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The Questions
The theatre must search itself to open new roads and to provoke. Perhaps that is the greatest challenge to generations ahead: to ask "Why?" without losing themselves in pseudo-aesthetics or in pseudo-art.
We ask "why?" when there are no more questions or answers. Facing a silence that stuns the sensibility, we ask, however, to save possibilities, exits, rescues and a future. There is a constant and untranquil expectation around.
Among those who don't know how to wait, we find Amir Haddad. He was born in Minas Gerais, raised in São Paulo, and launched his career as a theatre director in 1957. In the following year, he was one of the creators of the Teatro Oficina. In 1959, with the Teatro Oficina, he was honored for best theatre direction with the José Celso Martinez Corrêa's play, "A Incubadeira".
Since 1965, Amir Haddad has worked in Rio de Janeiro, first for the Teatro Universitário Carioca and afterwards for theatre groups that he created and directed: A Comunidade and Tá na Rua, which has already celebrated 25 years and was transformed into an Institute.
The Tá na Rua Institute involves: a history archive – a project which is under development, sponsored by Petrobrás, and will be publicly available at the end of 2007; the theatre group, Tá na Rua, which develops a genuine language for street theatre; and the Escola Carioca do Espetáculo Brasileiro – the actors training school that promotes the acting language in Rio de Janeiro as a "party, celebration, considering our Mediterranean, African inheritance," Amir says:
"I always get involved in educational activities, I renew myself doing so. I find that Rio de Janeiro has a lot to do with the kind of theatre I create, and I am very inspired by the things that happen in this city. My work would be totally different if I were not in Rio de Janeiro."
Besides being a teacher and a director, Amir also works as an actor. He played a role recently in a TV Globo soap opera and also in the José Henrique Fonseca feature film "O Homem do Ano". As a director, he is constantly invited to direct plays on the Italian stage and has won the most important prizes for theatre director in Brazil.
He goes from Shakespeare to the Carnival, from the Autos to Stanislaw Ponte Preta, from famous and recognized actors to young people from his training workshops.
In 2007, Amir turns 70, and is ready for the celebration: "I still don't know what I am going to do, but I will celebrate my 70th birthday. That's an incredible age. I can hardly believe that! It seems like another person."
Amir confesses that eats a lot of carbohydrates, hardly goes to theatre, "once in a while", and to the movies hardly ever, "I watch the same movies at home". His readings also are from the same books: Shakespeare, Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Guimarães Rosa. He consults the theatre theoreticians' books but does not follow them, "theory without practice is very boring. I have already developed my theory". And about what annoys him, he says: "Someone that does not know how to say: Oops, I am sorry! I was wrong!". He thinks that young people sometimes are older than himself: " I always say to them: stop this elderlyness!"
During our conversation, Amir revealed: "I don't feel myself as special! I like what I do and I do it with attention."
The Landscape
Amir Haddad received me for a conversation that also had a hot Summer day with a sparkling blue sky as a guest. On his verandah, we enjoyed the landscape of the Guanabara bay with the Sugar Loaf mountain.
The sea, the mountain, the blue sky, inevitably the question: Amir, how does a theatre group survive for 25 years swimming against the tide? He answers: "I don't know how to explain that." Who knows? What for? Life's fascinating events builds any biography. Amir goes on:
"I have the feeling that it is much better, easier and possible to do what I did than not doing so. I would have suffered a lot, would be mentally and financially unbalanced today. I did what I should. That is the way: to go against the tide so you can feel yourself useful. I did nothing extraordinary. I have never parked my car in a comfortable vacancy, I always go to the tight one, I like doing that and I know that in doing so I am learning a lot. It doesn't mean that I think poverty is a great virtue, but the extreme worry about comfort and facilities for life can make someone weak to carry out one's dreams and will. No one can do anything without making an effort, without believing and running all risks".
But to run risks, one must have courage, a rare thing today. Amir agrees: "We should go against the tide, as you say. The armfuls are much more difficult, but there were moments I relaxed, I floated and went ahead".
And what does it mean to "go ahead"?
"In my theatre work I see that I touched a rich, interesting, important, new field that opens huge possibilities in the theatre of the dance and the 'party'. That means an optimistic reading of the human possibilities, without accepting the condemnation of our society. All human beings can be artists. I wrote about that once".
Amir has a captivating and clear speech, his thought is coherent and objective. I asked if he writes: "I have never written much, but now I am writing more, not compulsively. I know I lost a lot of things".
