ciarlatani

1. agg. colloq. Those who pretend what they are not or do not feel.
2. n. e f. desus. Theater actor, especially comedy.

1.
Ciarlatani tells the story of two characters connected to the world of cinema and theater.
Anna Velasco is an actress whose career is at a standstill. After acting in small productions of classic works, she now works as a pilates instructor and performs children’s theater on weekends. Between television soap operas and alternative shows, Anna is searching for the great role that will finally make her triumph.
Diego Fontana is a successful director of commercial films who is embarking on a major production: a series to be shot around the world, with international stars. An accident will lead him to face a personal crisis and rethink his career.
These two characters are connected by the figure of Anna’s father, Eusebio Velasco, a cult director of the ’80s, who disappeared and became isolated from the world.

2.
Ciarlatani are also several works in one: each of these stories has a particular style, tone, and form.
Anna’s story has an eminently cinematic style, with a narrator guiding us, where dream and reality blur. Diego’s story is a more classic theatrical work, represented in more realistic spaces. And finally, there is, as a pause or parenthesis, an autofiction in which the author of the work we are witnessing defends himself against accusations of plagiarism.
These stories are told in parallel, they feed off each other, they are mirrors of the same themes.
The whole is constructed with partially independent chapters, forming a structure closer to a novel than to theater. The intention is that Ciarlatani be an eminently theatrical narrative, but with a novelistic and cinematic aspiration.

3.
Finally, Ciarlatani is a comedy in which only four actors travel through dozens of characters, spaces, and times. A satire on the world of theater and audiovisuals, but also a reflection on success, failure, and the roles we play, inside and outside fiction.

Pablo Remón

Playbill