Street Life

It s dangerous on the streets of Brazil, I can report. Take my daily walk to the Sede do LUME along the road that skirts the old farm - it s fraught with dangers. There are the geese, for a start. It s their territory, and they will defend it, honking furiously. One morning I saw a showdown between the geese and the RealGas truck: both stood their ground, wild honking versus the endless electronic rendering of Fur Elise. Really, it s too much at 8 o clock in the morning. A little further along the road is the avocado tree. Beware of falling avocados, they are pretty heavy things. Then there s the jogger in the blue tracksuit - she s very determined, and you could easily get mowed down if you stepped into her path. Oh, and the man with the machete - he s pretty terrifying, although he is only cutting back the undergrowth, nothing to worry about. On some days, there are the garbage collectors to avoid. Unlike dustbin men in England, who are a pretty slow breed generally, the Brazilian rubbish collectors treat their job as a kind of competitive sport. Dressed in blue and orange T-shirts, shorts and knee-high footballer socks (I kid you not), they leap from their speeding van to each side of the street and race each other back to the cart with their booty. Of course, the driver doesn t slow down for them, and they leap back on, hanging on for dear life and hollering loudly. Oh and the dogs. You know about the dogs... apparently people have them for security, but as they bark continuously day and night, how would anyone know if there was an intruder? I hear that there used to be a lot of burglaries in the neighbourhood, hence the dogs, although no-one is quite sure if there are many nowadays. I did hear one story of someone whose children were disturbed by some men in masks - but this being Barao Geraldo, the children just assumed they were witnessing yet another clown show...

The fact that I know this road so well, and others in Barao Geraldo so little, tells a tale in itself. I walk to LUME, I spend the day in workshops, then in the evenings I get whisked away to symposiums or lecture-demonstrations or shows, getting a glimpse of other streets from the back of a speeding taxi. Bizarrely, the only time I seem to go to centre - a park square surrounded by banks, restaurants, cafes, and newspaper kiosks - is when I m performing in the streets. I get brought there in a car, I step out, I perform my solo or group actions in character, I leave. It s an odd relationship with the place and people! Some day soon I ll take a stroll to the bank just to see how it feels to be standing outside it in regular clothes, behaving normally (well, as normally as I can manage anyway) rather than dressed in net skirts singing sea shanties and nursery rhymes, or invoking the spirit of Yemanja and floating paper boats in puddles.

My first such outing was with Naomi Silman - although her course wasn t specifically about street theatre, she felt it would be good for us to try our figures on the streets... hence a gang of fairy tale princesses, mermaids, and matadors descending on the town centre. So now that Naomi s course has finished (and watch this space for a report soon on the ending!), I ve moved onto Ricardo Puccetti s Street Theatre workshop. We ve been taken for a couple of outings to the town centre - this time, instead of making solo figures, we worked in groups of three or four. My group explored the Condomble Orixas (hence my manifestation as the watery Yemanja, the mother goddess, patron of the sea and of sailors). In our post-outing discussion, our group reflected on some of the key issues in street theatre: making an entrance, taking and holding the space, maintaining an onstage attitude throughout, transforming both the environment and yourself, seducing the audience into the action through either direct or indirect means, being adaptable and ready to change what you are doing in response to the environment, taking calculated risks, staying in constant relation with the audience, and - most important - really believeing in what you are doing!

On Tuesday last (14 February), Ricardo decided to take us somehere different - to the Unicamp university hospital, apparently the biggest hospital in the Sao Paulo region, a place that sees a heaving mass of humanity coming and going in buses, cars, and ambulances to the warren of buildings on the campus - clinics of every sort, accident & emergency departments, Brazil s most renowned specialist plastic surgery unit for burns victims, and consultancies for every possible chronic disorder imaginable. It seems a daunting proposition, but in reality it turns out to be one of the nicest environments to create theatre in a public space, as here is an audience that is, for the most part, really receptive and engaged in what is being offered. Some of the provocations offered included: a fortune teller, who was particularly popular with the hospital cleaning ladies, especially as she promised them all good fortune to come; a near-naked man in search of a shower, singing loudly as he scrubbed, provoking a lot of giggles from passing nurses; a patient on a strike against disease who rallied the real patients waiting for the home buses with great aplomb; a soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who garnered sympathy from the old ladies; and a purveyor of tiny toys and rhymes (me!) who had a lot of fun with the children in the cafeteria and at the bus stops, with the help of a wind-up frog, a sea-shell, a silk flower, and some merry ditties...