Perhaps he is going to find out how important it would be to write memories, beliefs, thoughts, hopes, 50 years of career affirming that art is the possible hope. This thought finds echoes in some necessary anguishes for any artist. Amir says:
"I believe in a better possibility for people. That is possible because the art world has revealed to me that there is no hope apart from art. Art is the possibility. In such a violent world, what role do we have? Artists that walk around the planet? This world is at war!! And we still singing, dancing and playing the drums! What function do we have, if we have one? This is a question that arises when we think about the life of an artist detached from the middle-class Protestant, capitalist pragmatic sense in which everything means money. There is another value, another sense. A good thing for humanity should be good to everyone, it cannot be sold for just reasons of survival."
You say that the work in art cannot be sold, in that capitalist meaning. So what becomes of that work? What I see is frustration, especially among actors who work without being paid and become frustrated, annoyed. Amir, how can an actor survive only with art?
"It is an interesting and very complicated question. But I feel a change in Brazilian cultural life since the president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva government. I notice a real worry about cultural diversity. An actor who thinks of building his artistic life with a children's play here, an experimental one there, perhaps a role on a TV soap opera tomorrow, and expects someone will give him a chance —, this actor is affected by a painful ideology that manages the development of his own culture, because that ideology promises a thing that does not, did not and will not give."
Amir believes that the government Lula is opening new possibilities. Facing the question of the Brazil's cultural diversity, stimulating different artistic manifestations, we will have important projects of inclusion. Amir evaluates: "They are opening a road for a Brazilian cultural project and doing so, they are starting something very important, I think they have not noticed so far that for the first time a government is dismantling the military dictatorship cultural project."
The Audience from the Street: Politics and Ideology
And how has the audience behaved in 25 years of Tá na Rua?
"When we performed on the streets in the 80's the relation with the audience was very intense. It was a lively people, interested, it was starting the political opening, a renaissance of Brazil. The contact with the population was very stimulating. I grew so much during that time. I got a fantastic power from this contact doing the kind of theatre I do. It was very pleasurable to meet emotions, discoveries, revelations, a population being reborn after the military dictatorship years. In the 90's, it has been more difficult to go to the streets to perform a theatre that discusses reality, ideology, routine relations. It was painful and so cruel to go to the street to show a situation to people who have already lost the hope again, because in that time there was a prevailing neo-liberalism, the promises had already failed! After the second mandate of the president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, everything was bad again, we couldn't touch that wound."
In the Lula government, Amir has changed his theme on the streets, and explains why:
"Things are getting better. When political change like that happens, I mean, for the first time in the history an ex-leader is elected president, a real representation of the people taking power, I should change my strategy. In the Fernando Henrique times, I performed Para que servem os pobres? showing what the poor are for, that poverty serves to the system─they will never disappear because they are a fundamental tool in a rich and capitalistic society. With the Lula election for president, I shouldn't speak about that, I should not work on that ironic comment, because I know that Lula attacks this poverty problem, my discourse would not help him, it would be a contradiction. When a man as Lula is elected for president, it is the right moment to speak about politics and no more about ideology".
The play Dar não dói, o que dói é resistir is the Tá na Rua production during the first years of Lula government. Amir says that the play has a very strong contemporary meaning, after the 2005 political events in Brazil. Political changes manage the group's relation to the audience on the streets. Amir says:
"My relation to the audience on the street has to do with the political changes in the country. When there is hope it is very good to perform on the street and to have contact with the audience. When there is no hope we should be careful because the pain can be strong and can remove the acting pleasure. And that would deny the political effect of the language. It must be pleasurable."
Dar não dói, o que dói é resistir
"It does not hurt to give but it hurts to resist" – this sentence, almost a mantra, titles the most recent work of Amir Haddad, which has been performed for three years by Tá na Rua. What was the inspiration of these words? Amir explains: "I always say that when working with my actors and actresses. Because what is difficult in theatre is not the donation of oneself but the resistance to the donation. All generous action does not hurt. It is also the history of how the most sensible Brazilian artists have lived during the military dictatorship moment".
The play is about the military dictatorship in Brazil. A theme that he affirms is unknown in today's theatre:
"Brazilian theatre does not touch on that matter, now we begin to speak about that, but we should speak more and more. This play is about the Brazilian military dictatorship and how artists have resisted. The wolves are waiting, disguised as lambs, we should take care."
