Mario Salazar

Mario Salazar

 

The first texts that I wrote were addressed to my teen love. I carved out rock after rock from my heart with my ballpoint pen, knowing that I came closer to her with every exposed rock of love. Well, those were the teen years, which is when one’s own life is extraordinarily dramatic. After the teens come the twenties and the thirties and perhaps the forties will get to me as well. My teenage love now lives in Uganda and my life no longer feels so dramatic. But the writing has remained. Writing, that is an inner conversation with one’s own heart. Confronting each other are the heart and life, which forces itself upon me as a tyranny of truth. Writing for me is an effort at reconciling the two, writing, which still tries to be a love letter every time.

Mario Salazar was born in 1980 in Berlin. After finishing school, he worked with children in institutional care in Spain and France. He did civil service at the Eibenhof psychiatric hospital in Berlin. Mario Salazar studied politics, North American and Latin American Studies at the Free University Berlin as well as at the Universidad de Chile. He then studied under Moritz Rinke, Michael Lentz and Jens Groß at Deutsche Literaturinstitut Leipzig. He was invited to the Workshop Days of Vienna’s Burgtheater in 2010. His piece Alles Gold was glänzt (What shines is gold) was awarded the radio play prize at the Stückemarkt of the Berlin Theater festival in 2011. The play premiered during the 2012/13 season by Milan Peschel at Theater Heidelberg. Mario Salazar is currently working on a drama Hieron and a novel in letters Hans. He lives in Berlin. He participated in the Heidelberger Stückemarkt in 2012 with Am Leben werden wir nicht scheitern (We shall not fail to live). His new piece Die Welt mein Herz (This World My Heart) will be premiered in January 2014 in the city theatre of Cologne.

Theatre works
2011 / Heimat; first staged: 24.3.2011, Berlin.
2012 / Man müsste auf dem Mond leben, um die Erde zu verstehen (Irgendwo müsste es schön sein); first staged: 21.6.2012, Bochum.
2012 / Alles Gold was glänzt; first staged: 22.11.2012, Heidelberg.
2013 / Hieron – Vollkommene Welt; first staged: 30.8.2013, Berlin.
2013 / Am Leben werden wir nicht scheitern; first staged: 15.11.2013, Berlin.
2014 / Die Welt mein Herz; first staged: 31.1.2014, Cologne.

Die Welt mein Herz
 THIS WORLD MY HEART is a theatre series in four parts. Each part is staged on one evening. All the parts together make up one very long theatre evening. Mexican immigrant Conhielo explains in South Bronx how an analogue social network will bring him wealth and fortune. In Berlin Moabit, two senior citizens Irmgard and Waltraud are planning to celebrate the 112th birthday of their dog Willi. In Buenos Aires-Retiro Amanda, an epileptic, turns her back on her pimp known as Rey de Retiro, to go back to her house, one shack further. Janine Baade from Stendal goes on a world tour and writes E-mails to the father of her murdered newborn child. The father, meanwhile, is running through New York and hopes to be able to forget the murder of his child.
characters: 3 women / 6 men

– Extracts from Die Welt mein Herz

Conhielo and Zapata are sitting in a diner somewhere in South Bronx/New York City.
Conhielo has ordered dinner for himself and Zapata. Steve Melzow from South Stendal/Germany is sitting at the next table.

CONHIELO
Zapata, today’s the big day, the day on which I’m beginning a new life. I’ve got a new business idea and I’m going to rake in the moolah. I’m going to make enough for me and following generations, listen, but don’t tell anyone. I need to do this subversively, from the underground. You mustn’t tell anyone because otherwise someone’s going to steal my idea and get rich. From my idea, my money, understand?

ZAPATA
I’m going back to Mexico. I’ll take Princesa and the baby and go back. I’ll marry her. America’s not going to get me anywhere.

CONHIELO
You’re not doing this right, Zapata. You don’t have ideas. Look at me, I have ideas.
I have new ideas every day. You need ideas in America. You should’ve had ideas even before you came here, Zapata.

ZAPATA
Getting over here was one of the best Ideas I’ve ever had.

CONHIELO
And now you don’t have any? You should do this like me. Be patient. Let the ideas come to you. Relax and wait. Spend the whole day in bed and see what happens. Sometime or the other your brain’s going to give you an idea.

ZAPATA
I don’t think there are many ideas inside my brain which I could use.

CONHIELO
Hombre, you’re just having a bad day. So what? Happens to everyone. You’ll be fine tomorrow.

ZAPATA
I’m not having a bad day. I’m having a bad life. And that’s not going to stop. Today feels just as shitty like yesterday and yesterday was just as shitty like the day before and I can’t remember the day before that, that’s how shitty that day would’ve been. Must’ve been so bad that I’ve forgotten it. You can’t make a good life out of so many bad days.

CONHIELO
Your life’s not going to get better when you go back to Mexico. You’ll never have a good life without ideas, wherever you go. What’ll you do in Mexico? You can be poor and die anywhere in the world but you can get rich only here in America.

ZAPATA
I don’t want to get rich. I want to lead a quiet life with Princesa and the baby. Something to eat, something to drink, a small wooden shack, piece of land. Nothing more.

CONHIELO
What about your mother? She’s going to kill herself when you tell her that you’re going back. She nearly got her head shot off at the border so you can go to college here, become a real gent with a degree, a good job and pockets full of money..

ZAPATA
And do I have a college degree? Do I have a job? Do I have pockets full of money? I’ve not become a real gent.

PRI comes into the diner. Conhielo has called up PRI and invited her for dinner.

PRI
What are you vagabonds doing here? You want to eat gringo food? Hey Zapata, I thought you want to save money for the baby. One dinner less for you is one dinner more for the baby, you said.

CONHIELO
It’s all on me. Today’s the big day. Today is when my new life begins. I’m gonna get rich. I got a business idea. Zapata knows.

ZAPATA
I know nothing.

CONHIELO
Did we or didn’t we talk about ideas?

ZAPATA
You’ve told me nothing about your business idea.

PRI
What business idea? You have a business idea?

CONHIELO
Sure, I have a business idea. You want to know my business idea? Sure, you do. So let’s start this way: What do you see?

PRI
What?

CONHIELO
We here Zapata, you, I, what’s this?

ZAPATA
We’re idiots.

CONHIELO
We are not idiots, Zapata, we are a group. And why are we a group?

PRI
So we can all eat for free and you can tell us your business idea.

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