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Facundo Arana: "Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would live such a moment."

He went up onstage for the first time and he did it next to Pepe Soriano himself. It was the preview of "Visiting Mr. Green". In spite of the rumors about a couple-crisis, his girlfriend Isabel Macedo was in the audience, applauding his performance.

Let's say it straight and clear. Facundo Arana has acted for the first time onstage. June 10 when he made his first appearance. His hair shorter than his character in " Padre Coraje" a more careful look and a slight tone that sometimes requests the theater and other, excludes the television.

Up there onstage, in that sacred place for the actor, a scared actor himself was awaiting him: Pepe Soriano. Arana, playing Ross Gardiner, a young man who has to accomplish his conviction by doing social work, set out for the first performance of "Visiting Mr. Green" and a performance on a theatre-stage in his life.

This happened on Friday. On Saturday, close to Multiteatro where "Visiting Mr. Green" was being performed Wendesday thru Sunday, Isabel Macedo embodied the bad Delfina on the opening night of the second season of "Floricienta".

Macedo y Arana have been together for the past nine years. Every now and then rumors occur: that they are getting married, that they're separating, that she’s pregnant, things like that. The last thing that has been said, was that they have separated – and that time was for certain..........! Well yeah, but only if you take this literally. This winter, four blocks will separate the couple. That's the distance between two theatres.

After two months of rehearsals in Multiteatro, this Friday Soriano and Arana performed the preview for the public.That night, Facundo put on the clothes of his character soon after five o'clock. Pepe, in spite of his 53 years of chareer, also arrived early to rejoin with his character, Mr. Green. None of the two hesitated for a moment when Santiago Doria, the stage director, proposed the roles to them. When Doria told him he'd be Soriano's partner onstage, Facundo couldn’t believe his ears. "Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would get to live such a moment. To me, it's a pleasure to make my first appearance on the stage next to Pepe.", Facundo confessed.

As it usually happens in theatres, taking pictures is prohibited during the performance. Not to the fans of Arana though. They have been crowding in front of the theatre long before the play began and thus they considered that their admiration for their idol was enough to justify their not complying with the rule. And that's exactly what happened: the flashes of the little digital cameras kept coming from the seats throughout the performance.

In the cabins, after the show, Pepe threw himself down on a chair, thrilled, while Facundo was trembling a little, as he later confessed. The play tells the story of a meeting between a 70 - years - old man (Mr. Green) and Ros Gardiner, a 29 - year old executive who injured the old man in a car accident. As a conviction, Gardiner must comply with som social requests. Thus the young one has to visit Mr. Green for eight Thursdays. The outcome is a meeting of two lonely spirits who in spite of their differences, their opposite life-styles and their contrasting ideas, will able to identify those things that brings them together.

The old master and the young actor meet int he best place possible for both of them: on stage.

After the performance, the fans are waiting outside and flashes of the cameras keep shooting. Pepe Soriano is having dinner with the cast, but without Arana. He prefered to drive his girlfriend home.

Translated by Irina