Amir evaluates his work as nothing more than the work of constant resistance: "The military dictatorship broadcast a TV channel, and employs a rigorous censorship, and dismantled the University. So, without research, without thought, freedom, and with massive media, what has happened is what you have seen in the past decades. I have lived through that and I have immunized myself in the best possible way. I did everything to resist. My work is of resistance, so I could keep myself alive in that deep viral infestation period of Brazilian cultural life."
Amir talks meaningfully about that. Our generation has no idea about the devastation that occurred. However we study this matter, there is a lot to discover. "A few have survived", he says, "The military dictatorship cultural project has validated concepts such as celebrities, stars, models, changing priorities and values. So a young actor is really in trouble today. Which road he should take? Where does he walk? From nothing to the Stars world? Where should he go? Is there a cultural life in Brazil? Is there any change? An event? Where is he going to grow? Or he should follow just a career? How are soccer players being shown? At the thousands of soccer matches we have in Brazil. I believe that more opportunites are appearing now. It is evident that neoliberal proposals to this country have failed."
Despite all of today's difficulties, Amir believes in renewal and in historical change: "When the situation becomes hard there are voices that show a different way. We should not accept things as they are now, we can make a change. We build history. We are fighting for inclusion, and today there is a different movement towards that."
Amir goes on: "What I mean is that if we have had different cultural politics, that actor without a job, desperate, would live in a better situation because the model that he would pursue would be much more possible and he could communicate with his community. He could have a better exchange with his social environment, he would become a better citizen and we would have seen interesting things happening in theatre because the Brazilian theatre already had produced very interesting things. Currently theatre production is very difficult."
What makes the difference? Is there something to be done to make a successful career in theatre?
"The path is narrow and usually a successful career has nothing to do with intelligence. I believe that if the government develops good cultural projects, it will build a new environment. So an actor will be interested in something more than a simple career, working with any dramaturgy, getting 15 reais per work, and without taking good works because he has to work anyway. Without any notion of his own citizenship, he is going to rent his creative resource, if he has one, in the worst way. Probably the repertoire he is going to perform is not going to improve the quality of his work, no growing at all, because everyone, somewhat, is involved in that mediocrity. It would be possible to have a theatre like that if we also have a great theatre as well. But what we have is the entertainment periphery ."
Rio de Janeiro and the Entertainment Periphery
Regarding Rio de Janeiro, Amir calls attention to the public cultural politics in the last State and Municipal governments: "If Rio de Janeiro's new governments invest in new cultural politics we will be able to have fantastic things."
About the reasons that have transformed the theatre season in Rio de Janeiro into an "entertainment periphery", Amir explains:
"Rio de Janeiro gives the impression of a spa that has little musical theatre performances for the old ladies who like going to theatre. That is Rio de Janeiro's season today. Once in a while there is something worthy to be seen. I am not generalizing, but that is the tendency, and the worst thing is that the inspiration, the orientation is to set things like that. There is a thought that says that modernity means to transform Rio de Janeiro into a new Broadway. There are a lot of terrible little musical plays around the city but nothing that provokes or makes someone think."
Is that what is called "commercial plays?"
Sometimes it means commercial, sometimes not. For example, Clarice Niskier's play, A Alma Imoral, achieved unexpected results. It is a play about intolerance, prejudice, how essential disobedience is. It threw a light in the general mediocrity of the current Rio de Janeiro season. So it is possible to have quality being commercial. It is commonly said that commercial quality means lack of artistic quality, this is absurd! I have already seen artistic quality to be rewarded, Clarice Niskier and also Pedro Cardoso in the monologue "O Alto-Falante". And I have seen mediocrity that is worshiped. There is no absolute truth about that question."
Carnival and Theatre
Anyone who watches Tá na Rua street theatre soon establishes a relation to the carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Amir says it was inevitable to see the carnival as a narrative, dramatic, sung, danced and open performance, that is, "a popular manifestation not disturbed by the audience vibration. It is different than a closed room performance in which the audience intervention can confuse the rite."
In 1989, Amir Haddad directed 300 actors performing beggars in the carnival of the Beija-Flor Samba School, Ratos e Urubus larguem a minha fantasia invited by the carnival creative director, Joãozinho Trinta. Amir remembers: "Joãozinho was theatricalizing the carnival, so when he called me I thought that it was a good moment to get involved in that big structure. What I did I used to do with eight actors on the street. And we did it with 300. It had a huge impact. The actors were singing, dancing in an amusing way but, nevertheless, acting."
