Spanish director Natalia Menéndez takes a one-woman play to Shanghai

Natalia Menéndez has been asked many things about her work. Once, someone even asked her to marry them. Now the Madrid-born playwright, stage director and actress is heading to China.

She is directing Holliday Aut, a monologue about exploring your inner self. It premieres in Shanghai on 12 November.

What is opening in Shanghai? 🎭

The play was written by Itziar Pascual in 1996. It has now been revised for a Chinese audience.

Menéndez was born in Madrid in 1967. She says she knew what she wanted to do at six, when she watched her father act in a play called Los peces rojos.

What does she look for in a text?

She wants a script that moves her, makes her smile or laugh, and leaves her with questions. The ones she can't stage are those that are banal or pedantic.

On stage, she says, she learned something no book teaches: living in the present, in the "here and now" of live performance, and feeling the energy that builds with the audience.

The nicest thing people say to her comes from fellow artists and from strangers who stop her in the street to talk about her work. The most extravagant? The marriage proposal. One job she would never take: working in a place full of reptiles, because she doesn't know them well.

What is she reading, watching and listening to?

On her bedside table is Contra el descontento by Cristina Monge. The last book she loved is an unpublished one by Pascual, which she hopes will come out next year.

Her most-watched films are To Be or Not to Be and Entre tinieblas. The last series she binged was Se tiene que morir mucha gente. Her pick of a song to sum up how she sees the world is Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'".

Recent shows that moved her include Gula, by Oriol Pla and Pau Matas Nogué, and the dance piece Calentamiento by Rocío Molina. She would happily live in the Prado and the Guggenheim Bilbao.

Asked what is overrated, she lists security, certain beauty standards and stain removers. If she hadn't gone into theatre, she says she might have been a musician, athlete, sculptor or masseuse.

She also named Pepe Sacristán, Julieta Serrano and Esperanza Roy as her picks for the next Max de Honor, the top honour of Spain's performing arts awards, for theatre. For dance, she chose Carmen Werner, Cesc Gelabert and Cristina Hoyos.