He is a mathematician, pianist, and son of a Les Luthiers: who is Teo López Puccio and what does he do in theater?

The drawing of a geometric diagram or the formulation of a problem in the form of a triangle become the script upon which Teo López Puccio constructs an intriguing and entertaining story about his mathematical knowledge. Small enigmas become the plot of an episode where scientific dissemination becomes imbued with a fresh, cheerful, easygoing, and rigorously pedagogical acting style, but with the style of a measured young comedian who finds his vigor in knowledge shared in an entertaining way.

What Teo López Puccio does with mathematics – in the videos he uploads to his Instagram account or on his YouTube channel – is similar to what the group Les Luthiers did with music: using academic knowledge in a discipline to express it in a more popular and dynamic medium where comedy or, in Teo's case, the histrionics inherent to his training as an actor, finds other dramatic variants that are not limited solely to the manifestation of that knowledge or virtuosity.

The comparison with Les Luthiers is inevitable because Teo is the son of one of its members, Carlos López Puccio. But the young actor, musician, and mathematics professor at the Di Tella and San Andrés universities embarks on a creative journey as a musical composer in Viento Blanco, by Santiago Loza, directed by Juanse Rausch and Valeria Lois, and as an actor and musician in the plays he creates with his friends from Estudio qp : Piramidal , Quiero querido querido , and El suceso, in which he synthesizes and connects his roles as performer, composer, and author of many of these works into a group narrative.

Sitting down to chat with Teo López Puccio in his home in Chacarita is like entering a calm zone, with the piano nearby and the paintings of his mother, the visual artist Ana Moraitis, stored on a mezzanine, protected from prying eyes in the home. This 27-year-old speaks gently and calmly about his poster work and his passion for mathematics in this interview.

–In recent years, the figure of the director as a creative genius has been undermined, leading to a shift in the concept of theater as a collaborative effort, where all departments collaborate in the final creation of the production. Your work on plays like Piramidal and El suceso are in line with this.

–I don't have experience working with monolithic directors. In fact, I work with a group called Estadio qp, and we're five people, and all five of us write. If there's a director, it's because we decide that for a given piece, it's best for one of the members to be offstage, but the group's identity is collective. That's our dynamic. I'm the composer and I write the music, but the decisions are made by the five of us.

–In Piramidal, the songs were the first thing that was done, and the dramaturgy was built on that.

We started with the songs to understand what we wanted to tell, to identify the places that led to the narrative, and we built the work around that. I'm the composer, but the idea is a five-piece, and so is the writing of the lyrics. We have a hard time getting people to understand that, even in the theater system. People are so accustomed to plays by authors or directors, and we struggle with that.

Often, instead of Estudio qp, they'd put Milva Leonardi and Marcos Krivocapich as directors for Piramidal , and that's fine, we chose them for that role in this piece, but we wanted it to be understood that we functioned as a group. There's something that pushes back on the directors' identities and the idea of ​​an author. That also defines the type of product you make.

In Piramidal, it's clear that it's written like a writers' table; there were five of us writing the script, as if it were an episode of a sitcom. On top of that, there's the construction done by the performers, to whom Milva and Marcos gave a creative freedom that contributes to the aesthetic of a group project. This way of working creates something essentially different.

–In Piramidal, there's an investigation into pyramid schemes; in fact, it reconstructs the journey of coach Ludovico Sitorrazo. This is presented as a musical comedy that also takes the form of a documentary featuring the character of Beta.

–We often refer to it as a comedy documentary , which is basically a satire mixed with real-world experiences. That's kind of our style; rather than making a piece about a specific topic, it's about asking ourselves questions and debating each topic at length. We don't all have the same opinion, and that makes it more interesting. The three pieces we did as Estudio qp ( Piramidal , El suceso , and Quiero querido querido ) followed the same approach, and we imagined continuing with something as a group, where the questions are what guide us. Art has that possibility.

In the middle of the year, we'll be revisiting El suceso , our latest work. We only did two performances last year during a residency at the Haroldo Conti Cultural Center, and we're continuing with the same idea: it's no longer a musical; it's the most theatrical work we've ever done, in which all five of us act, and the performance isn't mediated by music as a language; rather, it's much more acted out, but it still has the idea of ​​raising questions.

