MIT Global Shakespeares is thrilled to announce the launch of the Shakespeare in Brazil educational module. The site provides online access to Brazilian performances of Shakespeare, as well as interviews, essays, and metadata provided by Brazilian scholars and educators in the field. Shakespeare in Brazil is a collaborative, participatory project that celebrates Shakespeare as a global author.
Shakespeare has held an active place in Brazilian academics and stages for decades, including the production of world-renowned performances that have made their way to the Bard’s England, as well as to other prestigious arenas. The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected much of what happens in the theater, but surely it has not affected the status and presence of Shakespeare in Brazil. An impressive variety of creations have taken place in the recent times of isolation and social distancing, and have brought with them some contributions to theater both during the pandemic itself and also after the vaccines and reopening of the auditoriums.
A seminal publication for the study and staging of Shakespeare in Brazil, William Shakespeare. Teatro Completo, is the new edition of Shakespeare’s complete works translated into Brazilian Portuguese. Published in a three-volume box by Nova Aguilar Publishing House to mark the 400th anniversary of death of the English playwright, this edition contains the translations of thirty-eight plays by Shakespeare, including unpublished translations such as Edward III. (Volume I: Tragedies and Dark Comedies; Volume II: Comedies and Romances; Volume III: History Plays).
“I enjoy looking at the world through Shakespeare’s eyes.”
Who is Ayhan Hulagu in his own words? Can you introduce yourself to us?
I am a professional actor and writer. After finishing Sahika Tekand Studio Players, I started my professional acting career. I have acted in various theaters and written for magazines and dailies. In 2017, I established the US Karagoz Theater Company in the U.S. with the status of an extraordinary ability artist. This followed with plays and festivals. I have performed in more than twenty-five states in the U.S. and organized tours to various countries across Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Shakespeare’s plays and motifs have been cited and appropriated in fragmentary forms on screen since motion pictures were invented in 1893 when the Kinetoscope was demonstrated in public for the first time. Allusions to Shakespeare haunt our contemporary culture in a myriad of ways, whether through brief references or sustained intertextual engagements.
Refugees are the theme of the Shakespearean International Yearbook Vol. 19, co-edited by Tom Bishop, Stephen O’Neill, Ton Hoenselaars, and MIT Global Shakespeares co-founder Alexa Alice Joubin (Routledge, 2022). Shakespeare has often offered orientation and even emotional refuge both to people in crisis and to those contemplating it.
Shakespeare is over 450 years old and yet we are still turning to him to help us make sense of ourselves and the world. There is something about his plays that manages to speak complicated truths to all types of readers and spectators. Is it Shakespeare’s inexhaustible repertoire of human experience that makes him so relevant today? Shakespeare seems to serve as a timeless and ever shifting oracle from which we draw our truths. A new publication in Brazil vigorously concentrates on the Bard during the trying times of the pandemic.
Cristiane Busato Smith, lead regional editor of Brazil for MIT Global Shakespeares and lecturer at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Arizona State University, will give a lecture on What You Need to Know About Shakespeare Before the World Ends. The event takes place 1:30 – 3:00 pm on Thursday, March 11, 2021.
Gustavo Gasparani and Sergio Módena adapted William Shakespeare’s Richard III into a one man show with Gasparani playing 26 different characters. The text was reworked into a script that introduces a Narrator who conducts the plot and resorts to omissions, additions and interpolations. There are no changes in terms of time or setting. Simplicity sets the tone of the production; set and costume design elements are reduced to a minimum, to stimulate the audience’s imagination. The resources employed aimed at adding a touch of humor and lightness to the story, as well as resonating with the reality and the collective imagination of Brazilian audiences.
The Lancaster Campus of HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, hosted its fourth annual humanities symposium from April 11-13, 2017. The three-day event, titled “Shaking Out Shakespeare,” attracted over 600 students, faculty, and community members, and explored the profound influence of William Shakespeare on the arts, humanities, and sciences.
OTELO, an adaptation of the play Othello written by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), is a new production from Persona Cia de Teatro, based in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. The premiere took place in 2014, the year in which the 450th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest writers of the world was celebrated worldwide. The show Otelo was awarded the Prêmio Funarte Myriam Muniz 2013, in the ensemble category and the Prêmio Elisabete Anderle de Estímulo à Cultura 2013, by the Fundação Catarinense de Cultura. The show tells the story of Othello, the president of an important company, who is led into the trap of his secretary, Iara.
This production of Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare For All (Romeu e Julieta – Shakespeare para todos) was performed at the Federal University of Santa Catarina Theater (Teatro da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina) in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil on November, 28th, 2015 by the Elefants Theatre Company (Elefants Companhia de Teatro).
Cris Busato Smith, Brazil Regional Editor for the MIT Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive, gave two talks at the 22nd Annual ACMRS Conference held 3-6 February 2016 in Phoenix, Arizona: “Brazilian Shakespeares,” delivered on February 4 as part of the panel “Dead at 400: Shakespeare, Cervantes and El Inca Garcilasco,” and “Ophelia in Contemporary Brazilian Art,” delivered on February 6.
