Stage Struck IV

Geniuses and Lunatics 

"The historical importance of José Celso, in any context,
cannot be denied by anybody. He is duly respected as
 a fundamental pioneer by the new directors and
the current absolutists of the business,
starting with Gerald Thomas himself."

Kirsten Weinoldt

Continued from our last issue
This is the fourth of a four-part article on Brazilian theater.

Gerald Thomas—The Dry Opera Company

Born in 1954, Gerald Thomas has spent his life between England, Brazil, Germany, and the United States, graduating as a reader of philosophy and beginning his life in the theater at New York's La MaMa Experimental Theater. There, Thomas adapted and directed 19 world premieres of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) prose and dramatic pieces. In the early eighties, Thomas began working with Beckett in Paris, adapting new fiction by the author. Of these, the more notorious were All Strange Away and That Time starring the legendary Living Theater founder, Julian Beck, in his only stage-acting role outside of his own company. In the mid eighties, Thomas became involved with German author Heiner Müller, directing his works in the US and Brazil, and began a long-term partnership with American composer, Philip Glass.

In 1985, Thomas formed and established his Dry Opera Company in São Paulo. It has since performed in 15 countries with yearly returns. With the Dry Opera Company, Thomas has written and directed Eletra Com Creta, The Kafka Trilogy, Carmem Com Filtro, Mattogrosso, The Flash and Crash Days, The Trilogy of the B.E.A.S.T. and M.O.R.T.E, performed worldwide at several prestigious venues, such as Lincoln Center in New York, The Munich State Theater, Vienna's Wiener Festwochen, The Taormina Festival, and others.

In 1987, Thomas directed his first opera, Wagner's Flying Dutchman at Rio's Opera House. Brazil had never seen such an effervescent uproar. Public and critics alike were divided into profound love and hatred over Thomas' unconventional staging. Discussions over Thomas' placement of the story at the Berlin Wall occupied entire pages of newspapers and hour-long television debates, for months.

Gerald Thomas is the recipient of three Molière Prizes and eighteen other awards and writes regularly for Rio's newspaper O Globo while continuing his stage productions.

José Celso Martinez Corrêa—genius or madman?

Luiz Carlos Maciel says in his book Geração em Transe, Generation in Crisis:

"The historical importance of José Celso, in any context, cannot be denied by anybody. He is duly respected as a fundamental pioneer by the new directors and the current absolutists of the business, starting with Gerald Thomas himself. His productions show that, in addition to conviction, he has style, intuition, audacity, and intimacy with the stage. Short lived as all live theater, but powerful, they will always be in the memory of the generation."

From an article in Estado de São Paulo—by Beth Néspoli:

At 64 years, director José Celso Martinez Corrêa promises yet again to surprise and inflame in his production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, which premieres on Friday at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (July 20, 2001), in Rio. In the cast are Selton Mello and Otávio Müller, interpreting the tramps, Estragon and Wladimir, Xando Graça and Fernando Alves Pinto as Pozzo and Lucky, and still the boy Darlan as the kid who brings messages from Godot.

The invitation came from producer Monique Gardenberg and caught the director of Teatro Oficina in the middle of rehearsals for the play Os Sertões, The Dry-lands. At first, nothing seems further from Zé Celso than this play by Beckett, the central characters of which put their trust in a single thread of hope in their lives, namely the coming of the mysterious Godot, a corruption of God?—who never appears.

Zé Celso treated this play in a very special manner of his conception of the award winning play Cacilda!, about Cacilda Becker, who collapsed—later dying—during a performance of Waiting for Godot, in 1969. Produced for the stage 30 years after her death, Cacilda! was conceived as a ritual of resurrection of the actress and the Brazilian theater. However, revived on the stage of Oficina, Cacilda, metaphorically, opts not to wait for Godot any longer. Instead, she unites with the cast of Oficina in the production of A Gaivota, The Seagull, by Chekhov, a play, which significantly puts two theatrical styles in opposition.

