Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE-BRAZIL: Shining the Spotlight on Science – Literally

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 30 2005 (IPS) - Arte Ciência no Palco (Art and Science on Stage) is a unique Brazilian theatre group devoted exclusively to scientific themes, as a means of highlighting the fight for knowledge as one of the most dramatic battles in human history.

Despite its somewhat unusual and highly specific focus, the group has garnered a healthy following, attracting over 600,000 spectators to its shows over the seven years since its founding.

Its eighth production, The Dancing Universe, which premiered this month in Sao Paulo, provides a particularly apt reflection of the group’s spirit.

Imaginary and in some cases impossible encounters between historical figures like German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius (1st century B.C) and St. Augustine (354-430) serve to dramatise the age-old conflict between knowledge and obscurantism.

The 80-minute play’s nine acts are introduced and linked by music, with songs that provide background and summarise the concepts presented.

In addition to music, Brechtian theatre techniques and an ample dose of humour are also used to liven up what could become an overly sober production.

In an interview with IPS, playwright Oswaldo Mendes noted that the play’s humour lies more in the situations created and attitudes adopted by the characters than in the actual dialogue.

A prime example is the fictitious encounter in which a relentlessly arrogant Galileo, even after bowing down to the Inquisition and recanting his beliefs, refuses to lend a hand to the penniless Kepler.

Galileo justifies his refusal by noting that the only thing he has to share is knowledge, since the sole historical figure of his era who succeeded in making money out of the stars was France’s Michel de Nostradamus (1503-1566).

The permanently grumpy Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), harassed by the intermediaries of God, is another particularly comical character.

The play was inspired by a book titled The Dancing Universe: From Creation Myths to the Big Bang, written by Dr. Marcelo Gleiser, a Brazilian physicist and astronomer who teaches at Dartmouth College in the United States. A history of cosmology presented in laypeople’s terms, the book is also an exploration of the interrelationship between science and spirituality.

But the book served only as the initial inspiration for the play, which incorporates dramatic situations and a focus on the struggles waged by scientists throughout the centuries against oppression, ignorance and prejudice.

The final scene brings together German physicist Albert Einstein (1879- 1955)and British-American actor and director Charlie Chaplin (1889- 1977), at the moment when the latter is forced to leave the United States by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s persecution of all those considered enemies of the nation.

The imaginary meeting between these two men persecuted for their ideas symbolises the union of art and science in the fight against obscurantism, explained Mendes. “Thinking is dangerous,” Chaplin declares in the play.

This new production is also a tribute to Mario Schenberg (1916-1990), a Brazilian scientist who Einstein considered one of the world’s 10 greatest physicists, and who was expelled from the university where he taught by the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

Schenberg also united art and science, because as well as a scientist, he was also a respected plastic arts critic, remarked Mendes.

Mendes, 59, was formerly a journalist, until he decided to devote himself to the theatre 15 years ago. Since then, the playwright and actor has become an integral part of Arte Ciência no Palco (ACP).

The Dancing Universe is the first fully Brazilian work to be performed by the group, from its initial inspiration to the final product on stage. Previous productions were based on foreign works, like Einstein by Canadian playwright Gabriel Emanuel, Copenhagen by British writer Michael Frayn, and QED, a one-man play about physicist Richard Feynman by U.S. playwright Peter Parnell.

ACP has also created plays for children based on the life of Leonardo Da Vinci and French author Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Four of its works will be presented during a retrospective in Sao Paulo, where the group is based, this September and October.

The idea of founding a theatre group to explore and portray the relationship between art and science came from actor Carlos Palma. He was moved by a performance of the monologue Einstein that he saw during a trip to Chile in 1995, and brought it to the Brazilian stage in 1998.

Palma eventually joined up with Mendes and other theatre professionals to form ACP, which is now comprised of 12 actors, seven of whom appear in The Dancing Universe.

In the meantime, the relative ease of performing a monologue like Einstein has allowed him to present this particular work more frequently in towns and cities around Brazil.

There are other groups in the world devoted to exploring scientific themes, but most are connected to universities, making ACP unique as an independent professional troupe, Mendes maintained.

The group’s goal is not to teach audiences about science, but rather to present the human drama, emotion and ethical conflicts involved in the construction of knowledge. It is the human side of scientists that they are interested in, as the driving force behind scientific advances, say the members of ACP.

At the moment, the group is in the process of deciding among three plays for production next year, ACP art director Adriana Caruí told IPS. The subjects of the works being considered are Darwin, oxygen and Galileo, she noted,adding that the group is also being pressured by biologists to incorporate more themes related to this area.