«The first thing he wanted in life was to be a footballer. He saw a video of Maradona and he told himself: "you could achieve the same". He told himself seriously. He was good at it, he joined the youth academy at Cádiz C.F. Later the juniors at Betis, things were going well. But years later he decides to quit, after seeing that he was far from his ambitions, which were scoring goals at the Bernabéu. At this point he thinks the most he could aspire to is to play in 2nd division, and that is not enough. Since then he dedicates himself to literature and to performing arts. Some of his work includes “Cádiz-Heidelberg” or “Biofobia”. His ambition is still the same, to score a goal at the Bernabéu».
La tristura, Salvaje Festival
Emilio Rivas (Cádiz, 1983)
At 8 years of age he takes his first important decision. He decides to drop out of music school to join a football team. That decision will mark his education and development up to the age of 18 at which point, after passing through the youth academies of Cádiz and Betis, he decides to quit running with the ball.
In Seville, he enters the school of communication. He is attracted to the University Theatre group and he treads the boards for the first time with a lot of energy and little care. After graduating in Publicity & PR he moves to Madrid without a defined objective. He simply feels that any “path” passes through Madrid. He has an internship at the Círculo de Bellas Artes foundation radio station. He hits rock bottom and upon completing the internship he leaves the city. He returns to the south of Spain for a month and sets out on a journey on foot. He sets off from Cádiz and a month and fourteen days later reaches Heidelberg, Germany. Upon his return, in Madrid, whilst watching a play in La Cuarta Pared Theatre, he has a revelation: “It’s Theatre, that’s what it is”.
He decides to dedicate himself to performing arts and he moves to Granada. He trains at Escénica-Centro Andaluz de Teatro (2009). He then moves back to Madrid, where he attends the young actors workshop at Teatro de la Abadía. In 2010 he founds, along with José Espigares, Kalashnikov theatre company and fulfils his dream of performing in the place where his new path began, La Cuarta Pared. Between 2010 and 2012 he develops various projects including The Powers and Padre/Hijo/Gato. After those pieces he takes a brief aside with Biofobia (2013), his first solo stage work.
In 2014 he meets La Tristura theatre company and establishes an important bond collaborating with them as tour assistant at the Ibero-American Festival Miradas (Santos and Sao Paulo, Brazil), TEMPO Festival (Río de Janeiro, Brazil) and The International Performing Arts Festival of Pernambuco (Recide, Brazil) on the following plays: Materia Prima and El Sur de Europa. Días de amor difíciles.
In 2015, commissioned by La Tristura, he creates and performs a site-sympathetic promenade performance as part of the Festival Salvaje in San Cristóbal, Madrid. The resulting piece becomes Take a walk on the wild side and will complete the festival programme along with Observe how tiredness defeats thought by El Conde de Torrefiel and Domini Públic by Roger Bernat. Since then Emilio Rivas has developed new versions of said project for La Casa Encendida (Lavapiés, Madrid), Las Naves (Poblats Marítims, Valencia) and Teatre Principal (Palma de Mallorca). During this time, he has also collaborated on projects such as Home alone by La Tristura for La Casa Encendida and plays such as The melancholy of King Kong directed by Carlota Ferrer for Teatro de la Abadía.
