International Seminar
Spectacle/City/Theatre: Representations of City between Spectacle and the Luso-Brazilian Contemporary Theatrical Scene

July 1st to 3rd, CES Seminar Room

Abstracts

Abel Neves
Ruína do Futuro - Ruin of the Future
The inexistent city is the utopia that may materialize itself in theatre. The utopian experience that occurs in the space of representation may suggest the fundamental sense that is denied to us outside the theatre and in such we revitalize our heritage. The city announced in there reminds a ruin of the future.

Ana Raquel Fernandes
À procura de espaço na cena contemporânea luso-brasileira – Searching for space in the contemporary Luso-Brazilian scenario
Whilst considering space in its multiple dimensions (material, mental and social), we seek to analyze the manner in which it is represented in the Luso-Brazilian contemporary scenario. For the purpose, we put in dialogue the following plays: António, um rapaz de Lisboa by Jorge Silva Melo, Casas by Miguel Castro Caldas, Guarda Sol Amarelo, a collective creation, De quem sois? by Ivam Cabral, O Solo do Pianista Morto by Otávio Martins and  A coleira de Bóris by Sérgio Roveri.  

Antonio Pedro Pita
Uma Hipótese de Território Cultural – A Hypothesis of Cultural Territory
The objective of the presentation is to draw and hypothesis of definition of cultural territory, using some elements extracted from the extensive documentation regarding four years of public funding of arts.
to define a cultural territory it is not enough to exist equipments, programming instances and creation instances. It is necessary to think a specific geography, to consolidate projects that assure the plurality of languages and of aesthetic identities, to incentivize dynamics and mobilities and to define strategies of visibility. Cultural cohesion will be ever greater – that is to say: ever more radically founded – the more the expression of differences occur in the threshold of incompatibility.

Armando Nascimento Rosa
My presentation will proceed to a brief identification of the modes of presence of images of the city in recent dramaturgy works, own and alien, including commented readings of short excerpts of them. 

Berta Teixeira
With the presentation of a practice discourse I shall seek to contribute towards the reflection on the relations that aesthetic-expressive manifestations, namely theatre, potentiate and/or establish with the landscape of the city and provide na example of how the contemporary  of and in Benguela (Angola) happens p «(in)visibly» outside theatrical buildings. I shall present the residence of exchange m.a.r.e.s. as one of the space-time of cognitive citizenship, inasmuch as, cultural of the initiative «ó da arte» (exchange/research/creation/reflection). This action has for aim to stimulate and to promote some of the networks of communication and collaboration between and among several Lusophone communities (scientific, artistic, geographic, etc.) as project of social justice and beauty.

Claudino Ferreira
O teatro e a cidade – Theatre and the city
The presentation reflects upon the role theatres play in contemporary cities, mainly in what pertains to the modelling of its cultural environments. Based on research that has been developed on Portugal, and in particular on the Centro Region of Portugal, it shall discuss the manner public theatres, in their capacity of cultural institutions of reference, relate with the city and urban communities.  Pondering the terms that affect today that referential role and that, as consequence of ongoing transformations of political, socioeconomic and cultural nature, pose new challenges to theatres and to the dilemmatic manner in which they seek to match their traditional cultural mission as missions of a more civic, political, economic and identitarian nature, related either to the projects and strategies for the urban territories they are part of, as to the new management and competitiveness imperatives that are, today, posed upon cultural agents.

Ingrid D. Koudela
Reflection regarding the city as allegory in the spectacular text, parting from contributions from Heinner Muller and Brueghel. From crossing the game, images and spatialities of distinct matrixes, in part from those rising from a popular/medieval imaginary, the city emerges, in scene, as an allegory, ruins or fragment. An urban space non delimited by scenography, but by the game and by non dramatic spatial signs.

Jorge Louraço Figueira
Theatrical Citadels - During the last decade in Portugal and Brazil emerged a handful of authors and directors that created spectacles not only regarding the city but also to intervene in the city. This presentation tries to show how these scenic portraits of the city reveal characteristics and strategies of survival of the theatrical production in the city, and in what measure they were well succeeded. 

