Cayetano Soto's new creation M/C deals with the relationship of the model, actress and superstar Marilyn Monroe and the American writer Truman Capote. It takes place in the New York of the 1950s.

Capote has sketched the private Monroe in two portraits: “A Beautiful Child” and “Marilyn Monroe”. “A Beautiful Child” is a non-fictional essay from Capote’s collection “Music for Chameleons” and presents a vivid snap-shot of the Marilyn only he knew. After attending the funeral of Constance Collier, Marilyn's acting teacher, the two friends spent the day together in Manhattan. Capote tells of their exploits on that afternoon, visiting a Chinese restaurant and sharing secrets. He draws a wry, empathetic, and very human image of the actress. Even though this encounter had already taken place in 1955, he published the text in 1979, long after Marilyn's death, stating that the entire portrait came out of his diary.

The friendship between Monroe and Capote is not only fascinating from a human and historical point of view. It is more than that, because Capote transforms the real person Marilyn Monroe into a literary character. Marilyn thus becomes an incarnation of the Capote's literary approach. A careful reader of Capote's work will notice that one of the most innovative features of his writing is the technique of “squeezing the reality” and transposing real situations into a literary space. This can be observed especially in the different elaborations of the character of Marilyn, present not only in the two portraits mentioned before, but most sophisticatedly in the figure of Holly Golightly, the main protagonist of his famous novel “Breakfast at Tiffany's”. The apex but also the limit of this technique is reached by the non-fiction novel “In Cold Blood”.

Both Monroe and Capote were high-profile celebrities and extreme personalities whose lives are projected on the silver screen of our fantasy by movies, photographs, texts and souvenir objects of all kinds. Although Capote once described her as a “platinum sex explosion”, he was in the unusual position of perceiving her from a non-sexual perspective. M/C addresses the gay writer Capote and his non-sexual relationship with the sex goddess Monroe. The choreography eschews the usual iconography of Monroe's interaction with the male sex and concentrates on the subject of their friendship. In order to present the complex and multifaceted private and public personalities of the main characters, they have been multiplied: six Marilyns are facing six Trumans on stage.

M/C does not claim to give a chronological or complete outline of events, or even historical facts. It is choreographed in a similar way to which Capote constructed his literary figures. It reinvents an extraordinary friendship of two extraordinary people. It tries to highlight moments which Monroe and Capote could have spent together.

Both were very eccentric, both had had a difficult childhood. Thus, the children in the grown-ups are looking for the lost happiness of former days. In M/C some of the Pas de Deux are playful, full of charm and joy as well as manipulative in an ironic way. Truman and Marilyn are enjoying each other's presence as well as the high-society party life of Manhattan. They are dancing together and he teases her when she is – once again – late. The choreography points out little events that are characteristic for their personalities and the gestures they actually used.

They were both superstitious, especially Capote. He was afraid of yellow roses, of Fridays, of two nuns in an aeroplane and many other things. But he also believed in positive signs of fortune and lucky charms. On the other hand, he remained quite easy going and calm in life threatening situations: when he was almost killed during a film screening by an accidentally crashing chandelier, he did not pay any attention and simply continued to work.

Both were addicted to alcohol, were afraid of being alone and had sleeping disorders. Marilyn had tried to commit suicide four or five times before she died. He outlived her. In an interview given shortly before his own death he claimed: “I've known her a long long time. Nothing about Marilyn could ever surprise me.” When the interviewer objected “Except her death?”, Capote thoughtfully dragged his cigarette. After a while he admitted: “Yes, that surprised me.”

Nadja Kadel

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