Antonio Banderas makes his debut as a television producer: “I am losing money here but I want it to be a public service”:

This musical program is in black and white.

It opens with a theatrical monologue of two, three, four, up to five minutes, delivered by Antonio Banderas, sitting on a kind of stage, illuminated by a single bulb and focused by cinema lenses.

When he finishes reciting, the actor does not leave but breaks into singing

Life Is a Bowl of Cherries

, a classic popularized by Ethel Merman in the Broadway musical magazines of the 1930s and since then overshadowed by other gems from the great American songbook.

About minute seven, when María Casado, the presenter associated with TVE until now and current president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, appears to announce the protagonist of the program, it is already clear that rarity is not a game of

Black-and-white scenes

, (which Amazon Prime Video releases on December 15), is his usual tone.

The musical program, through which Vanesa Martín, David Bisbal, Pablo Alborán, Pasión Vega, Rozalén and Pablo López will pass, is rare because he can afford it.

It is the first television project of Teatro Soho, the television, theatrical and educational megaproject that Banderas has created in Malaga and with which he intends to produce things that are not necessarily never seen before, but things that are different from what is usual in the private sector.

“I would like us to have a very independent, very free style, where the search for excellence prevails.

I don't like cheap, easy, vulgar things ... I don't want that old-fashioned journalism, which enters through the back door to achieve a goal and they are giving you a little stab in the back ”, promises the actor, in a conversation on Zoom.

“I would like that although we act on the private, that it was a public service.

That it serves to reflect, to learn things about the world that we have lived, life, existence.

I would like to interview people who speak from the independence of freedom.

Playing flamenco in a way different from what has been seen so far ”.

María Casado, also in a telematic conversation, summarizes the methodology that Banderas is applying to everything that comes out in Soho: “Antonio always looks for excellence.

Not only on television and theater, but in all the decks that he opens.

The first day I arrived he told me: 'Dream big and we'll see where for everything.

But he dreams big that very magical things come from there ”.

Excellence is one of Banderas' favorite interview subjects.

But it intersects with another, more obvious: excellent is expensive.

Here the actor pauses: “I have to lay a foundation and make certain things clear: I do believe in public culture.

There are certain people who do need public money to carry out their projects.

Young people, artists to take care of… But I want to do it from the private sphere.

I personally.

I think I can do it, I have a name that allows me to open certain doors and interest certain people and entities that do want to bet on a project.

My experience is unique and I cannot put it on other people.

But I like that I only have to respond to the public: if we do things well, let them applaud me and if not, then do it.

Nothing else.

Not having to be with the photo, and with this and that and with what is beyond.

That does come a lot from North American culture ”.

Here he begins to interpret an imaginary scene: “There is no North American National Theater, a North American National Ballet, in America.

They don't believe in it, everything is private.

Broadway, Hollywood ”.

He pretends to enter a place and be amazed when he walks through the door: “I was going to the San Francisco opera.

You walk in and the first thing you see is a marble plaque with a bunch of names written in gold.

Who are they?

Well, the families who pay to have an opera house here.

A list of 40 families with 40 names that if they want to see Barenboim, they pay for it;

If they want to see Domingo, they pay for it.

Everything is private and that generates very strong competition, and also very powerful results come out.

It is true that there are other models, such as France, that supports its culture very strongly from the State.

But,

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I personally am interested in all that learning that I also received in the United States.

The North American public theater that has certain institutions behind it, that model interested me.

Can this be done in Spain?

It's possible?".

Impossible should not be because you are sitting here describing a project with ramifications in various arts and that has already achieved the feat of representing in Malaga

A Chrous Line

, the very American musical mega-success of Marvin Hamlisch that won the Pulitzer for Drama in 1975. “We generate a company that is not for profit. I lose money here. We are not going to fool ourselves. Because yes, because there is no other way to do it. If I wanted to make money, in

A Chorus Line

I wouldn't have put 22 musicians in the orchestra. I would have put in 7 and prerecorded everything else. But I lose quality. 'Is a harp playing here? There's a harpist going. ' 'But Antonio, what…'. 'A harpist'. 'And the xylophone, a keyboard can do it.' 'No, bring a guy with a xylophone.' Maybe the public doesn't intellectualize that, they don't know what's going on, but at the back of their heads there is something of quality that comes out of all that and they feel it. I notice it. Because that was written like that and is done like that. That is what I want to go to, that purity. Whatever the show, well done is something else. And we are not going to do only musicals, we are going to attack normal theater, and I am looking at the possibility of expanding a second theater, with schools for theater training, training for actors ... Television sets. But for me it is essential not to depend on anyone, to depend only on our own ideas. If we crash, we crash ”.