"Really, I never had any interest in producing that play. I never waited for Godot in my life. I accepted the invitation because I like Monique, although my heart has been a bit wounded for having to be away from Oficina at that moment." Invitation accepted, Zé Celso decided to imprint his reading on Beckett's play. "I sought a path different from the existentialist and Judeo-Christian view, which dominate all the productions of this play. The dominant view, to which he refers, was brilliantly defined by critic Décio de Almeida Prado, in an article published in Estado in 1955, on the occasion of the first production of the text in Brazil, under the direction of Alfredo Mesquita. According to the critic, God is the theme of the play. "If there is a God, everything is clear, everything is simplified, life acquires a superior, metaphysical feeling, providing a divine thought and proposal," he wrote.

"And if God doesn't exist?," continues the critic. "The first to pose that question—for two or three centuries—did not perceive the enormity of what they were thinking. They were optimists because they believed blindly in man, and because they intended to sacrifice God—observed Sartre—without sacrificing the belief in absolute values, eternal and universal, as if one thing were not connected with the other. God disappeared, but, for all practical and theoretical effects, it was as if he continued to exist. Our era, on the contrary, is that of sad atheism, the atheism which is not proud of its lack of faith because it perceives that there is nothing particularly happy and comforting in the idea of man abandoned, alone, in the presence of a universe equally absurd and empty of any meaning."

Half a century after the creation of the play, Zé Celso proposes an improvement. And he bets on man reconciled with his condition. Therefore, the stage will be covered in bull manure, in a reference to the minotaur, half man—half bull—symbol for Zé Celso, of a man who knows how to bring with him the vile and the sublime, everything that was formerly transferred to the gods.

"Nothing to do," is the first line written by Beckett. "Everything to do," counters Zé Celso. "Godot doesn't come, you can't expect nothing and still live. You can discover, with those characters, that there is no essence, life is pure flow," says the director, who transformed the theater of the Italian stage of CCVV into a kind of replica of the Teatro Oficina.

"Brasil lives in a situation of expectation and, meanwhile, everything will be dismantled, left going right, then comes the crisis, and extinction. But Godot does not come in any way," comments Zé. "And Brazil is crazy for failing to hope. With absolute fidelity to Beckett, my Godot is set in the tropics." In the play there is still Pozzo, who brings his servant Lucky tied with a rope. "Lucky is happy because he has employment," Zé says ironically.

The characters are not waiting for Godot, standing still. "Beckett revisits the whole theatrical tradition of the west; he takes the world to the stage. He goes from minimalism to tragedy, going through the cosmic silences. I, too, do this. And I respect Beckett bringing the universal of the tropics to the stage."

Teatro Oficina.

While the actors Renato Borghi and Ítala Nandi cried, embracing, on the curb un-reconciled with the fire that devoured the Teatro Oficina on that night of 31 of May, 1966, the director, José Celso Martinez Corrêa (who, even beside Fernando Peixoto, completed the quartet of symbols of Oficina) was not discouraged with the total destruction and already worried about the work of reconstruction.

Such incessant energy (and apparently unbeatable) was always one of the principal marks of Oficina, theater which was a landmark for the Paulistano stage, as much for its revolutionary architecture integrated into the environment, as for its historic productions. Founded in a small shed on Rua Santo Antônio, in Bela Vista, in October of 1958, Oficina initiated its professional run two years later, inaugurating its headquarters with A Vida Impressa em Dólar.

Fernando Peixoto and Ítala Nandi joined the group in 1962—he as narrator, she as narrator and later actress. Two years later, the play Pequenos Burgueses, The Middle Class, is suspended by the censors after the military coup. Zé Celso, Borghi, and Peixoto were forced to hide and subsequently take a trip abroad.

The fire in 1966 was followed by the most outstanding years of Oficina. The following year, Zé Celso reopened the theater with O Rei da Vela, The King of the Candle, a spectacle, which would travel to Europe and be prohibited in Brazil. In April of 1974, Oficina is invaded by the police. Imprisoned and tortured, Zé Celso decided to go into exile in Portugal. He would return in 1979, and two years later created Oficina Uzyna-Uzona.

"In addition to the importance of its historic productions, the theater is notable also for its architectonic concept, a project of Lina Bo Bardi," Comments Zé Celso.

Serroni, pointing out the format of the passageway of his stage and part of the glazed roof, which permits natural light to come in, as the principal characteristics. Zé Celso is planning to transform the base of the theater into a great arena and is negotiating with the group Sílvio Santos, proprietor of the land, about the possibility of construction.

