Fromstagetostreettheater

Performance at the Teatro Municipal - Joseph Haydn

The first bell rings, and the audience comes in. The spectators settle into their seats. The second bell, still understanding toward latecomers, is the cue that there's still time to get up for a moment, maybe make a quick run to the toilette before the show begins. The third bell sounds: the play is about to start. Every traditional theater audience already knows this ritual well, which combines the sound cues with the dimming light levels, inviting everyone to fall silent.

Image description: This is a photograph of a municipal theater located amid a modern city. On the left side, we see tall buildings with beige facades and evenly spaced windows. In the center, the municipal theater stands out with its classical architecture, featuring marble columns and green domes. On the right, other modern buildings with glass and metal facades are visible. The theater is surrounded by green trees, and in front of it there is a square with people walking. At the bottom of the image, yellow cars are parked.

Anyone who frequents the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro knows that the experience will be marked by this kind of preparation, a rehearsal for an immersion. In the seconds of complete darkness before the bassoons, oboes, first and second violins resound, the interior of the huge building waits in the shadows for the moment to affirm its vocation for grand spectacle.

Musician performs on a street in downtown Rio de Janeiro

But art also unfolds outside historical buildings and theater halls. When the artist's voice and body are enough, the street is company. That's what the group Tá na rua believes, for example. Active for almost 40 years, its artists harmonize references as disparate as Shakespeare and orixás, forgo the traditional stage or voice-amplifying devices, and embrace improvisation and simplicity. The setting is the street, which runs through the procession with its spontaneous sounds. “The city is theatrical and dramatic in itself,” says Amir Haddad, the group's founder. The play staged in the street can take on the air of a popular festival, driven along by chants and drums, as in a carnival.

Speaking of Carnival, the group took part in the parade Ratos e urubus, larguem minha fantasia, by the samba school Beija-Flor, whose controversial decision to bring in the Cristo Redentor dressed as a beggar, which was blocked by the courts, marked the 1989 Carnival. Some say that a samba school parade is also a kind of theater. It involves, after all, staging, narrative, an explosion of sounds, cadences. Thirty years after Ratos e urubus, for example, Beija-Flor dramatized the country's social problems, bringing Brazil's ills to the street-stage-Sapucaí in the theme that won the parade. And in 2019, Mangueira captivated the audience and was crowned champion by shining a light, in the Sambódromo, on the stories of heroes that official history doesn't tell: women, mulattoes and tamoios, Marias, Mahins, Marielles, malês.