The controversial and commented episode did not help the samba school to win the carnival championship. It took second place:
"The thing did not continue because Joãozinho lost! That was a powerful parade, it provoked a commotion in the country. This shows a certain conservatism which is hard to overcome in Brazilian society. You can break thousands of barriers but there is always a powerful guy who says: from this point you cannot move on! Joãozinho found a samba school parade jury who has said that!"
But the director's relation to the carnival is deeper and began before 1989: "My relation to carnival has to do with my understanding about what kind of work I was doing in theatre, the liberty that I gave to my actors, with music, dances and singing. The first time I came to Rio I went to a samba school rehearsal. I was a theatre director and for me rehearsal was rehearsal. I watched everyone singing and dancing, I was a theatre director from São Paulo and I thought: Oh, this is a "carioca" thing, they had no rehearsal at all! When I came back, it was the same! Afterwards I understood that the rehearsal was the meeting, the samba, the dances, the availability, the celebration, the body, the sexuality, everything was there being expressed. That was the rehearsal that has prepared the community to go to the samba school parade with open hearts. Today it has been denied this popular origin of the carnival, I hate that, when I see a samba school component doing so many things in the parade but does not have time to sing the samba and neither has a feeling to do that! The samba schools are like that nowadays!"
The contact with samba school has helped Amir Haddad to understand his own work through another perspective: "I understood that in the samba school the content was rehearsed, not the form. And I noticed that I did that in my work. I put in my actor's hand a mask, clothes, music, and several different actors around him and let him be free. I saw that the manifestation is different from the interpretation. I want the actor working with manifestation and not in the incorporation, that is, I want his expression outside the body, in the game, playing. I began this relation to theatre from the carnival"
Honors
Recently, two honors have marked Amir Haddad's biography. In 2005, the director's life and career was the theme of a samba school parade, the Unidos do Cabral Samba School, from Cachambi, Rio de Janeiro:
"I loved to be the theme and I was very lucky because they had created a high quality samba for the parade! It was cool because my actors took part in the production of the parade. But I am a little blasè..."
In 2006, the president Lula and the Cultural Ministry had decorated Amir Haddad with the Order of the Cultural Merit.
How was the ceremony?
"I got nervous, and I also did a speech long enough to make the president Lula shorten his own because there was no more available time! That was bad! But they liked it. Afterwards they called me asking for a copy of my speech."
Constant Fight
Despite the honors, the fight is constant. The director has never had regular sponsorship for his artistic projects, as we see in Brazil some groups of theatre, dance and orchestras that are regularly maintained by big companies such as Petrobrás and Shell. Amir says: "Constant support just for my artistic projects I have never had. I would like to, it would give me tranquility to develop some works".
But there is some important support. Among those, Amir remembers the Pontos de Cultura. Since 2004, Tá na Rua Institute is one of the groups chosen by the Federal government project to offer theatre professional training courses to lower social class young people.
Amir also has received the FATE – the Municipal Support to the Theatre - that has enabled the production of "Dar não dói, o que dói é resistir" :
"Our budget lasted 3 years, and the money was not much! Many projects that have won the FATE sponsorship were readings and disappeared soon. To perform that play, we cannot count on ticket-selling, each performance is an expense, even so, our money has grown!".
The Rio de Janeiro State government gave Tá na Rua Institute a house in Lapa for their artistic center. And the Federal Cultural Ministry, a room at Teatro Glauce Rocha, which is the administrative office. Amir says that this support is "fundamental and priceless. What we do is because we have that structure."
The Future
Amir reveals: "I am going to supervise a Dario Fo play with Débora Bloch, afterwards a Marcos Palmeira project."
Supervision? – I ask with a certain curiosity - who invented that?
"Myself. Doing so I don't have go to rehearsals every day, it is boring! Let the actor work! Supervision respects the actor's universe. That is good because without a director all the time, there is always interaction with the scene designer, production staff... If you are good, you are going to say important things and those people will have enough material to work for a week. An actor must have the desire and the will to work".
He will assume direction completely in an Auto, "Saint George against the invaders of the Moon", with the group Tá na Rua: "It is a cordel. We are going to perform on Saint George's day, in Lapa. 2007 starts with our carnival parade and afterwards the Saint George play. I like to perform on the special days, Saint days, as in the Middle Ages ".
Saying Good-bye
At the end, I gave Amir a gift. It was a picture showing the poet Manuel Bandeira reading a book and the poet's verses: "I do not know how to dance/ Some take ether others cocaine/ I take joy! / That is why I came to watch this mardi-gras ball". Yes, Bandeira, Amir came... And he says: "I just loved those verses."
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