{"id":207542,"date":"2015-09-15T15:53:47","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T18:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=207542"},"modified":"2015-12-28T16:00:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T18:00:26","slug":"theater-of-the-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/theater-of-the-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Theater of the real"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Reenactment

Adauto Perin<\/span><\/a> Reenactment on the Tiet\u00ea River (BR-3)…Adauto Perin<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

It might have been one of those darned assemblies, the ones that are held at midnight.\u00a0 The intention of the faithful gathered in Santa Ifig\u00eania Church in the heart of S\u00e3o Paulo was not to attend Mass but rather to prevent a show they considered blasphemous from taking place.\u00a0 Finally, exhausted, they withdrew.\u00a0 It was then, at 1 in the morning on November 5,1992, that O para\u00edso perdido<\/em> (Paradise Lost) debuted, marking the beginning of Teatro da Vertigem\u2019s trajectory.\u00a0 \u201cAt one point, I thought that only the Holy Spirit could bring the play to the stage,\u201d jokes the artistic director of the company, Antonio Ara\u00fajo.<\/p>\n

At the time, a key support for the play\u2019s staging came from the archbishop emeritus of S\u00e3o Paulo, Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns.\u00a0 Ara\u00fajo had even received anonymous telephone death threats.\u00a0 Since then, some controversy has always accompanied the trajectory of one of contemporary theater\u2019s most successful theater collectives, mostly because of their use of unconventional urban spaces and of the physical nature of their productions, which are the group\u2019s signature features.\u00a0 In the second play of Vertigem\u2019s biblical trilogy, O livro de J\u00f3 <\/em>(The Book of Job) (1995), by Lu\u00eds Alberto de Abreu, the protagonist flounders around nude, hooked up to surgical paraphernalia on a stretcher at the abandoned Umberto Primo Hospital on the city\u2019s south side.\u00a0 The public, disturbed by the sight, wandered halls that reeked of the smell of ether.<\/p>\n

\"...in

Claudia Calabi<\/span><\/a> …in an abandoned hospital (O livro de J\u00f3<\/em>)Claudia Calabi<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

These assaults on the senses marked the end of the company\u2019s first phase at the unused Hippodrome building on the capital\u2019s east side.\u00a0 The task was to stage a production that evoked the massacre of prisoners at Carandiru prison in the project Apocalipse 1,11<\/em> (Apocalypse 1.11) (1999).\u00a0 The audacity of the company\u2019s approach to staging continued into the 2000s.\u00a0 In BR-3<\/em>, the audience navigates the Tiet\u00ea River as if they are seeing and smelling the real experience of it, and the actors stage the play at points along the way, where the boat stops.\u00a0 \u201cThis is the moment where Vertigem leaves behind an idealized metaphysical notion to get down and dirty,\u201d says Silvia Fernandes, a full professor at the School of Communications and Arts at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (ECA-USP) who specializes in Brazilian theater from the 1990s.\u00a0 \u201cThe group moves then to a dramatic engagement with the present, which is why I would call it political theater \u2013 remember the allusion to torture in Job — and theater of the real, that is, connected to reality in that it touches on urban topics and is staged in the streets and in public buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ara\u00fajo, a Minas Gerais native from Uberaba, withdrew from the theater arts program at ECA-USP, where he is now a professor.\u00a0 With seven university colleagues, he launched a research project on language as applied to the movements of actors influenced by the classic mechanical studies of the Irish mathematician William Hamilton (1805-1865).\u00a0 His next step was to imagine these movements in symbolic spaces.\u00a0 \u201cFirst, we were thinking in terms of the mythic sense of Paradise and the fall of mankind and the body based on works like Paradise Lost<\/em> by John Milton [1608-1674],\u201d the director explains.\u00a0 \u201cFrom there, we inverted the game, putting the spectator in a sacred place, like a church.\u201d\u00a0 The company was reborn through these experiences.\u00a0 In 2011, Ara\u00fajo launched A g\u00eanese da Vertigem<\/em> (The Origins of Vertigem) \u00a0(from the Editora Perspectiva publishing house,<\/em> with the support of FAPESP).\u00a0 In fact, this was the director\u2019s master\u2019s thesis, in which he broke down the process of creating Paradise Lost<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"...and

Claudia Calabi<\/span><\/a> …and in a church in the heart of S\u00e3o Paulo (O para\u00edso perdido<\/em>): urban themes that are still contemporaryClaudia Calabi<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Finding the ideal place for staging a play, says Ara\u00fajo, always comes after the play is written.\u00a0 The task can be shared by playwrights and writers invited into the group, like S\u00e9rgio de Carvalho, from the Cia.\u00a0 do Lat\u00e3o, and Fernando Bonassi.\u00a0 The conceptualizing of BR-3<\/em>, for example, was ambitious.\u00a0 It grew from a search for national identity based in three \u201cBrazils\u201d: the S\u00e3o Paulo neighborhood of Vila Brasil\u00e2ndia, the capital Bras\u00edlia and Brasileia, a city in the state of Acre.\u00a0 The group traveled by bus to the north of the country with writer Bernardo Carvalho.\u00a0 \u201cOn the trip, we experienced predatory modernization, from trash in the waterways to forests that have been destroyed,\u201d says Ara\u00fajo.\u00a0 The Tiet\u00ea River came in handy as a backdrop for BR-3<\/em>, the production of which was coordinated by Professor Silvia Fernandes.<\/p>\n

Once in awhile, Vertigem moves away from the urban landscape, as in the case of O filho <\/em>(The Son), based on Franz Kafka\u2019s Letter to My Father<\/em>, under the direction of Eliana Monteiro, Ara\u00fajo\u2019s assistant since Apocalipse<\/em>.\u00a0 Monteiro used the warehouse at Sesc Pompeia in S\u00e3o Paulo and filled it with discarded domestic objects while also creating intermediary floors.\u00a0 The play was celebrated for the performance of veteran actor Antonio Petrin, 77.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s trademark, however, is the estrangement from and engagement with urban reality, which has already drawn international attention.\u00a0 Bom Retiro 958 metros<\/em> (2012), a nocturnal stroll through S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s commercial district, was recently adapted in Chile for a similar district in Santiago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grupo depicts urban life through reenactments in public buildings","protected":false},"author":571,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[263,204],"coauthors":[1530],"class_list":["post-207542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","tag-theatre","tag-visual-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207542"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=207542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}