Animal Magic

It’s a strange thing, taking workshops in a language that is not your own. When I arrived here a week ago I had maybe two dozen words in Portuguese – mostly useless words not used in Brazil (I have never, ever heard anyone say ‘adeus’ but that’s how the dictionary translates ‘goodbye’). Either that or words pronounced completely differently to the versions on my ‘Learn to speak Portuguese in just 60 minutes!’ CD. I could just about manage to say ‘olá’ and ‘tchau’ and ‘obrigada’ without making a fool of myself, but that was about it.

But after just three days with Naomi Silman on her February workshop at LUME, my vocabulary has extended considerably. I’m quite good on body parts, for example. I know pé (foot), joelho (knee), quadril (hip), ombro (shoulder), peito (chest), braços (arms), and cabeça (head). These crop up a lot – the methodical working through of body parts and the play on certain correlations between body part and virtue or vice (the chest with pride, for example – developed by Naomi into a play on the figure of the Matador) reminding me of the corporeal mime techniques of Decroux and Lecoq.

I’m becoming quite at home with the animal kingdom, too. In the past three days we have been sapos velhos (old frogs), cordeiros jovens (young lambs), panteras furtivos (stealthy panthers), ratos adolescentes (teenage rats), as well as caranguejos (crabs), macacos (monkeys), and moscas (flies). Oh, and we have not only been flies, but we’ve had flies inside us too. So handy phrases I now understand include ‘a mosca está dentro de sua garganta’ (the fly is inside your throat), and ‘os ratos adolescentes está descansando, mas não estão dormindo’ (the teenage rats are resting but are not sleeping). Well, they’ll be useful in the local bar!

The world of the elements is also opening up – the earth (terra), the air (ar), the wind (vento), water (água), and stone (pedra). We’ve been learning to move with and through these elements – flowing or staccato, fast or slow, with external energy or internalising the expression.

Moving into the man-made world, I’ve become very familiar with the word chapéu (hat). That one has been a constant theme (what’s a physical theatre workshop without a box of hats, after all?). Today saw an excess of hats – and sticks, and umbrellas, and buckets, and bowls, and teapots, and suitcases, and chairs.

Sometimes the objects are just themselves, but at other times they get a little cheeky and take on false airs and graces – a suitcase that thinks it’s a boat, say, or piece of wood that thinks it’s something tasty to eat.

Sometimes it is the people who have the upper hand (as, for example, when Naomi places a tower of hats on my head), and sometimes it’s the objects that call the shots (as, for example, when I sit on a suitcase wearing my tower of hats, and the suitcase collapses). As is so often the way, it’s the accidents in devising and improvising that make the moment.

So here we are, living in a material world…