2019 | Cia. Mungunzá | São Paulo | SP | Length: 1h10

Directed by Georgette Fadel, the play celebrates the 10th anniversary of the paulista group and brings to the stage a year of experience in the lead of the Teatro de Contêiner.

Inspired by the silver boys that paint themselves to perform juggling at the traffic lights and to beg in subways at the metropolitan zone. And also, in the crack addicts and homeless people whom have a relation in the actual residence of Cia. Mungunzá’s Teatro de Contêiner. Located near the Crackland, center of São Paulo, the company presents SILVER EPIDEMIC, a play acclaimed by public and critics, directed by Georgette Fadel and it celebrates 10 years of the company.

Original text with playwright supervision by Verônica Gentilin, which is part of the cast among with Gustavo Sarzi, Leonardo Akio, Lucas Beda, Marcos Felipe, Pedro Augusto and Virginia Iglesias.

SILVER EPIDEMIC presents the union of two different narratives: the personal vision from the actors about the real characters they’ve met in their current residence in Crackland, and the Medusa’s Mith, in which people are transformed into stone. The inauguration of the Teatro de Contêiner happened in march of 2017. It took a ripener to the group and also created a more affectionate relation with the city of São Paulo. “We just happen to present new forms of action. A new format of public policies. Our space it relates directly with the city and center of São Paulo’s residents, whether is because of the architecture or because of the dynamic we created that it doesn’t have a hierarchical division”,  explains the actor Marcos Felipe.

The spectacle unites two different narratives: the personal vision from the actors about the real characters they’ve met in their current residence in Crackland, and the Medusa’s Mith, in which people are transformed into stone. In the development of the narrative the actors go, little by little, getting silver until they’re completely covered up in silver powder by the end of the play. Full of images and mostly performatic and kinesthetic, the Silver Universe in the play, assumes a greater range of meaning: its color it is the crack stone color when lighten up, its light brings it up the shine and the necessity of being seen by a society that ignores certain ghettos, its designation it is an indicator of wealth, money. Traveling through its meaning, the actors execute an enormous quantity of performances that dismantl

Directed by Georgette Fadel
Argument/written by Cia Mungunzá de Teatro
Playwright supervision Verônica Gentilin
Co-directed by Cris Rocha
Assistant director Djalma Amaral
Body preparation Juliana Moraes
Musical director Bruno Menegatti
Cast Gustavo Sarzi, Leonardo Akio, Lucas Beda, Marcos Felipe, Pedro Augusto,
Verônica Gentilin and Virginia Iglesias
Videomaker Flavio Barollo
Stage architecture Leonardo Akio e Lucas Beda
Costume design Cris Rocha e Sandra Modesto
Lighting design Pedro Augusto
Production Cia Mungunzá de Teatro

 

It is not an easy experience to watch. Inconveniences from many orders are evoked by the way how certain stories are narrated – which is the opposite in the lyrical images – the same when videos about the police violence in the Crackland are exhibited. When it is mentioned people that do not know toilet paper – or people that steal it – it may not have space to poetry. Still, it rains over same color blankets, where underneath them people are living. People that are, probably, way more than what was taken to the stage.

Amilton Azevedo – Folha de São Paulo

 

This play by Cia. Mungunzá it is one of the bravest and honest pieces I have ever seen. They face Medusa’s glance which is this reality of ours that is repulsing. They have the courage of expose themselves dizzy, shredded. Because there was no chance of not being about failure. And if it wasn’t, would’ve been crook. And the craziness (and, therefore, beauty) is the one that keeps going. And the spectacle is also about this, hitting with anger, passion and awkwardness this evil head that will have grown back in a matter of minutes. And they know it. They show it. This play has the pulse and the face of desperation. Our desperation.

Janaína Leite – Scenic Documentary Researcher

A petrifying world, stoned, gentrified. The episodes are lancinating and abysses. A piece of art, pregnant of a grotesque beauty, which mixed people-thing-rat in unhuman and still a real composition. Little by little the audience is obliged to swallow different pieces of text and people’s manifestation. People that are constantly avoided. The spectacle that celebrates 10 years of company is eruptive! (…) Images and texts junctions are harmonic in its set. It creates a “piece of art-portrait”, monumental, a wide opened moment lived at the world’s suburbs.

Alexandre Mate – Researcher and Cia. Mungunzá’s commemorative book writer

Cia. Mungunzá

Created in 2008, the Cia. Mungunzá develops for 10 years a research that is focused in contemporary Theatre. Where its organization, production and creative process are executed by an artist’s core that, besides the theatrical spectacles, has the proposition of a constant reflection about the social and cultural universe. They are 7 artists/educators that works with different directors. Therefore, each spectacle is a “distinct aesthetic encounter”. In the spectacles, the company focus on the polyphony and hybridism of the artistic languages. Using the staging as playwriting and the performatic act as acting. Instigating the artistic act as political and social exercise. Their work: Why is the child cooking in the polenta (2008); Luis Antonio – Gabriela (2011); A suspended poem to a fallen city (2015); Once upon an Era (2015); and Silver Epidemic (2018). The One-Decade group has travelled over 19, of 27, states in Brazil and has presented in Coimbra (Portugal). Their work has been awarded in São Paulo by Shell, APCA, Prêmio Cooperativa Paulista de Teatro and São Paulo State’s Governor Award. Back in 2017, the group has built the Teatro de Contêiner Mungunzá which, supported by São Paulo City Hall, occupied an unused public area of 1000 m2 in the neighborhood known as Santa ifigênia in São Paulo. The Theatre has become a lighthouse in a region where public policies had failed, consequence of a non- dialogue-existence. Focusing on reducing the bureaucracy in the access to art, the space had received 100 thousand people in twelve months. Awarded with 2017’s APCA Award and nominated to Aplauso Brasil and Shell’s Awards in 2017.