Paul
Heritage
“Parallel Power: Shakespeare, Gunfire and Silence”
October
14,
2005 |
|
Paul
Heritage is Professor of Drama and Performance at Queen
Mary, University of London . For over a decade he has
been working on a range of socially engaged arts projects
across Brazil, including the Love in Time of War project
in Rio’s favelas. |
Shakespeare
Stopping Guns in Rio’s Favelas
By
Jacqueline Adams
Paul
Heritage is not someone you would expect to see in a shantytown.
Aristocratic, chiseled features, an elegant British accent,
pink shirt, debonair manner, and tall, lean form, he must
have appeared out of place when, between April and July 2004
he spent many hours in Rio’s favelas, bringing
Shakespeare plays to the faveleros.
A
professor of drama at the University of London and director
of a performance art organization bringing theater to prisons,
Heritage was steeped in the world of actors and acting. But
this was something he had not done before, and it held a
number of difficult challenges. Heritage needed to talk famous
Brazilian soap opera stars into coming to act in the favelas,
despite their reputation for danger and violence. He needed
to persuade the local faveleros that Anthony and Cleopatra and Measure
for Measure, two plays never before staged in Brazil
, were worth putting on. He had to raise money for the enterprise.
The infrastructure for holding performances had to be set
up. More fundamentally, the challenge was to achieve a crossing
of spatial and class boundaries in the process, by putting
on the plays in both middle-class and shantytown environments,
having the members of one go into the other, and bringing
middle-class actors and shantytown musicians together on
stage.
Rio
de Janeiro is a “cidade partida” (divided
city), one with an invisible boundary between the faveleros
and the asfalto (literally cement, but referring
to all of the non-favela parts of the city), explained Heritage.
Fear characterizes the relationship between the two sides.
The theater project was to break the divide by bringing the
two together.
He
chose to put on the plays in the favelas of Vigário
Geral, Parada de Lucas, and Rocinha — among the largest
of Rio’s estimated six hundred favelas — and
Leblon, a well-to-do neighborhood by the beach. The performances
were to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in Leblon
and on Monday nights in one of the three favelas. Despite
the difficulties, the funding was secured, the actors were
persuaded, a free shuttle bus service was planned to transport
faveleros into Leblon and back and a promise was secured
from the police not to enter the favelas suddenly during
the performance.
But
where to put on the play? There was no theater house in the
shantytowns, no stage, not even a big enough open space.
There was, however, a narrow tract of land about 200 meters
wide between two of the targeted shantytowns, and a school
at one end of this tract had a playground large enough to
hold a stage and seats. Although the size of the space was
suitable, there was a problem: Vigário Geral and Parada
de Lucas were run by rival drug gangs and at war with each
other. The inhabitants of one never ventured into the other,
and the strip of land was guarded by teenagers with automatic
rifles. Gunfire rang out across the tract every day and more
so at night, earning it the nick-name “The Gaza Strip.” No-one
would attend the play if they risked being shot on the way.
But would a cease-fire be agreed to? A highly popular band
named Afro-Reggae, fortunately, was based in one of the favelas,
and would be integrated into the Shakespeare plays. As Afro-Reggae
was universally loved, the prospect of seeing them was attractive
to everyone. Both sides said “yes” to a cease-fire.
|
Professor
Heritage speaking with Harley Shaiken,
the Chair of the Center for Latin American Studies,
after his talk on October 14.
|
How
many seats to put out? Not expecting many people, but just
in case, Heritage put out 400. Lights in the “Gaza
Strip” were repaired. Chemical toilets were set up.
Cars were hired to drive around the shantytowns all day advertising
the plays, somehow summing up their plots in one sentence
over the loudspeaker. On opening night, before the curtain
went up, every seat was taken and many people were left standing;
over 2000 people from both communities were present.
The
actors were tense before the show while Heritage gave them
a prep talk. Ninety percent of them had never been to a favela
before. Would the cease-fire hold? What would the audience
be like? Such questions were going through everybody’s
mind. Just before the performance began a down-to-earth television
star explained the plot. Anthony and Cleopatra started to
unfold, with Afro-Raeggae chiming in at appropriate moments.
The faveleros loved it. Although they milled around, laughed
and talked, to the actors’ discomfiture, they thought
it was wonderful that there was theater in their own neighborhoods.
The
ceasefire held for eighteen days. After the performance,
the “Gaza Strip” was used for cultural events
during the day. It now has street lightening, and is cleaned
up every so often. The greatest impact, however, argued Heritage,
was on people’s cultural imaginings; imaginings about
what could be done, what was possible, that the city need
not be “partida,” that the divisions between
the favelas and the asfalto could be breached, as might those
between one favela and another.
Paul
Heritage is Professor of Drama and Performance at Queen
Mary, University of London . He gave a talk on “Parallel
Power: Shakespeare, Gunfire and Silence” on October
14, 2005.
Jacqueline
Adams is a professor of sociology and is currently a visiting
scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies.
