Nothing like a hot Sunday afternoon, a cold beer and an open terrace in the heart of Camden as a setting to interview Renato Rocha. The Actor and Theater Director is working in town this summer, acting in BufoMecanica’s piece for the Shakespeare Festival: Two Roses for Richard III, and as Artistic Director of Dark Side of Love in production at the Roundhouse. Renato is what we call ‘menino do Rio’... Read More
Lya Nagado: Questioning Mortality “The whole magic of beauty is in its mystery” - Schiller* As soon as I saw Lya Nagado’s beautifully executed, but enigmatic, oil paintings ranged around the gallery wall at ICN, I knew I was in the presence of something rather special. Her paintings, whose hues and tones suggest those of the Flemish old masters, have surfaces whose sumptuous velvety... Read More
Romen Gouveia’s installation, ‘Guilty pleasure … the impossibility of logic’, an electric boutique of colour, charges the debate of how “brands play the roles of deities in our culture, creating our most powerful iconography, building our most utopian monuments, articulating our experience back at us, not religion, not intellectuals, not poets”. (Klein, p.30, 2002) Showcasing at ‘Goldsmiths... Read More
I arrived at the Globe on the Friday afternoon on time to see Galpao’s truck delivering the costumes and props through the backstage door. The adventure of finding them took me into a journey inside Globe’s staff members. I ended by meeting the festival’s Director Tom Bird. He was really pleased to have Galpao back and he was the one who took me, in person, to the technical team of the troupe... Read More
Grupo Galpao’s version of Romeo and Juliet has already been enchanting the world for 20 years. It was first put together by the Group back in Brazil and presented in the historical city of Ouro Preto. Since then, the play travelled across the country and the world, playing over 270 times until 2003, coming to London, to the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in 2000. To celebrate the Shakespeare Globe... Read More
I am not sure about you, but a lot of people I know foster great fantasies about Brazil. The country internationally known for football and samba has now outgrown this fame and is on the map as the 5th economy in the world. Spending few weeks there recently, this time it felt really different. It was the first time in my life that I felt a foreigner in my own country, which has changed significantly... Read More
Into theatre – how to design using the camera as tool Sophisticated use of media entered experimental theatre productions in the 80s, thanks to the great influence of Robert Wilson and Phillip Glass’s ‘Einstein on the beach’. “[Einstein on the beach] is a cultural icon in so far as it crystallises and transcends the experimental trends of all the arts across the board during the 1960s and... Read More
