Station #01
REMEMBER ME
The first phase of THE DEATH OF THE STAR, directed by Natália Mallo, discusses the place of the stellar figure as a symbol, model and aspiration of the creative system in force in the Euro-Western theatrical tradition. The reflection on the star proposed in this station observes the power structures and economic forces that underpin this "unreachable sentence" that governs the theatrical modes still practiced today, and which insist on the hierarchy between subjects and between corporeities. The objectified body of the female artist, thematized by THE DEATH OF THE STAR, is a guarantee of the extemporaneous survival of the star system in the collective imagination, revived from the past traits of the diva, the first actress and the muse in contemporary social personas, such as the digital influencer.
In the text, written by Vana Medeiros, three Brazilian actresses from the independent "research" theater, haunted by a ghostly apparition, are launched on a mission to save a star of the past from his death by oblivion. When deciding to explore different ways of incarnating and disemboweling the specter-figure of the star and its mandate, although without full conviction of the propriety of the request for revenge, the three actresses debate about the changes in the scene and in society, in sharp dialogues and iconic songs, always marked by irony.
The creative material of this first season plays with the elements of the represented scene, to question its efficiency and propriety, in the face of current times and dilemmas. Using expressive strategies from musical theater, pop culture, drag behavior and mainstream cinema, the scenes alternate between everyday presence and montage, while the actresses seek to solve the mission that, even if they are reluctant to believe, seems to concern to them.
The season REMEMBER ME is finished on the threshold of the dissolution of the star project, when the three actresses recognize their bankruptcy and transience. This opens up another aspiration for their continuity in history, arriving at station #2.
Station #02
Station #2 - BECOMING WHAT?
In this phase of THE DEATH OF THE STAR, conceived and directed by Lu Favoretto, dancer, choreographer and director of Cia 8 Nova Dança, the actresses approach a hybrid language, the result of the contamination between dance, theater and performance art. Station #2 finds inspiration in the deconstruction of patterns that inhabit our body-mind, and which we attribute to the impositions of culture, related to the way women are located in society, in our historical time.
Through the moving body, new becomings are triggered, in individual and collective mutation attempts, which are reflected in the scenic state. The support in the motor bodily structure emerges in new body frequencies, in an opening for movement vocabularies and unusual intensities in experience, which operate as clues for a temporary construction of a becoming-other, consisting of multiple deconstructions.
Creative matter, derived from triggers of incessant becomings, is generated in the imagination and in the body of each performer-creator, with their powers, marks, scars and desires. What are the impulses of transformation and fluidity that can emerge from each of the three performers, beyond habit, linked to a society dominated by consumption and commodification, which constrains us in homogenizing individuation projects? What are the interactions and intertwinings that derive from there, suggesting friendships between humans, minerals, vegetables, animals and enchanted ones? These are questions of investigation of the scene, in search of the expansion of the imaginaries, in the face of these individual's death drives, giving rise to other presences.
One of the matrixes of movement that unfolds in the scene and that invites bodily experimentation around the question "what will become?" it is the undoing of the face. A place of identity firmly established, the face is displaced, generating motor possibilities and presence that seek to disfigure the figure.
The lines of deformation, once summoned, are composed instant after instant, accompanied by image projections and light drawings that promote the crossing of space and time. The superimposition of projections (which, among other things, evoke the memory of the creative process itself) to the experience of the body in the present moment of the scene is responsible for the displacement of the perspectives of the performers and the audience, opening cracks in perception.
The experience of the future, then, extends from the bodies to spatiality and temporality, leading the spectators to an enjoyment of a singular character, in unknown territory. The resultant of station #2 - BECOMING WHAT? escapes the absolute control of the scenic situation, allowing vulnerabilities and sensitivities to emerge, in the scene and in the audience.
DEVIR
O QUE ?
Station #03
In Station #03, the final part of EMBORAR, with guidance from Cibele Forjaz, we find the POEMA JIBÓIA (Jiboia Poem), written by Cláudia Schapira, inspired by the myth narrated by the indigenous woman and shaman Mapulu Kamayurá. After the debate on the scene models and the densification of the experience of a body in becoming, experienced in sstations #01 and #02, the traditional narrative of the Yamuricumã, brought by Mapulu Kamayurá, constitutes a kind of clash of conceptions of the world, which demands a unique type of listening and mobilization.
Close to the Amazonians, or Amazons, the Yamuricumã are women who set out on the march, abandoning their families and lands, to build another world, elsewhere. The traditional narrative exposed in the myth is devoured by the artists of the collective, who scenically return the experience raised by Mapulu's words. The women's march, in search of another territory in which they can experience other forms of coexistence, is the image and the motto that lead the audience and the actresses on a kind of journey through the spaces of the building in which the presentation takes place.
In Station #3 of EMBORAR, titled The Women's March, the performative character, constituted in this immersive trajectory by the bowels of the theater building, is intermingled with the resources of the epic narrative, the lyrical-musical scene and the dramatic conflict, but without being based on any of these enunciative solutions. The women continue to seek, establishing in their relationship with the real spaces of the trajectory (the stage, the corridors, the kitchen, the sewing studio, the garden and the stairs of the Ipiranga Museum, among others) the poetic and political meanings of this endless march. These meanings, as has occurred in the dramaturgy of Cláudia Schapira, also evoke the struggles of women in the Brazilian historical past and in the present moment.