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(1992 - 2003)
In order to bring a fresh reading of the most well known love story of the world, acclaimed director Gabriel Villela and Grupo Galpão teamed up to transpose the tragedy of two youngsters in love to the context of Brazilian cultural traditions. Brazilian folk culture is a remarkable presence everywhere in this staging. The production introduces the character of a narrator, who conducts and comments on the narrative, and epitomizes this preeminence of Brazilian oral culture. This character play by Antônio Edson speaks in a language clearly inspired by the works of the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa, who based his fictional world on a unique reading of the Minas Gerais’ backlands.
“Romeu e Julieta” was a landmark in Grupo Galpão’s career. The cooperation with Gabriel Villela was fundamental to help Galpão dare to innovate, boldly adapting the Shakespearean classic for outdoor performances. The classic translation to the Portuguese by Onestaldo de Pennaforte was interspersed by vibrant music from traditional Brazilian serestas and modinhas performed and sung by the actors themselves. The challenge of performing Shakespeare in the street inspired highly imaginative and ingenuous scenery and props that were drawn from the wealth of culture of the Brazilian heartland.
"Romeu e Julieta" is a tragedy of love, freedom, and death imbued with the dazzling speed of young lovers. This speed was reinforced by an adaptation of circus techniques, which Galpão already mastered, combined with the folk theater forms derived from circus plays that were brought by director Gabriel Villela. These elements were combined so as to enhance the vertiginous development of the story and explore the emotional ebergy, the ambivalence between anguish and pleasure, the violence, and the passion concentrated in Shakespeare’s text.
Villela and Galpão’s adaptation explored the elements of earth and sky in a mythical treatment of the couple of young lovers, their story staged within the circle of time drawn on the floor to delimitate the area for the performance. Exiled from their families and from Verona, Romeo and Juliet have to conspire with the moon, the stars, and the universe. This is the source of constant renewal for the invigorating power of their love and their freedom. Galpão’s "Romeu & Julieta" was created to celebrate this power of constant renovation.
Since its debut in the historical colonial city of Ouro Preto in 1992, "Romeu & Julieta" has had an amazing career of success with the audience and the critics, both in Brazil and abroad. The play was performed more than two hundred and fifty times in almost sixty Brazilian cities and eight foreign countries (Spain, England, Holland, Germany, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Colombia). Grupo Galpão took the play to theaters, stadiums, Gymnasiums, and, preferably, public squares, with audiences that ranged from three hundred to up to four thousand viewers. In July of 2000, this successful trajectory was crowned with a season in London, where Galpão’s “Romeu & Julieta” received great acclaim from the English audience on the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. |
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