Folha de São Paulo conducted an interview with Zé Celso, in which he answered questions about himself.

Q: How is it that a shy boy from Araraquara became Zé Celso, in São Paulo?

A: Ah, always because I was in love, and because I am in love…. I went to work for Arena, because I didn't know how to do anything. And Boal (director Augusto Boal) worked with great freedom. Boal gave freedom, but he also had a dogmatic side, from the Seminário de Dramaturgia. The parameter of the Brazilian author as seen by the head of the theater was, for me, settled. I felt that wasn't me.

Q: And what was that, then?

A: I already had a past, in Araraquara, in the attempt of the fascists to create a new generation. I had a friend called Plínio in homage to Plínio Salgado (1895-1975), writer and Brazilian politician, who founded the Ação Integralista Brasileira (1932), political party of fascist orientation. It was a family that I liked a lot, that I visited, to have more liberty. They said: "Read Os Sertões and this and that," and they had conferences, and I heard Plínio Salgado speak. He spoke well. I have the impression that I acquired a certain quality of speaking from hearing him speak, as well as the gestures of theater.

Q: You participated in the Centro Cultural Alberto Torres, a fascist center.

A: Alberto Torres was in a collection in my father's library. He was a student of Brazil, thought Brazil. He had and has an enormous importance in my life. And today I meet this thought again in Príncipe da Moeda, Prince of Coin, by Giba (Gilberto Vasconcelos, sociologist), who places great importance in Alberto Torres. Now, in the Centro Cultural we were children, a group of friends. We reunited around that which appeared.

Q: There were several centers.

A: That's true, scattered all over Brazil. In each place, a name - Euclides da Cunha - and others. They called us Águias Brancas, White Eagles, (laughs). We didn't have the slightest idea of what was behind. But there is a side of my love for Brazil, for Villa-Lobos, for Getúlio (Vargas, ex-president). For populism, for (ex-governor Leonel) Brizola, my confessed, declared, total love for Brizola. All those sins (laughs). The other day I wrote about a commentary, which (columnist Arnaldo) Jabor made about the theater. I was answered orally. He said that I was, like Glauber (Rocha, filmmaker) in the last years of his life, crazy. He gave me this praise. And suddenly comes this book, which reveals Glauber's intuition. I like it because Giba sees in Glauber a reading of Brazil. There's an artist there, but also a Padre Vieira. I say Glauber, but we were formed by another, Hélio Rocha, a great orator who traversed Brazil in conferences at cultural centers. We had that same formation, which later went to the left. And Glauber foresaw that. At the traditional, Paulista left, that which is now in power, today at the right, lacked the sentiment of the new people, of the specificity of this civilization. Glauber arrived and said, "Those people hate you."

José Celso Martinez Corrêa—Chronology

1937 - Zé is born March 30 in Araraquara, state of São Paulo

1956 - Enters the law school at Largo São Francisco, in São Paulo.

1958 - Initiates a partnership with actor Renato Borghi. Participates in the creation of Oficina with Borghi, Amir Haddad, Jorge da Cunha Lima, and others. Vento Forte para Papagaio Subir, Strong Wind for the Parrot to Rise, which he wrote, débuted on October 28.

1959 - Débuts at Teatro de Arena with A Incubadeira, The Incubator, which he wrote, directed by Haddad.

1960 - Translated and adapted, with Augusto Boal, A Engrenagem, The Gear, by Jean Paul Sartre, which Boal directed.

1961 - Directed A Vida Impressa em Dólar by Clifford Odets, at the opening of Teatro Oficina, on August 16.

1962 - Directed Todo Anjo É Terrível, Every Angel is Terrible, a play adapted from Thomas Wolfe.

1963-70 - Directed Pequenos Burgueses, The Middle Class by Gorky. It stayed seven years running without interruptions.

1964 - Directed Andorra by Max Frisch.

1965 - A year of studies in Europe (Paris, Prague, and Warsaw) and in the United States.

1966 - Directed Os Inimigos, The Enemies, at TBC (Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia—Brazilian Theater of Comedy. After the fire at Oficina he did a retrospective at TBC at the invitation of Cacilda Becker.

