Tropical ginsberg

64
imported distinguished directors and technicians, from all over Italy, to
make state of the art modern plays. TBC staged highly successful plays,
critically acclaimed, with actors like Cacilda Becker, Paulo Autran, Ruy
Affonso, and Sergio Cardoso. Whereas TBC would hire foreign
directors to make their best plays, Arena would stage plays directed by
Brazilians, and written by Brazilian authors. Arena was founded in
1953, by a group of students of the prestigious Escola de Arte Dramática
(EAD), 137 headed by José Renato, and Geraldo Mateus. Arena managed
to surpass the space limitations of the proscenium stage, 138 preferring
arenas, where the stage is surrounded by the audience.
Even though artistically both companies went to opposite
directions, TBC favouring a theatre made with sophisticated
international standards, and Arena preferring a theatre committed with
socio-political issues, their actor’s performance was very similar. Both
companies’ actors followed the teachings of Russian actor-director,
Konstantin Stanislavski, who had developed pioneering acting
techniques. According to Stanislavski, actors should psychoanalyse their
characters, they should think, walk, and talk, like their character; think
about the character’s infancy, problems, fears, dreams, everything. The
stage was composed with objects which were part of the character’s life,
i.e. photographs, handkerchief, tools, anything which could help
describe the character, or characters of the play. The naturalist scenery
was extremely detailed, sometimes even having a giant tree placed on
the stage. The scenery, plays, and stage of TBC and Arena were indeed
very different; however, because they had this same “Stanislavskian”
approach of theatre, their presentations still had much in common.
This superficial sameness was only deconstructed many years
later, with José Celso Martinez Corrêa, and his co-founded theatre
company, Teatro Oficina. José Celso was deeply influenced by the
theatre and acting principles formulated by German poet, playwright,
and director, Bertold Brecht. A specific concept elaborated by Brecht,
called “gestus,” was what caught José Celso’s attention at first. “Gestus
was a physical exteriorization which signified the social condition of the
character. The character’s clothes, gestures, way of talking, everything,
represented his social condition. The “gestus” proposed a criticism of
society in general, and not only of individuals, the key factor of the
137 School of Dramatic Arts.
138 A form of theatre stage. The stage is elevated a few meters above the front row audience.
The audience’s seats are disposed in a proscenium arch shaped structure. The stage is located
in the middle of the proscenium arch. This theatre space creates the fourth wall in front of the
stage, through which the audience peers.