José Antonio Bandeirinha
Theatre presupposes an act of indomitable will by the community that hosts and practices it. The spaces constructed and devised for such purpose are the most clear and unsofist testimony of such will. One may, undoubtedly, continue to produce theatre in improvised spaces, what ceases to exist is the petrified proof that Theatre is loved and respected by all. Ceasing to exist the specific content of the act, almost as important as the essence. 

José Simões de Almeida Júnior
The starting-point for the discussion is to comprehend the theatrical place as an agent, a kind of defining media of the theatrical phenomenon. In this sense, the theatrical space is not conceived as reflection or depository of the scene. It constitutes itself in the territory, edified or not, lived for that purpose. We have, thus, the theatrical place characterized by the usage, what makes us question the cities’ everyday as “another view”, in the quest for theatrical territories, not more “edified theatres”. They are, therefore, other spatialities and visibilities that construct the imaginary of the theatrical place in the cities’ landscape.

Maria Amélia J. Corá
Construção do imaginário na Política Cultural Brasileira – Constructing the imaginary in Brazilian Cultural Policy
thinking public policy in brazil means exercising the construction of the imaginary, in the sense that public policy has yet not been appropriated to the everyday discussions and in such Brazilian citizens do not know which are the roles to play in that construction.
We will exemplify how cultural policies are thought out in Brazil, namely in the city of São Paulo, parting from the private initiatives of the theatre groups Satyros and Grupo XIX, followed by municipal interventions such as CEUs and  Virada Cultural, and finally, we shall discuss briefly the changes proposed in the substitution of cultural funding and law (Lei Rouanet).

MirianTavares
During the beginning of the 20’s the cinematographer Sergei Eisenstein was still deeply tied to theatre, where he began His artistic career. He came to direct some plays, but His main role, as man of theatre, was as scenographer. Besides director he drew up not only the scenarios, but conceived the very play parting from the architecture of the space he imagined. One of the plays for which he idealized a scenography was  Precipício, by Pletnev. It was necessary to show an inventor running through the city with euphoria. And his task was to resolve the dynamics of the streets at the same time he showed an individual at the mercy of this great frightening space. Eisenstein’s idea, which was not executed, was to construct fragments of the city incorporated in the bodies of the people, each one of them was at the same time subject and object and the movement of their bodies provoking the movement of the city, bestowing this space with dynamism.   He was inspired in Cubism and its multifaceted vision of the world. In a single gesture man converted himself in the city, as if both were one and only. The city presented on stage was beyond metaphoric, methanimic. Indeed because Eisenstein knew the great deference between theatre and cinema was one that represents space. The other presents. Or pretends to present. I use this example in order to stress the unsimilarities between these two arts when dealing with working upon urban space: on stage and on screen the city assumes different figurations, even though it may not alter its meaning. Cinema uses scenic space as space of artifice, which renders the character of reality of the movie even more accentuated. In this lecture I shall speak of the different forms of presentation/representation of urban space parting from the double experience of Eisenstein as theatre and cinema director, through some contemporary examples of films where scenic space is explored as space of the artificial and non-visible.  

Newton Moreno
I seek to approach the process of construction of the spectacle ASSOMBRAÇÕES do RECIFE VELHO, free adaptation, of my authorship, of the work of the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. The show is a fragmented love poem to the city of Recife (Northeast of Pernambuco)  that lists some of the ‘ghosts’ of His training, i tis as through the legends that the people of Recife elected we might understand the great scars of the process of construction of their identity. We shall also approach how in the initial installation an abandoned big house was used, in the attempt of dialoguing with (and focusing on) historical buildings imbedded with memory that collapse with not the least of care of public power. The spectacle wants to discuss how we treat our memory.