1967 - Directed Quatro em Quatro. Oficina reopened on September 29, re-designed by Flávio Império, directing O Rei da Vela, The King of Candles by Oswald de Andrade. Stage design was by Hélio Eichbauer, music by Rogério Duprat. With Borghi, Ítala Nandi, Etty Frazer, Otávio Augusto and others. Sometimes these were substituted by Dina Sfat, José Wilker and others.

1968 - Directed Roda Viva, by Chico Buarque. It starred Marieta Severo, Samuca, and others. It was at a performance of this play, in São Paulo, that "communist hunters," representatives of the military dictatorship, disrupted the performance and beat up on the actors, causing one actress to miscarry her baby. This year, he also directed Galileu Galilei, which débuted on the day when the notorious AI-5 (a crackdown on freedom of speech) was enacted.

1969 - Worked on Na Selva das Cidades, In the City Jungles, by Brecht. Stage direction by Lina Bo Bardi.

1972 - Directed Gracias Señor, Thank you Sir, a collective creation, and Three Sisters by Chekhov. Borghi at this time broke with Oficina.

1974 - Zé was imprisoned and tortured for connection to ALN, Ação Libertadora Nacional, a group opposed to the military junta. Freed, he left for a life in exile.

1975 - Directed and interpreted Galileu in Portugal. With Celso Lucas, he brought to the big screen O Parto, The Birth, and 25 about Mozambique.

1978 - Returned to Brazil in June.

1979 - Reopens Oficina with 25 and O Parto.

1982 - Launches the film O Rei da Vela. Oficina, until then rented, was razed and under the leadership of Lina Bo Bardi and Edson Elito, reconstruction began.

1982-91 - Zé was busy with new productions. Some of these were As Bacantes, Acords, and Cacilda!

1986 - The partnership with actor Marcelo Drummond was initiated.

1987 - Director Luiz Antônio Martinez Corrêa, brother of Zé, is assassinated.

1991 - Directed As Boas, by Jean Genet, in the Centro Cultural in São Paulo. It starred Raul Cortez and others.

1993 - Reopens Oficina on October 1^st, directing Hamlet by Shakespeare. It starred Marcelo Drummond, Alleyona Cavali, Alexandre Borges, and others.

1994 - Produced Mistério Gozoso, Enjoyable Mystery, by Oswald de Andrade. Following the performance in Araraquara, his birthplace, he was charged with reviling religious symbols.

1996 - Directed As Bacantes by Euripides, Pra Dar um Fim no Juízo de Deus, To Put an End to the Judgment of God, by Artaud.

1997 - Directed and played the title role in Ela by Genet.

1999 - Re-produced Cacilda! At the same time, he was awarded the Prêmio

Multicultural Estadão, promoted by São Paulo newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo. He was said to have been 'overjoyed' when he received the news because as he said: "The prize recognizes and validates a controversial work, which has had a great degree of rejection. I think that the fact that I was chosen shows that, although the work wasn't popular, it also has acceptance. I have always worked like a warrior, trying new concepts on the stage, however with extreme financial difficulty, without ever getting this kind of recognition. My work has a greater potential, and a prize like this opens other possibilities for financial support and gives me hope for artistic growth."

In the past couple of years, Zé has been involved in interesting, and always, controversial projects. Jean Genet's As Criadas, The Maids, has for many years caused controversy in those countries where it has been shown. The play was written in 1947 by a man, known for his crimes and homosexuality. He spent much time in jail, and in the 60's, he was in peril of being locked up for the rest of his life, when intellectuals and artists put great pressure on the French government to have him released based on the fact that he was a great artists and his imprisonment would constitute a great disservice to the world. His plays are no less controversial, however. This play, which is based on a true story, is about two maids who kill their mistress. The roles of the three women are traditionally played by men. When Zé Celso directed the play, the mistress, Madam, was played by the great actor Raul Cortez. In the newest production, Ricardo Torres has taken the reins of direction. In the play, Madam is the symbol of the dominant's power, while the maids (in the new production played by Deo Garces and Marco Rocha) represent the impossibility of social ascension, one of Jean Genet's social criticisms.

One of the most famous and controversial plays that Zé Celso has directed on several occasions, is Oswald de Andrade's O Rei da Vela, The King of Candles, which has also been directed by a variety of other directors, who were not afraid of the comparison to Zé Celso.

