The renowned actor Gael García Bernal ventured into the world of audiobooks, by producing and narrating the story of Gregorio Samsa, protagonist of Frank Kafka’s classic novel “The Metamorphosis”, a new and different challenge from acting and dubbing.
In an interview this Wednesday with EFE, during his visit to the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) to present this project, the actor said that sound fiction was a different scenario where he could show theatrical and vocal technique, artistic risk and a lot of freedom and creativity.
“There is no conscious journey of what I have to do differently for a narration or for something in audio, but the medium does condition you to certain things, from there creativity is born, from there the game is born, from there that natural part of acting is born,” he explained.
García Bernal not only lent his voice, but “The Gulf Stream”, the production company he founded with his friend and also actor Diego Luna, joined the company Audible to create the audiobook “The Metamorphosis” and the radio soap opera about Hilde Krüger, the true story of a German actress turned spy in Mexico in the 1940s.
The actor commented that Kafka’s work has a charge of dramaturgy in itself that allowed them to play with sound spaces, especially since everything is narrated from the main character’s room.
The famous Guadalajara interpreter also confessed that before this project he read the novel only once in his adolescence, forced by a school program that tried to promote classic books of literature. Now, at 47 years old, the text made him reflect on the rejection of difference.
“The political axis (of the novel) is between the exaltation of the other, of the foreigner, of otherness, of those who are different from me and those who are precisely against that, and that is a fundamental political division today, which is from where all things are being argued (in the world),” García Bernal stressed.
Producing a radio soap opera like Hilde Krüger was for the actor a way to return to that primitive form of communication such as voice and orality.
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AI will not be able to replace acting: Gael García Bernal
The actor in films like “Amores Perros” and “La mala Educación” declared himself a regular consumer of radio, journalistic podcasts and sound documentary series. From there arose her interest in the story of the spy whose audiovisual production required a large investment, but which she managed to resolve with sound fiction.
“Human beings have the capacity to read faces and that’s where reading comes from, that is, from that tool and orality comes from that too, it’s like a mixture, like a system,” he explained.
It is because of this very primitive ability to encode and understand gestures that García Bernal considered that artificial intelligence will not be able to replace those who dedicate themselves to acting.
“We actors are not going to be replaced by artificial intelligence, ever. I think not, because what we see is behind the mask as well. In other words, we know that it is a game, that it is not the people who are those characters, we also see behind it,” he declared.
The commitment to producing sound fiction is not only to reach those who have never entered literature, but also to the public that wants to know the stories in another way, said the actor and director.
“The times that I have heard about books, I have managed to connect with what is being told and they have also been very particular books, that is, they are narratives that I can follow, that I do not need to turn the page to remember who was who,” he added.
García Bernal believes that there is an audience that is interested in this type of creative products and that they must be made with quality, although the disadvantage is that the feedback with those who consume them does not arrive as plausibly as in theater, television or cinema.
“We set it up this way, the truth is that it is like an experiment. I hope it catches on and works, I would love it. Perhaps the disadvantage of audio is that it is very difficult to know (whether people liked it or not) that is, there is no applause (…) but neither are boos,” he ironized.
With information from EFE
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