Paulo Peixoto
A cidade performativa – The performative city
During the 1930’s, Lewis Mumford proposed to understand the city as theatre of social action. Mumford’s perspective remains as present as it was 80 years ago. The “urban scene”, the “urban dramas”, “public art”, the “plasticity of public space”, the spectacularization of everyday life”, the “competition between cities”, among others, are notions that inform of the incessant enlargement of the performative dimension of cities. The economy of experiences, the rankings, and the necessity of make happen through the radicalization of the proposals of intervention, mark the presence of theatrical logics and performance in the cities.  

Rogério Proença Leite
A espetacularização da cidade contemporânea: notas para uma comparação entre vida urbana e cena teatral – The spectacularization of the contemporary city: notes towards a comparison between urban life and the theatrical scene
The contemporary cities, mainly historical cities, are ever more transforming themselves into truly monumental spectacular scenarios of a reinvented tradition. This presentation aims to discuss, having for basis the contemporary processes of urban interventions, in what sense may we in fact speak of a “theatrelization” of everyday life in the present context of contemporary urban culture; and in what sense may contemporary cities be considered scenarios of public life, in the sense of scenographic spaces constructed to for the aesthetization of sociabilties.

Rui Pina Coelho
Parting from Assombrações do Recife Velho, by Newton Moreno (Brazil) and Este Oeste Édem, by Abel Neves (Portugal) it’s possible to map out affective cities as well as the urban tissue that is the metaphor for the cities imagined by their authors. This commentary seeks to question these two constructions of a emotive and evocative background searching their reasons and ways of being. Rui Pina Coelho

Sílvia Fernandes
Cartografia de BR3- Cartography of BR3The aim of the text is to analyze the show BR3, by Teatro da Vertigem, premiered on February 10th, 2006, at the river Tietê, in São Paulo. The project’s intention was to research possible Brazilian identities, or non-identities, parting from the study and experience in three locales of the country: Brasilândia, neighbourhood of the periphery of São Paulo, Brasília, in the Federal District, and Brasiléia, small town in the border of Acre with Bolivia.  The regions were chosen by the radical of nationality and because they form territories of exception in which the idea of country is put in check ,as well as concepts defined  as periphery and centre, archaic and modern, exclusion and citizenship, spectacular and non spectacular. The planned city, the border city and the peripheral city project territories in which the idea of national belonging is weakened by notions of border and unstable identities substitute the subjects secured of Brasilitude. 
Initially, I situate the three cities researched by the group and next i analyze the dramaturgy of Bernardo Carvalho, worked by the actors in workshops e improvisations, that unites Brasília, Brasilândia and Brasiléia in the saga of a family of Brazilians. Antonio Araújo’s direction at the river Tietê, environmented in the banks, bridges, roads and boats, is the last feature focused by the text.  

Susana Constantino
Constructed in the period of the Estado Novo, the Cine-Theatres are buildings that materialize the conciliation of cinema and theatre shows in a unique building and that will assume themselves as the grand cultural equipment of the locations that are placed at, contributing towards the redrawing and reinforcement of new urban centralities. Some of these buildings, in a different manner, have come to this day and still conform Portuguese contemporary territory. 

Vera Borges e Maria Angélica Alberto
Da “transformação em lanternas” (caso brasileiro) ao “mundo perfeito” (caso português): a formação e o mercado teatral. – From “transformation in lanterns” (the Brazilian case) to the “perfect world” (Portuguese case): Theatrical training and market.
The training carried out inside theatre groups, between friends, and learning from inter-generational experience play an important role in the initial training of actors. The “love of art” helps to explain , in part, the persistency of actors in this precarious and unstable labour market, but school and local communities seem ever more “blinking the  eye”. Parting from the outputs of the two researches, one developed in Portugal and the other ongoing in Brazil, we seek to discuss the tensions and ambiguities that exist around the triad: “love for the theatre”, training and work. We will show to what point theatre groups have assumed themselves as “school of actors”, as, today, it is the school and the local community that take actor candidates to theatre, through original employment strategies in the artistic market.   

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