With an unpublished text by Maria Clara Ferrer and Thiago David, the play tells the story of a family that lives on the high seas.
Photo: Priscila Natary
The USP Theater (Tusp) presents the show “Calmaria,”(Calmness) created with students from the Department of Scene Arts of the Federal University of São João del-Rei (UFSJ), in Minas Gerais. The short season takes place from February 22 to 25, with free admission.
Based on the conception of the director, playwright, and UFSJ professor Maria Clara Ferrer, and the screenwriter and master’s student Thiago David, the play is the result of an artistic pedagogical process of the institution. For Ferrer, “it is essential that, in the context of a mounting discipline, all components be thought and orchestrated together, in favor of creating a scenic language. The course is not only focused on the training of actors, but on a knowledge of stagecraft that encompasses different activities: directing, acting, plastic arts, video, light and sound, and production,” she explains.
In an immersive atmosphere, the text and staging flirt with audiovisual aesthetics, reconstituting and deconstructing the novelistic codes of a family saga. Exploring the twilight, the light shelters and edits the scenic action, sometimes by cuts, sometimes by fading. The scenography, initially marked by a large suspended table, reminds us, as Sandra’s character says, that “every balance is fragile.” The sound creation was conceived with the intention of not emphasizing the realistic aspect of the play: the sounds of the boat are sounds from inside, they are veiled voices, noises of a family machinery in full degeneration. The costumes play with chromatic combinations and, like the characters, transform and are turned inside out throughout the acts.
For this, the group counted on the solid collaboration of professionals from different areas who were invited as mentors to accompany and fine-tune the work within the different nuclei. The intention, says Thiago David, co-author of the work, was to provide the experience of a theatrical creation process with all the rigor and intensity required by the profession, regarding engagement and collective commitment and confrontation with material and time limits. And in this sense, Ferrer concludes, “Calmness is the result of a deep belief in the Brazilian public university as a place of intimate and political transformation, as a physical – and therefore, face-to-face! – space in which artistic creation is possible.”
After two seasons in São João del-Rei, the team decided to continue the show. These new presentations of Calmness in other spaces and cities are “a way of affirming the importance of university theatrical creation, through a work carried out seriously by a group that is so representative of the diversity of our country,” says producer Gustavo Travenisk, a student of the theater bachelor’s degree.
Synopsis
The action takes place in a unique place: a boat called Calmness. In it lives, confined in the middle of the sea, the Maranhão family. Composed of fourteen characters, the plot unfolds in a constellation of conflicts traced by the family ties of four generations. Between said and unsaid, it is seen that calmness is only superficial. Behind the well-set dining table lie frustrations, secrets, daydreams, and everything that ferments inevitable disorder. In four acts, the play brings to light the symptoms of bankruptcy of a patriarchal family structure, mirroring issues related to sexual and affective relationships and ways of dealing with motherhood and mourning.
Technical Information
General Coordination: Maria Clara Ferrer | Playwright: Maria Clara Ferrer and Thiago David | Direction nucleus: Maria Clara Ferrer, Luisa Amorim, Elias Filgueiras, Tainá Belizário, Hericles Gomes | Production Direction: Gustavo Travenisk, Hericles Gomes | Cast: Alexa Vitória, Anthony Mattos, Giovanna Stehling, Jordana Lis, Leonardo Guilherme, Luiza Cassiano, Marya Rodrigues, Mikael Yadish, Nicole Pinheiro, Rafael Mello, Suelen Campos, Victor Sanches, Victória Mel, Victoria Vette | Light Operation: Andressa Lirr | Light Assistant: João Pedro | Video Conception and Operation: João Saturnino | Sound Operation: Luisa Amorim | Graphic Art: Gustavo Travenisk and Alexa Vitória | Mentoring in Scenography: Taisa Campos/Tato Oficina Cenográfica and Morgana Martins | Mentoring in Lighting: Mauro José
Service
Calmaria
Where | USP Theater Rua Maria Antônia, 294 – Vila Buarque – São Paulo, SP (near Higienópolis and Santa Cecília metro stations)
When | From February 22 to 25, from Thursday to Saturday at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday at 7:00 p.m.
Rating | 12 years old
How much | Free tickets through Sympla (https://bit.ly/m/calmaria)
Capacity | 90 seats
Duration | 120 minutes
Information | (11) 3123-5222