Prohibited for 34 years, the play, which served as inspiration for the Tropicalismo movement of the late 1960's, returned to São Paulo after a long absence, to the TBC. The first production was directed by Zé and will always be the one to which the others will be compared. Combining social criticism with elements of popular culture, the text demonstrates the power of capital along the times, outlining a portrait of the trajectory of the country and of capitalism.

Divided into three acts, the text tells the story of the moneylender, manufacturer of candles, and opportunist Abelardo I and his assistant, Abelardo II, who exploit and enslave the miserable population with their greed for profit in the name of foreign investment. In the era of a bourgeoisie, still very much in its infancy, Abelardo I is going to marry Heloísa de Lesbos, of an aristocratic family, decadent and perverted. That marriage reflects hypocrisy so common in a society of appearances. The text demonstrates also how an individual dies and the system continues, with all its corruption and promiscuity. And all the while, the people starve and die in the streets.

The play, in 1967, raised the question of passing on the indignation with the capitalist system in an aggressive and dramatic language. The new version is presented in a softer and more pleasurable format by directors Enrique Diaz and Emílio Mello. While in Zé Celso's production the public was accused of being "an immense, gangrenous cadaver," the current play dispenses with that treatment. Faced with a reality in which the Utopias are of another kind, the play continues profoundly critical and extremely current.

The movie of the same name, directed by Zé, is a mix of the 1971 footage of the stage production and three additional years of shooting from 1979 to 1982, the whole put together in a series of somewhat arbitrary images. Although the story behind this bewildering film is based on a man who sells candles and gets involved both with the rural aristocracy and the Americans, Zé has modified the basic plot. He has combined a history of his own fight for freedom of expression with the original story. (from a Blockbuster synopsis of the film).

Zé Celso is not finished challenging the Brazilian people. A recent production of Waiting for Godot in Rio, received mixed reactions from critics and public. A recent photo in the magazine Isto É shows him in a passionate embrace and kiss with Caetano Veloso, who is also known for his controversial public statements.

Not always easy to understand, Zé Celso always has something interesting and thought provoking to say. With the help of three Brazilian friends, Verônica, Ana, and Flávio, I took a quote by Zé from www.artes.com/reflexoes/ref12.htm (The three Brazilians, I'm happy to say, had as hard a time as I did with the translation).

"Theater, as says aunt* Oscar Wilde, is possible in noble societies. That is, it is the son of a dramaturgy of society, which places the importance on being alive and mortal at the center of 'It's only today, tomorrow there's no more.' Thus, it was in the century of Pericles that we got the Greek tragedy, in the Elizabethan, Shakespeare, in the will of the 'decolonizing' lieutenants or varguists**(who knows what to call this, which today is the curse of liberal Stalinism), gave to anthrophagi, Villa-Lobos, Bidu Saião, Oswald. In the 'developmentism,' JK [Juscelino Kubitschek ex-president of Brazil] gave Nelson [Rodrigues], Cacilda, Bossa, Cinema Novo [Brazilian movie direction] in the here and now from the time of multitudes of youths of the 60's, which gushed Tropicalism, music, cinema, theater, politics, plastic arts, Plínio Marcos and Cacilda Becker of the new Antigone Chanel at the theater of political agitation of '68. Our epoch of appearance, I repeat appearance, little noble and much poor, where in order to be able to do anything, such as survive, for example and be always mathematically "cut," we are invited to live sniffing out [the verb used means like pigs for truffles], licking, and dribbling the speculative capital, employed by the 'economistic' abstraction. We have to chatter on TV and in columns to guarantee the social misery and give life to it, the coin, a reality which refuses itself from becoming concrete raw material, productive investment, devourable food, manure."

* aunt. Refers to Oscar Wilde's homosexuality

** lieutenants: refers to an uprising, primarily by lieutenants, which had great importance. Varguistas were followers of President Getúlio Vargas (1983-1954).

