Knock Against My Heart by Oladipo Agboluaje

Knock Against My Heart by Oladipo Agboluaje, with Nos do Morro in Rio. Andre(Prospero), Mariana(Miranda), Michael, William AKA Ninho(Caliban), Cristiano(Antonio), Pierre.
Video footage shows the opening scene, Caliban on the Morro, under the tree in Nos do Morro base, audience entering to the Ladainha. Knock Against My Heart was originally commissioned and toured by Theatre Centre in the UK 2008, with Andre and Ninho in the cast.

Aderbal Friere-Filho

I meet Aderbal Friere-Filho. Last year he famously directed actor Wagner Moura in Hamlet. We talk about Shakespeare and the big sea of theatre. I saw his production of Moby Dick which is currently playing in Teatro Poeira and we immediately connect over the theme of the sea which is running through my Pericles project. Here are some of his words (imperfectly translated).
"With waters more deep than those of other oceans, navigated by brave sailors - actors and actresses - the Great Sea of Theatre conceals in its depths all the possibilities of man and his ventures. Many navigators wander in strong boats constructed by genii like Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov and many others. Some good pirates, with a spirit of adventure, take risks in their own boats, in deep waters, with principals of navigation made by their ancestors."
He says much more which I will document elsewhere. Our conversation moves freely between subjects and continues so that I lose track of time and I miss my next meeting. This feels appropriately Brazilian, and in the spirit of the sea, shipwrecks and wandering.

Shakespeare and Nos do Morro

Nos do Morro has a history of working with Shakespeare. Cicely Berry has been giving workshops here since 1995. The company produced A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2004, and more recently for the RSC's complete works festival in 2006, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The essay by Beatriz Resende in the Nos do Morro book quotes philosopher Giorgio Agamben in relation to their approach to the Bard;
"To desecrate is not simply to abolish and cancel separations, but to learn to make new meanings from them, a new use, to play with them. The desecration of the sacred is the political task of the next generation."
(from Profanations, G. Agamben 2007, with apologies for the sacreligious translation).
This sentence is at the heart of my current work with Shakespeare. In 2007, I visited Nos do Morro with the playwright, Oladipo Agboluaje, to discover, together with the company, a rewriting of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The result was Dipo's play Knock Against My Heart, making Shakespeare's story relevant to the politics and economics of the 21st Century.
This time, my workshops mix Shakespearean words with the words from the hill and the Vidigal writers write about their day to day concerns. There is much hilarity as the group creates newly minted sentences and turns of phrase. I hope the writers have new texts and ideas to take forward. There are the beginnings of a play here. The house that fell into the sea and the event of the death of Celeste, the legendary owner of Bar-raco, are a stories that stay with me long after.

In Memory of Noel Greig - 25.12.1944 - 09.09.2009

Texts from the Nos do Morro writing workshops were presented to an audience in Vidigal, Rio.
The evening was dedicated to the memory of Noel Greig, a good friend, who has been an inspiration to me and many others, particularly in the field of new writing. A passage from his book Playwriting, was translated into Portuguese and read to the audience.
"To be part of an audience at a live drama is an opportunity to experience the critical or self-conscious dimension to our shared existence. Gathering together to witness a performance, we are celebrating our ability - our need - to reflect on the conditions that make (or unmake) us human. Private concerns are made public; the invisible is made visible... The little scene written and performed in the classroom may pass off in an afternoon and never be heard of again. The new play written by one author and presented on the stage of a national theatre may pass into the canon of great, universal works. But as events that bring us together and connect us with each other they are equal."

Shakespeare with Afro-Reggae

Opening night of Cacilda by Teatro Oficina - Teatro Tom Jobin, Jardim Botanico

The show began at 6pm and finished at 2:30am. Ze Celso was busy orchestrating proceedings throughout.

Saquarema - Casa do Nos

Saquarema is two hours drive from Rio on the coast. Nos do Morro have a nucleo here and I work with the group. There is more of a sense of the indigenous culture here which is reflected in the names of places and of people.

Writing workshops - Nos do Morro, Vidigal

I lead several writing workshops with a group of tutors from Nos do Morro, together with Paulo, the resident playwright and one of the founders of the company.

Dialogues with Nos do Morro

The origins of Nos do Morro(us from the hill) began with dialogues between Paulo Correa e Castro and Guti Fraga and his artist friends. Paulo, who lived on the Morro of Vidigal, and the artists who had come to live there used to meet in a bar run by the legendary owner Celeste. The bar was called Bar-raco, and it was here, one night in the 80's, after many beers, that the dream of a theatre group based on the hill was first told.

