Books address theatrical learning and mechanization of the language

In a “literary-theatrical double”, professor José Batista Dal Farra Martins, from the Department of Performing Arts at the School of Communications and Arts (ECA) at USP, remembers and honors one of his masters and throws into discussion the way the word spoken wanders between everyday life and the stage. Is that Zebba Dal Farra, as he is also known, has just released two books – The Being Apprentice: An Itinerary with Myrian Muniz and Word Muda: About Poetics for Voices in State of Siege -, results of his free teaching held at ECA.

In O Ser Aprendiz , Dal Farra scrutinizes 20 years of learning with Myrian Muniz (1931-2004), actress, director and teacher who piloted performances in Teatro de Arena and Teatro Oficina, the direction of the show Falso Brilhante , which led Elis Regina’s career for other trips, and also the creation of the Escola-Escola Macunaíma.

“The poet and friend Jorge Marinho defined Myrian Muniz as follows: I am the one who just walks”, comments Dal Farra. “In my apprenticeship with the master, there were many marks of the actions and knowledge of this journey, which started in the fall of 1984. The following year, she invited me to work on her voice, as she said, with a group of male and female students. that she kept at Espaço Viver, on Rua Bela Cintra. Aware of my inexperience as a teacher, she called me to her house, an hour before class, sat me in front of her, at an exact distance, and said in her deep, deep voice: ‘Look at yourself and you will know what he needs’. Throughout the time I spent with her, that phrase pulsed between us, perhaps summarizing an essential point in her theatrical conception: looking at the other and, as a corollary, listening and relating. Here is the ground where,

Two moments mark Dal Farra’s book. In the first, called Inventário , notes, scripts, projects, recordings, sculptures, photos and other traces reconstitute his coexistence with Myrian. The next corner of the book is entitled Itinerário and gives the reader an organization from the author himself about the reverberation that the set exposed in the first part had in his artistic work.

“It is an itinerary, one of the routes that this inventory of memories provides, provokes”, explains the author. “I say this because there were several studies and attempts, from theatrical scripts to articles, until reaching the published itinerary. Without a strictly chronological purpose, I divided the apprentice relationship into four acts (and affections). In the first act, of full receptivity and unconditional surrender, the master’s voice dances around fear. When a certain clarity strengthens the confrontation of fear, the relationship is strained by the need for independence, the second act of this itinerary. In the third, separation and the challenges of power, a distant look, strange listening. Finally, in the early 2000s, the return, reunion, recognition, mutual listening: old age. These four acts seek to revolve around the master, sometimes in the detail of a laugh,

The book Palavra Muda accompanies and deepens a discussion brought to the stage by Dal Farra through the show Roda das Vozes em Estado de Sítio (2017), by his company, Ausgang de Teatro. In the work, the author presents two concepts. One is the machine language, a mechanical and automatic, utilitarian and informative language, which appears in contemporary daily life as a heap of words saturated with information. One word changes, after all. The second concept is the opposite pole, the passion language. It is the territory of singing as a total resonance. Between the two, actresses and actors, singers and singers transit.

“The Franco-Swiss playwright Novarina says like this: we will end up dumb from communicating so much, the end of the story is speechless”, points out the author. According to Dal Farra, the saturation of the contemporary word and the subtle and seductive control that this situation provides are the impetus of the book. “This affects all people and puts us in the position of voices in a state of siege. If the robotic voices that speak to us on the phone are credible, it is because we already speak this machine language in some instance. To confront this depotentialization of the voice and the word, I propose to study its power, a process that puts actors and actresses, rapsodes and rapsodas on stage: the theatrical and performative space. Thus, the text reverberates in the artistic field with problems of the contemporary world. ”

For Dal Farra, the two poles, machine language and passion language, complement and antagonize each other. “Along the way, there are singular points, such as the threshold between speaking, which is everyday, and saying, which is poetic, and the passage from saying to singing, and speaking is still present in saying, and both pulsate in singing . Therefore, Word Mute is not an appeased text. It was conceived and written on a theatrical solo, in which actresses and actors, rapsodes and rapsodas are in a constant relationship of constant listening: this is a path that is done for two ”, concludes the author.