This exceptional production, Timon de Atenas, was performed in Rio de Janeiro between October 10 and December 7, 2014 at the Teatro Maison de France and directed by Bruce Gomlevsky. The wonderful Vera Holtz stars as Timon (making the character gender neutral). Also starring Tonico Pereira as the philosopher Apemantus and Alice Borges as the faithful Flavia.
Cris Busato Smith, Brazil Regional Editor for MIT Global Shakespeares, delivered a lecture on Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ entitled “Lady Macbeth and Ophelia: Beyond Drowning and Sleep-walking.” The event was well attended and generated many questions from the audience.
Dr. Cristiane Busato Smith, Global Shakespeares regional editor for Brazil, will chair a session on Friday, February 07, 2014 on Shakespeare and the Catastrophic at the 20th Annual ACMRS Conference, Arizona State University. She will also be presenting a paper entitled “Macbeth: Visions of Apocalypse Now and Then” on Saturday, February 08, 2014.
The theatre group Ueba Produtos Notáveis is a Brazilian street company based in Caxias do Sul (Rio Grande do Sul). Their street production A megera domada (2009), a free adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (1592), displays specificities and motives borrowed from the commedia dell’arte, among them comic/grotesque acting techniques, stereotyped characterization, improvisation and theatre in the round with no separation between audience and performers.
Hamlet Sincrético (Syncretic Hamlet, 2005) is a collaborative production by Grupo Caixa Petra that adapts Shakespeare’s Hamlet from a “black aesthetic”. It draws on Afro Brazilian cultural and religious syncretic elements as metaphors to retell Shakespeare’s tragedy. The production respects the linearity of the source play but does not reproduce its language which follows the particular nature of each character. The characters are incarnations of types or characters from Afro-Brazilian mythology and religions. For instance, while Hamlet’s role as the seeker of justice is associated with Xangô, the *orixá (or orisha) of justice and wisdom, the ghost is linked to Oxalá, the sky father orisha. Gertrudes is the queen of carnival and Polonius is characterized as a former *Candomblé priest converted into an evangelical preacher. Claudius is portrayed as Zé Pilintra, a folk character in the *Umbanda and *Catimbó traditions known for his bohemianism and wild partying.
Grupo Galpão’s Romeu e Julieta is an intercultural adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a production that intentionally draws on a range of popular practices such as street theatre, circus performance and the tradition of the commedia dell’arte, as well as on elements from the cultural imaginary of Minas Gerais in southeast Brazil. This production was staged in 2000 at the Globe Theatre in London.
Titus Andronicus, directed by Silviu Purcarete for the National Theater in Craiova, Romania, 14 March 1992. Staged in the aftermath of the 1989 revolution, Purcarete’s production was set in fratricidal violence of the post-communist Balkans. It won several awards at festivals in Romania, Canada, and Brazil.
Nós do Morro (Us from the Hillside) is a community based theatre company and school based in the Vidigal[i] Morro, one of the largest favelas (shanty towns) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Grupo Galpão’s Romeu e Julieta (1992), directed by Gabriel Villela, is an intercultural adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a production that intentionally draws on a range of popular practices such as street theatre, circus performance and the tradition of the commedia dell’arte, as well as on elements from the cultural imaginary of Minas Gerais in southeast Brazil.
Commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of the Complete Works Festival in 2006, the award winning community theatre company Nós do Morro (We from the Favela/Hillside) displays a fresh and energetic performance of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Switching effortlessly from the comic to the serious, the plotline is infused by vibrating music and movement.
In the same vein as Dead Poet’s Society, the story is set in the repressed atmosphere of an all male boarding school where four students engage in a clandestine reading of Romeo and Juliet. As the boys express their repressed emotions and passions through Shakespeare’s verse, they start to merge with the roles of the characters in Romeo and Juliet, and the tale blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Macbeth, herói bandido (2004) is a stage production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), produced by Cia. Rústica (Rustic Theatre Company), an autonomous theatre ensemble based in Porto Alegre, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is one of the most active and prolific troupes in the city, promoting relevant research projects and award-winning theatre shows.
The stage-production Sonho de uma noite de verão (1991), directed by Marcelo Marchioro, paid homage to the Brazilian circus-theatre, highlighting aspects closely related to the circus universe, among them humor, magic, and love. Furthermore, Marchioro rejected exoticism, exuberance of scenery, and exhausted romantic clichés current in 19th century performances, privileging the complexity and verbal subtlety of Shakespeare’s text.
The production of Hamlet (1992) was part of a larger project idealized and concretized by the Brazilian director Marcelo Marchioro, in Curitiba PR, entitled “Shakespeare in the Park”, which aimed at popularizing Shakespeare for Brazilian audiences. The enterprise, which included lectures, workshops and other educational activities for actors and the general public, also included the mounting of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1991). The alternative space where Hamlet was performed, a large auditorium situated in São Lourenço Park, was totally remodeled for the production, with the creation of a sort of re-mediated Elizabethan stage.