–Recently, the musical genre has shown other narrative possibilities and has moved beyond the Broadway format, even at the production level. You worked with Gustavo Tarrío on Familia no tipo (co-directed by Mariana Chaud), which explores this shift in the musical.

–Tarrío was a key driving force behind musicals in recent decades, with an aesthetic, a way of telling stories that transcends Broadway, an aesthetic we continue to borrow from. When you think of musicals, you think of Disney and things associated with traditional musicals, but you can also think of them as something much simpler: a play that includes songs to tell a story.

–In Paquito, la cabeza contra el suelo , where you made the music, there is a show format reminiscent of a café concert.

–That was Juanse Rausch's (the director) fantasy of working with the past and reminiscing. Paquito is influenced by music halls or café concerts, shows with songs, more characteristic of Buenos Aires culture than musicals.

–You also replaced Ian Shifres for a year as the stage musician in Mariano Tenconi Blanco's La vida extraordinaria . Lorena Vega, an actress in that play, said that the work she did in Novela , Fito Páez's latest album , where she provides the narrator's voice, was very similar to the work she did in this play.

–It was a great experience. First, because Lorena Vega and Valeria Lois are talking about the music composed by Ian Shifres, which has very explicit lyrics. I had to study Ian's music, and there were moments where I didn't even have to explain to myself that such a change came with such a word because it was so obvious, it was so well put together, it was like a movie script. That dialogue is very well measured, a credit to the composer.

Another thing that's unique about these two is that they're very musical when they speak; they use the same notes to deliver the words, like a score. I couldn't believe it; they're very precise. It's a work that has many seasons, so they have the ability to reach that moment with such precision.

–Theater is, to a large extent, a work of scenic rhythm, both in the acting and the staging. As an actor and musician, you have the opportunity to consider both the rhythm of the staging and the rhythm in the musical intervention.

–That rhythm isn't always there on the day of the premiere; you need muscle memory to construct it. It's an end in itself, a goal, but it's also a consequence of the theatrical work. As a musician, I have a fairly literal perspective on that; it's quite clear when it happens and also when it doesn't.

Often, in shows that by design require audience input, there are moments where you know it's going to be rushed or drawn out depending on the audience's response. It's great because unlike in film, in theater there's always a back-and-forth, the audience is alive, and you know whether they're laughing or not, whether it's happening or not.

–In some works, you work on both musical and acting interpretations at the same time. You have different resources at the same time to approach these moments.

–In the show we do with Estudio qp on Fridays at the Morán Cultural Center, Quiero querido querido (I Want to Belong), a café concert, a show with songs and a puppet for people to watch while they have a drink. The songs narrate the experience of a puppet colonizing the Earth. The most important thing is the audience; the puppet speaks to the audience. I'm playing the piano the whole time, and I have a monologue in which I tell something while I play, and the timing is 100 percent determined by what's happening to the audience. If the audience is bored, it goes faster. The performance is a response to what I perceive is happening to the audience.

–In the videos you upload to Instagram where you explain some geometry problems, there's acting, scientific outreach, and a short story that generates curiosity and intrigue, like an educational performance.

–I discovered that I wanted to do scientific outreach or scientific communication because I am passionate about mathematics and I can talk for hours, and one day I said I didn't have to put it off any longer, because it was an outstanding debt I had, and I discovered that it was about standing in front of a camera and trying to act as someone who explains something, or inventing or fictionalizing a circumstance in which the excuse is to explain, and what one is trying to do is convey interest, which is what I feel is missing in the world of mathematics.

The discipline of mathematics has its rules, but they're not pre-established rules. I suppose triangles always work that way, they always have three vertices, and once you assume that, establish the rules, and pose a hypothesis, from there you play on a field that's already defined, that has its rules, but you're moving creatively in whatever direction you want.

Mathematical thinking isn't linear; there's a formal path, but the way you navigate that universe is creative. You decide what to analyze and why, how you arrived at that conclusion, and the ways to get there. I feel that's my relationship with mathematics and art.