Ao Mestre.com

It is exciting for me to meet the Ao Mestre.com project. A new play by Jhaira, which gives voice to the dreams of teachers through the story of Dom Quixote. Nelson will play Dom Quixote.

Complexo de Alemao

When I fly back to Rio, I notice how some of the houses of the favela have been painted all the same colour. I had been told the story that this was a tactic of the drug barons, to make it harder for the police to gather surveillance from the air. It is in stark contrast to the bright colours of Campo Limpo in Sao Paulo. My earlier experience of working in Complexo de Alemao, courtesy of Afro-Reggae, was of stark border crossings and police searches. The harsh reality of combat lines denoting a civil war.

Cacilda - rehearsals, revisit

My peripatetic residency means I can revisit people and places for a second time. I had seen the first read through of Cacilda, the new play by Ze Celso and Teatro Oficina on my last visit to Sao Paulo; now the company has just a week to finalise the production. The atmosphere has changed. I will watch the opening in Rio.

Fora Sarney

The feelings of discontent I had discussed in Ouro Preto, about the corruption at the heart of politics, spill over now onto Avenida Paulista, the main street in Sao Paulo.

Nucleo de Dramaturgia - British Council/SESI

I take part in a workshop led by Marici Salamao, who organises the Nucleo de Dramaturgia in collaboration with SESI and the British Council in Sao Paulo. I have listened to several readings of new plays and at the workshop I discuss with Marici new playwrighting in Brazil. There are more new plays in Sao Paulo than in Rio; and Brazil never experienced anything like Britain's new plywrighting explosion centering on the Royal Court in the 60's; at that time and throughout the 70's and 80's new voices were muffled by censorship and the dictatorship. Now there are many new voices and Sao Paulo is where they are heard.

National Theatre - Connections/Conexoes

I give a workshop with this group from Projeto Arrastao. They are working on a text by Glaswegian author Davey Anderson. The group is led by Artistic Director Nelson Vilaronga and is taking part in the National Theatre Connections programme. Here in Sao Paulo I am meeting more groups working with text than in Rio.

Projeto Arrastao, Campo Limpo; Colours and Words that Travel

Projeto Arrastao works on the periphery of Sao Paulo, Campo Limpo, in a favela, Parque Pinheiros.  There used to be a park here but the favela has taken over. The favela is not as dangerous as many of those in Rio. One element of the project is to help the local inhabitants paint their houses bright colours to create a sense of nature.  Many of the inhabitants came originally from the North East.  There are many blues and paintings of the waves, reflecting the seafaring culture. On one long staircase begins with the bright colours of nature and moves to black and white of urban Sao Paulo. Many houses have bird cages full of canaries, characteristic of cultura nordestino. The project has been running for many years. The word arrastao, means drag net. The irony is that the word is also used to describe the process of collective theft, where group will trawl a beach, Copacabana, for example.  Words used in different ways.

I am excited to find a variety of words and texts written on walls. Poetry, alongside grafitti. 

Grupo X1X; Pericles and Perepeteia

I had visited Grupo X1X during my first tour round the Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Rio triangle. I had met the men of the group at their base in Vila Maria Zelia, Belem, Sao Paulo.

It is a village of old delapidated buildings in the East of Sao Paulo that used to house the Jute workers in the 19th century. The theatre itself is an empty room full of a sense of the past. 

The women of the group and the director, Luiz are touring with the play, Hysteria. By chance, I will encounter it when I am in Belo Horizonte.  It has been touring for several years, including a visit to the Barbican in London. The play's success is justly deserved.  During the performance, the men and the women are separated and the all female cast interact with the women in the audience. I have now seen a number of plays in Portuguese and often my shortcomings in the language mean I miss out. Here, it is the language of theatre that really speaks, actors and audience combining and moving in the space, making a bridge with the emotions and stories of the past, and us, now, here, in the present. So it is with great pleasure that I return to work with the group in Sao Paulo. We are looking at scenes from Pericles. Luiz, the director, is interested for the group to work with Shakespeare text, since many of the actors in the group have origins in working with the Shakespeare. The groups usual processes work with improvisation, group collaboration and found historical texts.  However, their next production, The Ice Boat, includes extracts from Chekhov.  I am working with Barbara Heliodora's translation of Pericles. We focus on key words. We find meanings and sensations in the repetition, games and stories between the actors. Ronaldo, Janaina, Paulo Celestino, Tatiana, Luiz and Paulo are wonderful sensitive people and I hope we meet again.

In this moment, I am deepening my understanding of Perepeteia, in the story of Pericles, but also in life.