Sonho de uma Noite de Verão – uma intromissão no mundo de Shakespeare (Midsummer Night’s Dream – an intromission in the world of Shakespeare), directed by Fernando Mello da Costa, is the first Shakespearean stage adaptation from award winning community based theatre company, Nós do Morro. Declaring to be an “intromission” into the world of Shakespeare, the Brazilian performance recreates the atmosphere of love, fantasy and dream present in the original text. The blurring of the boundaries between reality and fantasy is creatively introduced before the actual play starts, in the foyer of the theatre.
Othelito (2007), adapted and directed by Ângelo Brandini, is a stage re-visitation of Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice from the point of view of comedy. The main characters become commedia dell’arte archetypes: Othelito is the Captain, a fearful fellow who is always boasting his achievements. Brabantio becomes a Pantalone of sorts, a cantankerous old miser. Iago is Briguela, the crafty villain. Cassio and Desdemona are the Enamorados, typical romantic characters.
Otelo da Mangueira, a musical stage-adaptation directed by Daniel Herz, is an ingenious transposition of Shakespeare’s Othello to the traditional Brazilian universe of the Samba Schools whose pageants attract thousands of tourists from all over the world every year. Gustavo Gasparani, who is the writer of the performance text, has succeeded in metamorphosing the main characters of the Shakespearian plot into a dispute for consecrating the samba-song at Morro da Mangueira, Rio de Janeiro, during the carnival of 1940, which is the year samba was raised to the category of national rhythm.
Ensaio. Hamlet. (2004), a collective experiment by Cia. dos Atores, directed by Enrique Diaz, tore Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1604-1605) to pieces to explore contemporary issues emerging after the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the first candidate the Workers’ Party (PT) elected for president in Brazil. Specific topics from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, such as power, misconduct, incest, fratricide and madness were appropriated and used as material to create new scenes pregnant with contemporary signifiers.
With his five-hour production of Ham-let (1993-4), director José Celso Martinez Corrêa, known as Zé Celso, shocked purists who prefer not to see the Shakespearean text desecrated, but he was equally revered by his creative talent. In proposing a Brazilian Hamlet, this exuberant rendition achieves a liberation from the Shakespearean text by proclaiming and celebrating its affiliations to Brazilian culture and themes.
The stark minimalism of the staging of Macbeth, the Scottish Play (Macbeth, a Peça Escocesa) does not affect the quality of its performance. Performing with the bare minimum, the actors were at home with the text and knew how to communicate it well to the audience. The bareness of the stage also helps to accentuate the eeriness and other-worldly quality of the weird sisters.
Anne: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”– he asked me. “No, thank you!” I replied. Anne Hathaway’s dismissive words in the beginning of The Intimate Diaries of Madam Shakespeare (2007) set the tone for the Brazilian stage adaptation of Robert Nye’s novel, Mrs. Shakespeare: The Complete Works (2001). The quote from the famous sonnet and Anne’s smug dismissal of her husband’s words capture the spirit of the play.
Trono de Sangue (Throne of Blood/Macbeth), the title of Brazilian director Antunes Filho’s staging of the Shakespearean tragedy, refers explicitly to Akira Kurosawa’s film, and puts into relief its intermedial characteristics. The director carried his well-known devotion to the cinema into the aesthetics of spectacle which resulted in a beautiful visual achievement with clear references to Noh Theatre.
Musical theatre in cabaret atmosphere: Patrícia Fagundes’ adaptation for the stage of A Midsummer Night’s Dream subverts traditional protocols by fusing multiple media, such as theatre, dance and music, and by mixing and refashioning elements from popular culture and mass media. The Brazilian director’s decision to set the play in a cabaret, transporting the inventive Shakespearean plot into the cultural imaginary of the 20th century is highly appropriate if we think about the fragmented, multiperspective structure that governs the texture of the play.
Part of the repertoire of the acclaimed Brazilian troupe Clowns de Shakespeare, Much Ado About Almost Nothing premiered in Natal (RN) in 2003 and toured Brazil for six years. It chronicles two distinct love stories: the sugary romance between Claudio and Hero and the war of witty insults between fiery Benedicto and Beatriz. In order to have a happy ending the lovers will have to escape the Machiavellian traps that villain Dom Joao plots for them.
CALIBAN is a play based on a research about this well-known character of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Caliban, the sole inhabitant of an island, is a primitive and savage creature, and is enslaved by Prospero, a noble chief of state who, after being exiled from his country, arrives on the island after a shipwreck. The process of civilization and domination serves as foundation for the plot. Thereafter, the play develops around only one man on stage, who will enact the metamorphosis of one character and create others, so breaking the linear narrative of the story, at times bringing the text into a contemporary focus to reveal it’s metaphors and reflections.
