FESTIVAL OPENING

A Brazilian classic is transformed under the direction of José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo: Navalha na Carne, written by Plínio Marcos 50 years ago, caused a scandal and is now regarded as a reference in white theatre history. Now, in the appropriation by actors Lucelia Sergio, Raphael Garcia and Rogério de Brito, this play is modified into a contemporary drama about Black reality.

The prostitute Neusa Sueli and the pimp Vado and Veludo are the characters through which important questions of negotiation are formed: where does the naturalness of the body as a commodity come from, which the pimp advertises here on the market? Which economy and which images give rise to the Black body as a commodity?

On stage, a bed is the only object. Here the world erupts. A camera stands right in the middle, projecting live. The slight delay is a reminder, that everything that happens, could happen differently, that it could have happened differently, that it could have developed differently. In the visual, media enlargement, in the hybridity of stage and video image, the monstrosity of the humiliation and objectification can be experienced. It becomes evident that words are bodies in battle.

The actors performing here, bring different experiences from the Teatro Negro, from the versatile Black theatre in Brazil. Black theatre – that means, among other things, the questioning of the “classic”, which theatre and its denial of the historical violence: After all, beyond the European, melancholic “beings” shown on stage, there are numerous “non-beings” on the other side of the Atlantic, for whom even the “or” was not an option.