CAMAGÜEY.- Kike Quiñones loves any type of stew and broth. Of the roast pork, he prefers the part of the ribs. Given a choice, choose beer over soft drink. His favorite person is called Rodrigo, he is his son. He also has a ritual with the stage, but we'll talk about that after we find out the clues for the show he presents here with our Symphony and other guests.
The Sinfonía con de nada project had been in the drawer for about fifteen years because from the first idea it seemed to him with a great orchestra. For the Fiesta de la Cubanía in 2017, the pianist Frank Fernández asked him for suggestions regarding a concert in Bayamo, there he met the young Javier Millet, the director of a group like the one he had imagined for his own. They started, stopped due to the pandemic and resumed until opening in October 2022.
“The show has to do with dreams, with people's desire to grow. Perhaps the metaphor could be that one, even in dreams, is capable of doing what one sets out to do, ”he recounted during a break in the essay.
─From what has been reviewed, you evoke classics of universal and Cuban music. "To Berlin by car", for example, takes us to Adalberto Álvarez and, therefore, to Camagüey...
─You can't put on a musical show in Cuba if it doesn't go through our music. The script started only from the treatment of the classics: Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bach… Then he suggested the parody of “A Bayamo en coche” for the tribute to Adalberto; For Cuban concert music we decided to merge María la O and Cecilia Valdés with a fragment from the show Laughing is a very serious thing that I worked with Iván Camejo, Pagola la paga and a group of colleagues.
“The show is full of subtle nods to vernacular theater, to silent cinema because it also uses audiovisuals, to great musicians like Michael Jackson, to Hitchcock's cinema. It is symphonic and at the same time classical because of the game with those lines”.
─There is also direct recognition to Les Luthiers. The recent announcement of the withdrawal of that group reinforces the connotations of the Cuban offering. What do you think?
─Yes, speaking of classics Les Luthiers is one. I say it with all the letters. It is the most important Ibero-American comedy group of all time. There is no other that can be compared to it, not even by far. An important reference for our generation of humorists, in fact, I believe that the movement of the eighties was greatly influenced by Les Luthiers, and that of the nineties as well. In my shows I pay tributes. I did it to the teacher Luis Carbonell, to different personalities. Now, the number The daughter of Scipio goes in particular by Daniel Rabinovich, with whom I was a friend.
─Sinfonía con de nada is promoted as one-person but with guests, who are we talking about?
─It started as a sole proprietorship and has grown. Things were happening to me. I invited Michel Pentón, who works as a utility at different times. I helped myself with four Bayamo's musicians who act, a special seasoning. There is the actress Mireyita Abreu, from the duo Caricare. The show has a lot of experiment, to try and merge, that they can explore other potentialities.
─I have never been to the theater in Bayamo, but I read Marilyn Garbey's criticism of wasting space in La Jiribilla. Would it happen here too?
─I respect the criteria a lot and Marilyn is a very authoritative voice, what happens is that as a tribute to the vernacular she takes the frontality in the representation, that is, there is no scenic search. This type of theater is based more on the enunciation than on the physical action; and that's why I didn't worry. You will see it here as it is, so the criticism will continue.
“From their perspective it seems good to me, it is logical that it could have been arranged in a different way, but for that the orchestra would have to be arranged in a different way and I wanted it to be present all the time. The musicians become actors and spectators. Scipio's daughter is very frontal all the time, Cecilia de la O equal. My moments tend to stand up comedy, although I play the character of the conductor. Michel's entries are ephemeral as well. Everything is worked with the premise of presenting the Cuban vernacular”.
─You bring the heart of the show with the people of Bayamo, but how have you fared with the people of Camagüey?
─First I have to ponder the work of Javier Millet, who masters very well everything that we are doing, then he advances a stretch with the orchestra. One orchestra is not the same as another, nor are the people, nor the musical concepts. That is nourishing me in an extraordinary way. I have found very professional musicians. They are more daring than me because they dare to be directed. In a rehearsal a girl told Javier: "What Kike is doing in front of the orchestra is very well understood"...
─Then, you can dedicate yourself to directing an orchestra…
─I don't think… That takes a lot of study. It has really been very nice to exchange with the musicians from Camagüey. They are facing those scores almost at first glance, it just so happens that they are very good. The orchestra sounds very good. It sounds different from the one in Bayamo. That professional level makes it more solid. The process before laying has been rich.
─We have seen you on television with the program El humor se piensa. That says about your defense that it is also being investigated. How far or close are we from having true awareness about it?
─Creators and audiences are very far away. The creators because there is a new generation that has studied a little more, and has a contemporary conception of humor that is not the one we generally defend. That is shaped by the fact that they are students, many university graduates, as happens every time there is a surge of comedians. A group studies, it excels; but in another, nothing disposable in terms of numbers, it does not happen.
"Regarding the public, they underestimate the subject of humor because it simplifies it to the fact of laughter, laughter or dealing with lurid, sharp topics... Humor has those things but it has others, and in that study, in that shredding inside the mechanisms that produce humor in Cuba, we are far from what is happening in the world today, from the importance that is given to it in the world.
“A few years ago I did a master's degree in Cuban cultural processes. My theme is dedicated to humor. Now I am going to enter a doctorate also that has to do with this, but we are far away. You say I'm going to look for Cuban bibliography on humor and that talks about the thought around humor and that doesn't exist in Cuba”.
─You were director of an institution and they aspire forma you to be dean. Can you tell us something?
─That is in the proposal phase. I am very honored that they think of me. The faculty has been directed by relevant personalities, including one of my teachers, Armando Suárez del Villar. I respect that job a lot. It is complicated from the methodological and program point of view, it takes a lot of preparation. Things have never been easy for me.
“I spent 10 years directing the Center for the Promotion of Humor, which is terrible, but it became easier for me after I directed people of my generation with whom I had obvious communication, to work together, exchange together, experience needs together and reach achievements together. There was an understanding that flowed without many problems, although there were many problems. Now this deanery is something else, and I'm looking at it with time and from afar still. I would prefer not to speak in depth about this topic yet.”
─Has it happened to you that you say something but you are not taken seriously because they see the character in you and not the natural Kike?
─Girl, I don't know why, but I've been lucky in that sense. People listen to me when I say my criteria. Maybe because I'm one of the comedians that normally doesn't tend to make jokes in places that aren't the stage. I have fun, but I try to distance myself from the Kike in the scene with the other, more timid, often closed in on himself. People listen to me and take me seriously, perhaps because my eyes express a lot when I speak.
- Do you have any superstitions?
─Yes. I cannot enter the scene from any other place than from the left and making almost like a fan towards the center. It is within the theatrical techniques, but suddenly in a show you cannot get everyone out of the same direction, but I always say that the left is mine.
─The best comedian for you is… which one?
─The one that makes me laugh and think.
─What do you spend your free time doing?
─To play ball.
─To continue along the theme of tastes, tell me about your flavor and your color...
─I had never thought about my favorite flavor but it must be because of the ice cream. And since I am ecumenical, I like all the colors, they all have beautiful things.
─And from Camagüey?
─Your public seduces me, invites me to come always. I hope you will join me and have a good time at the Camagüey Coliseum.
- Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez