Madrid on Thursdays and we have had the immense luck to fill up the first Thursday and last night this second Thursday was sold out and the rest are going quite well. And then the idea is to rotate it.
What seemed most complicated to me about this project was that you fit your agendas together. How did you achieve it?
FP: Hahahaha… it was crazy. All this is achieved by having less time for leisure and rest. Now that we have started, we can lower the piston a little, but it has been worth it.
GO: Sleeping very little. We have been getting up very early for several weeks. The good thing is that another very core project in our life, we share it and that part has been easy.
Being you two, live music couldn’t be missing, what sounds in this work?
GO: Several things sound. Sounds I learned with you…a little bit of the music I grew up with. My father was an artist and sang boleros and I grew up with that. A song of mine that I recorded a few years ago plays, at the beginning of the show. Sounds Alfonsina and the sea, Crazy life…a little bit of the music I grew up with.
FP: We are constantly taking a tour of the year we are in and the music that was playing. It’s a bit WECB, you’ll like it.
GO: Classic.
You have had a successful year with the 20-year album, what is the best thing this album has given you?
GO: We believe that the best is yet to come. There are many very nice things left. The best thing has been meeting each other again, being able to count on the collaboration of other artists who you see live the project with the same affection that you have for it and that is something very nice. We knew the love for the series, because they tell us it every day, but the fact that the music also has that trace of affection left has been something very cool. Now we have La Riviera on February 23, Seville, Valencia…
FP: Being able to tell this story with Víctor who has been part of it, we grew up there and being able to produce these songs with him has been very fun, we have had a great time. Having all the people there has been amazing how they got along. It is all surrounded by very beautiful things and there are surprises. A great one to end the year that is not far away. It’s a big surprise. And there is 2024 left and I think we are going to have a great time spinning this.
What was the last message received in the Los Serrano WhatsApp group?
FP: Some of Resins.
GO: Resins insulting someone, right?
FP: Indeed, a Resines sticker that he himself sends.
Víctor, which artist from this country do you have left to work with?
GO: With many… artists that fascinate me, after fulfilling one of my dreams which was to play and be able to learn and share with Pablo López, Vanesa Martín and Pablo Alborán are like the other two artists that I have in that limbo of greatness. Later I would tell you Alejandro Sanz, but I always say that he amazes me because the one I really love is Alfonso Pérez, his pianist. If I were the pianist with Alejandro Sanz, there would not be Alfonso Pérez, who is the one I like.
Between project and project, you have found time for a wedding and I speak in plural because I understand that one gets married and the other officiates, right?
GO: This slipped my tongue the other day… hahahaha… the thing is that right now, Ana thinks the same as me, it’s something secondary because until Christmas is over, Ana finishes releasing her EP next week, the house is the house of the crazy ones, we meet to take the dogs out at night, basically. We’ve both been caught up in the same period of work and we’ve said, okay, we’re getting married, we’re clear about it, but we’re going to finish the job and then we’ll get on with it. And we will call Fran, she is clear about it.
FP: It gives me enormous happiness.
