International perspectives enrich our understanding of Shakespeare's tales of comedy and violence
In the year when that most exportable of English of cultural icons ? Shakespeare ? catches up with the multinational Olympics on reclaimed industrial land in east London and theatre companies from across the world are offering their own version of his plays at the Globe theatre, it's worth asking: does Shakespeare now speak more clearly to countries other than Britain?
Last November I visited Rio de Janeiro as part of a Shakespeare forum curated by People's Palace Projects, an organisation that promotes arts for social justice. I worked on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure with student actors in Vidigal, a favela famously situated above Ipanema beach and "pacified" just a week previously by armed police, as part of a state drive to reclaim areas like this from the violence of the drugs trade.
The students were hosted by Nós do Morro, the now internationally renowned theatre school founded to train young actors from the favelas. On that day, I saw versions of a scene from that darkest of Shakespeare's comedies that were both funnier and more painful than I'd often witnessed at home.
When I asked the students why they thought they had such an ease with the swift switches of mood in this play about sexual corruption, one student simply told me that well, that was life, wasn't it? Sometimes you had to take on corruption in a deadly serious fight, sometimes you had to laugh at it.
Against the backdrop of life in the favelas or Brazilian political history, it would be easy enough to draw parallels between the lives of these young people and those of Shakespeare's characters. When police in charge of the "pacification" process in the favela of Rocinha are still rumoured to be taking bribes and three have recently been charged with rape, small wonder at the mix of firy disgust and dry cynicism with which the Brazilian students worked on a scene in which a corrupt deputy demands a woman's virginity for her brother's life.
"Pacification" may now be softening dividing lines between communities in the favelas. Researcher Marta-Laura Suska tells the tale of a commander in the UPP (pacification police) who was asked by a community member to forbid a relationship between a young woman from the favela and one of his young officers involved in its pacification. Happily, no such prohibition was made ? but the couple have left the favela in question to get married, and no doubt Mercutio's cry of "a plague on both your houses", as he dies in Montague-Capulet crossfire would ring true to some of the students I worked with in Vidigal.
We shouldn't romanticise the violence and corruption that some of the Quebradas students have experienced, nor do I want to suggest that British people never experience violence or corruption. I'm sure it would be disturbingly easy to find young people with family or friends killed in gun crime on London estates who might relate to the deadly factionalism of Richard III or the prejudices and prohibitions of Romeo and Juliet.
But what struck me particularly about the Brazilian students' ways of working with Shakespeare was the lack of solemnity with which they approached him and their willingness to draw upon all the cultural traditions at their fingertips to tell stories that shift disturbingly from laughter to tears.
Shakespeare's work was a rich stew of new twists on old stories, experimental poetry and folk tradition, clever ways of commenting on state violence and corruption without ending up in the Tower. Which is precisely why Grupo Galpão's Brazilian Portuguese production of Romeo and Juliet at the Globe will be particularly fascinating. It received some puzzled coverage when it was last here: Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington considered it an endearing piece of exotica, energetic and amusing but ultimately not "tragic" enough. I'm looking forward to seeing Shakespeare's words being picked up and shaken around, translated and cut about, by people who not only might have actually experienced more of what he was talking about, but who may better understand how his drama works, both structurally and emotionally.
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The first day of spring. Can you smell it in the air?
And today we leave for the Basque Country where we will be the next couple of weeks visiting my family and old friends.We will be waiting for the first cherry and apple trees to blossom. We will welcome the baby sheep, make mamia from sheep's milk, and if we are lucky, we might even go mushroom picking.I miss the feeling of missing the seasons. When winters starts to make room for spring and there is change in the air. The smell of morning dew on the first buds, the birds finally return and wake me up with their chirping, and the first days without a coat. I miss the feeling - and that is why I must go home now. "Florida, you are warm and beautiful, but I need mud and rugged forests".I will be back soon and in the meantime, eat well and enjoy the first days of spring. See you soon.
