Zé de Paiva

Os Sertões - A Terra

From 2000 to 2007, Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona worked on the staging of Euclides da Cunha's epic book, Os Sertões, which describes the 19th Century War of Canudos in the Brazilian "sertão"(backlands). The result was the pentalogy of plays: A Terra (2002), O Homem I (2003), O Homem II (2003), A Luta I (2005), and A Luta II (2006). This first play is a carnival opera, the actors are the earth, the vegetation, the wind, the animals, the rivers, the drought. It reveals the most intimate secrets of nature, that also vibrate in the human and trans-human arteries. This work enriched by the experience that the subsequent works brought gains an updated insight into the human interference in the environment. Destructive power is proportional to financial power, and the discussion about the way space gets occupied was brought to the forefront, including the real-estate boom that surrounds today not only Teatro Oficina, but the whole world, now hotter and more arid.

Illusions Vol. II, Oedipus

Retelling of the Greek myth. Grada Kilomba's 'Oedipus' tells a story about violence, exploring the role that fate can play for those who live in a system that reproduces cyclical oppression.

Illusions Vol. III, Antigone

Retelling of the Greek myth. Grada Kilomba's 'Antigone' relates a story of resistance and justice, told from a black feminist perspective, in which the protagonist rebels against the colonial patriarchal system to bury her brother, transforming the burial into a political act against the oblivion of faces and reminding the spectator of the exploitation and death of black workers in colonial plantations.

Illusions Vol. I, Narcissus and Echo

Retelling of the Greek myth. Grada Kilomba's 'Narcissus and Echo' is a metaphor for a society which has yet to resolve its colonial past and is incapable of seeing beyond its own reflection. The rereading can be seen as an incisive analysis on the history of a system of distortion and exclusion.

Eigensinnige Leben

A performance in the footsteps of black activists in early 20th century Berlin.