Susana is a Spanish actress and theatre maker who has been living and working in the UK for over five years. She is passionate about theatre and people and wants to create work that has a positive impact in society. She is also a survivor of abuse.
Susana has vast experience as a stage actress. She joined Calatalifa Theatre touring company at age 15, which specialised in ancient Roman and Greek Theatre. She toured with them for over ten years, starring in plays like “Elektra” and “Oedipus King”.
In 2016, she joined Southampton based company, Gauntlet Theatre, with whom she’s premiered two shows, “The Night Blogger” (2016) and award-winning play “My Life Closed Twice” (2018/2019). The second was a fully devised, collaborative piece based on Gauntlet’s collaborator Joseph Hand’s life experiences of psychosis, which they performed at different festivals, including Brighton, Hastings and Gothenburg Fringe Festivals throughout 2018 and 2019.
Susana has recently finished her Master of Arts in Acting at University of East London. For her dissertation piece she created, wrote, directed and starred in “Breaking The Cycle”, an auto-ethnographic feminist performance that explores transgenerational trauma and gender violence.
Susana has recently joined the Performing Arts Department at Thomas Thallis School as an Educational Assistant, where she helps students with character work, writing and dance and is aspiring to become an Acting Coach and a Drama Teacher, while she keeps creating new theatre.
ARTWORK
“The Good Wife” an extract from “Breaking The Cycle”
Theatre/Performance
“The Good Wife” is a scene from “Breaking The Cycle”. It is the story of Susana’s grandmother and it represents what Susana believed her grandparents’ relationship was: a love story ruined by jealousy and possession, that led her grandmother to become a victim of physical and financial abuse in the hands of her husband in a society in which treating women this way was the norm.
“Breaking The Cycle” is a feminist autoethnographic play that represents the oppression suffered by Spanish women during and after Franco’s dictatorship, which explores power dynamics in relationships and the oppression of three women of three different generations of the same family, in a patriarchal society in which the three women become mere objects to satisfy the needs of their male oppressors.
Susana drew from her own experience of sexual and psychological abuse and memories and stories of her mother’s and grandmother’s abuse. The cycle of abuse is passed on through generations and validated by the cultural context. The play reflects Susana’s journey of healing and self-discovery in which she tries to understand herself, her history and heritage in order to overcome depression and find self-empowerment, self-love and self-acceptance.