A List of Brazilian Theaters

RIO DE JANEIRO:

Teatro Cândido Mendes
Rua Joana Angélica, 63
Tel: 021-267-7295

Teatro Carlos Gomes
Praça Tiradentes, 19—Centro
Tel: 232-8701

Casa da Gávea
Praça Santos Dumont, 116—Gávea
Tel: 239-3511

Teatro Casa Grande
Av. Afrânio de Melo Franco, 290
Tel: 239-4046

Teatro I do CCBB
Rua Primeiro de Março, 66—Centro
Tel: 216-0626

Teatro II do CCBB
Rua Primeiro de Março, 66—Centro
Tel: 216-0237

Teatro Glória
Rua do Russel, 632—Glória
Tel: 245-5527

Teatro dos Grandes Atores
Avenida das Américas, 3555
Tel: 325-1645

Teatro Ipanema
Rua Prudente de Moraes, 824
Tel: 247-9794

Teatro João Caetano
Praça Tiradentes—Centro
Tel 242-0623

Teatro Leblon
Rua Conde de Bernadotte, 26
Tel: 294-0347

Teatro do Planetário
Padre Leonel França, 240—Gávea
Tel: 239-5948

Teatro da Praia
Rua Francisco Sá, 88
Tel: 287-7794

Teatro Princesa Isabel
Rua Princesa Isabel, 186
Tel: 275-3346

Teatro dos Quatro
Shopping da Gávea, piso 2
Tel: 274-9895
http://plutao.mvirtual.com.br/teatro4 

Teatro Sesc/Copacabana
Rua Domingos Ferreira, 160- Copacabana
Tel: 255-1088

Teatro do Sesc/Tijuca
Rua Barão de Mesquita, 539—Tijuca

Teatro Villa-Lobos
Rua Princesa Isabel, 440—Copacabana
Tel: 275-6695

Teatro Villa-Lobos II
Rua Princesa Isabel, 440- Copacabana
Tel: 275-6695

Teatro Ziembiensky
Rua Urbano Duarte, 30- Tijuca
Tel: 228-3071

SALVADOR (BAHIA)

Teatro Castro Alves (TCA)
Campo Grande
Tel: 532-2323

Teatro ACBEU
Tel: 345-5888

Teatro Gregório de Mattos
Tel: Praça Castro Alves
Tel: 322-2646

Espaço Xis
Tel: 328-2484

Teatro Sesi
Tel: 335-0836

Teatro Salesiano
Tel: 327-0166

Teatro Gamboa
Tel: 329-2418

Theatro XVIII
Pelourinho
Tel: 332-0018

SÃO PAULO

One way to check on what's playing in São Paulo is to log on to http://www.estado.estadao.com.br

CURITIBA
 
When visiting Curitiba, state of Paraná, where you can see lots of productions of national theater, check www.beatonline.com/festival.html

BELO HORIZONTE

Located in Minas Gerais, BH offers good options of theater.
Check with www.horizontes.com.br

RECIFE
Recife has amazing nature, music, and beautiful beaches.
Log on to www.cr-pe.rnp.br/turismo/programas/teatro.html  

Credits.
The research for this article was a mammoth undertaking, and many people, without knowing it, have contributed with their articles, sometimes anonymous, on the Internet. I am deeply in their debt. Some of them, however, put their names to the knowledge they shared with me.
Larry Rohter, "Reawakening the Giant of Brazilian Theater," College Times, NY Times about Nelson Rodrigues.
An interesting article about Nelson Rodrigues was available on www.revistasubmarino.com 

O Estado de S. Paulo is a great source of information for a multitude of topics and has a great tradition for cultural coverage: http://www.estado.estadao.com.br

The website www.teatrobrasileiro.com.br contains a richness of information and provided the interview with José Celso Martinez Corrêa as well as the chronology of his work.

www.interlog.com provided the information on Jean Genet's play The Maids.

www.terra.com.br  provided much of the material about Cacilda Becker.

The story of Maria Clara Machado was found on www.multarte.com.br 

Alice Lovelace's fine material about Augusto Boal was found on www.inmotionmagazine.com

Other wonderful websites providing the source for this article were: www.adusp.org.br - www.usp.br - www.aferventus.hpg.com.br - www.encena.com.br - www.orbita.starmedia.com - www.geraldthomas.com - www.bixiga.com.br - www.atarde.com.br

Kirsten Weinoldt was born in Denmark and came to the U.S. in 1969. She fell in love with Brazil after seeing Black Orpheus many years ago and has lived immersed in Brazilian culture ever since. Her e-mail: kwracing@erols.com 

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