Paz Padilla visits Lanzarote with 'The Humor of My Life' on May 6th

The presenter and comedian will be at Jameos del Agua, being "the first major peninsular production to be presented on all the islands"

April 24 2023 (10:18 WEST)
Updated in April 24 2023 (10:20 WEST)
Paz Padilla in a moment of her show 'The humor of my life' (Provided)
Paz Padilla in a moment of her show 'The humor of my life' (Provided)

The presenter and comedian Paz Padilla has announced her visit to Lanzarote on May 6th and 7th, as part of her tour of the Canary Islands. The theatrical event in which she will present 'The Humor of My Life' will take place in the Jameos del Agua.

The play will tour various scenic spaces in the Canary Islands until May 21st, "it is the first major peninsular production to be presented on each and every one of the islands of the archipelago".

"Canarians are very generous and always welcome foreigners with open arms. I have always been very happy in the Canary Islands and that is why I wanted 'The Humor of My Life' to tour all the islands. We will wait for La Graciosa to have an auditorium to return on another occasion," says Padilla, whose show has already been seen by more than one hundred thousand spectators in Spain.

The theatrical production 'The Humor of My Life' is inspired by the book of the same title, a number one bestseller written by the artist herself in 2021 and published by Harper Collins, in which she narrates her life experience accompanying her husband, Antonio Vidal, in the process of his illness and death.

"It is a work of love, of accompaniment and of the acceptance of death through my experience, personal experience and search through the resource of humor. With humor things hurt less. We live tormented by death. In the play I say that if we are afraid of death we will die every day, but if we lose our fear we will only die once. Talking about death is something that nobody likes because we live in a society in which we hide our corpses. We don't want to be aware that we will all die, so we have to make that reality visible without dramas," explains Padilla, who adds that "this play, which is a roller coaster of emotions, is very reflective and that is why the audience when they leave the function leave thinking about what to do with their lives".

Paz Padilla recalls that when Antonio fell ill, her mother had died shortly before. "People approached me and spoke to me with fear and anguish. I calmed them down. That shocked me. I saw that their concept of death was very different from mine. When Antonio gets sick and they tell me that he has months to live, I try to help him, but I didn't know how, because I had never faced such a hard situation. I wanted him to go through that process in the best possible way".

"I wanted him to accept his death and die in peace and calm. Then I started looking for help. I took refuge in Rafael Santandreu and the psychiatrist Luis Gutiérrez Rojas, among others... I spoke with many people linked from Buddhism to Christianity, because I needed to understand death, understand the process that Antonio was going to go through and what would happen to me once the final moment arrived. I understood that I had to survive after his death".

The actress and comedian confesses that at the end of each performance of 'The Humor of My Life', which is directed by Pablo Barrera, "we end up full of adrenaline, because it is two hours of extreme intensity. The narrative rhythm is very intense and emotional. I relive what my story was in each of the functions".

Emotional Nudity

"People ask me how I do this play in which I undress emotionally. I do it because I draw on my craft. Pablo Barrero helped me a lot in this challenge. I was more used to the register of humor, but not of drama. He told me either we work on this from the craft or you are going to burst. That's how it was.

"People think: Paz Padilla, comedian and monologue, but the play is not a monologue in the strict sense, because it stirs you inside; through my story I give you my hand and make you live situations that will make you leave the theater different, without pain and anguish, although it is inevitable that you will consider things. What people need is to suffer less than they have to," she says.

The producer and composer Juan Fernández de Valderrama (member of the group Materia Prima, whom she has known for many years), accompanies Padilla on stage at all times, performing an acoustic selection of musical pills and well-known songs during the performance.

"I am a popular person and I wanted people to hear my version, this other way of seeing death. If you think about death you value life. We all say 'when I retire', 'when the girl grows up', 'when I have money'... We are always when, when, when... and so life passes us by. We wait for things to happen when what happens is here and now. Only when life gives you a slap in the face is when you think that this is serious," adds Paz Padilla.

"There is no truce in this theatrical work that enjoys moments of intensity and crazy freshness", says a statement issued by the production company of Paz Padilla's tour. During the performance, the comedian allows herself to laugh "shamelessly and without any hesitation even at her own shadow, but at the same time providing the public with some more than healthy impressions about the pains that the death of a loved one always causes us".

"I still think it is very sad to lose a loved one, that it is never forgotten and always hurts. I cry every day, because I miss him. It doesn't mean that his death and departure don't hurt me, but that I accept that he has to go, which is different. Accepting is not forgetting. Forgetting never stops hurting you. But if you remember with love and gratitude, it hurts less," says the Andalusian actress.

Paz Padilla's Canary Island tour with 'The Humor of My Life' will arrive at the Asabanos Cultural Center of El Hierro on May 12th and 13th. On May 14th, it will also be presented at the Adeje Auditorium, while at the Teatro Circo de Marte in Santa Cruz de La Palma it will do so on May 19th and 20th, to conclude at the Insular Auditorium of the capital of La Gomera on the 21st of that month.

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