RICARDO FRAYHA
producer

In an exhibition and scenic space, the septuagenarian trajectory of one of the most remarkable groups in experimental theater is reconstructed through photos, films, posters, drawings, testimonies and texts, with special attention to their passage through Brazil in the 1970s. A place of reference an memory, open to coexistence and creation, the exhibition embraces and activates the traces and foundations, the bases and the consequences of the performances and actions on the reality of the American group.

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THE LIVING THEATRE

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Founded in 1947 in New York by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, the Living Theatre was, at its birth, already directly linked to an important renovation in the theatrical territory of the second half of the 20th century. Together with other New York experimental groups, it gave rise to the off-Broadway movement, occupying small theatres or adapting deactivated warehouses and aiming to discuss current issues and the very nature of theatrical work on the scene, in a structure that is directly opposite to productions aimed at box office success and easy entertainment. Quite influenced initially by the tradition of political theatre by Erwin Piscator - of whom Judith Malina was a student and through which she came into contact with Bertold Brecht's epic theatre - the Living Theatre associated other poetic, philosophical and theatrical references to the theories of engaged theatre with a Marxist view, at for a work and political posture aimed at non-violent revolution and anarchism. Absorbing and anticipating characteristics, perceptions and behaviours typical of the cultural revolution that took place after the Second World War, the group fixed itself as the counterculture theatre, engaging in street theatrical manifestations and performing on the scene an unexpected combination of the rationality of the dialectical theatre with Antonin Artaud's theatre of cruelty. With political activism and the intertwining of art and life as its major brands, the Living Theatre has maintained a constant collaboration in its creations with activists, around various struggles and in a direct relationship with the most urgent issues of reality. Facing, at times, the practical difficulties of maintaining a challenging aesthetic proposal - the complex equation between the need for financing the productions and the desire not to charge tickets, for example, in addition to the constant changes of address motivated by problems with the State - the group achieved its first major success with 1959's The Connection, whose hyper-realism in the portrait of a group of heroin users generated a mixture of surprise and delight in the public and, from which, the actors deliberately came to represent themselves. Since then, the company has toured Europe and won acclaim at the most important festivals such as the Festival of Nations, Paris, in 1961, and the Avignon Festival, in 1968. At the same time, the radical nature of its creations did not fail to generate controversies and extreme repressive reactions, as was the case with the expulsion from Avignon by the local authorities with the piece Paradise Now. In 1970, the group came to Brazil invited by José Celso Martinez Corrêa, director of Teatro Oficina, who had met them in Paris that same year. The following year, when the group was preparing a parallel work for the Ouro Preto Winter Festival, in Minas Gerais, its arrest was decreed by the DOPS, which had international repercussions and mobilised protest actions in Europe and the USA, leading them to be expelled from the country by presidential decree - Judith Malina would only have her entry into the country released in 1990, through the revocation of the 1971 decree by then President Fernando Collor and would be awarded, as a form of reparation, the Order of Cultural Merit by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in 2008; Julian Beck had passed away in 1985. In the following decades, the Living Theatre would continue its performance alternating between long periods of residence in Europe - passing by the Venice Biennale in 1975 -, tours through the interior of the United States and the establishment of venues with more or less smaller longevity in New York. Even with the death of Judith Malina in 2015, the group remains active, at her request, operating collectively with the guidance of several generations of company members. Its septuagenarian trajectory, which has about one hundred plays, represented in eight languages, in 28 countries, constitutes one of the greatest references of the world and continues to inspire new theatrical generations.

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LIVING THEATRE, PRESENTE!

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Curator: Andrea Caruso Saturnino, Ines Cardoso and Ricardo Muniz Fernandes | Artistic consultancy: Ilion Troya | Conception and spatial project: Simone Mina | Assistant architect: Vinicius Cardoso | Light design: André Boll | Sound ambience: Livio Tragtenberg | Voices: Alessandra Fernandez, Antonio Salvador, Beatriz Sayad, Helena Albergaria and Sérgio Mamberti | Text translation: Beatriz Sayad, Ilion Troya and Julio Jeha | Video installation: Lucas Bambozzi, Mariana Lacerda, Edouard Fraipont and Lucas Gervilla | Research: Alessandra Vanucci, Ilion Troya and João Moreira | Graphic design and visual communication: Érico Peretta and Nika Santos | Photos (program): Leo Feltran | Content review and editing: Daniel Cordova | Technical coordination: Julio Cesarini and Carol Bucek | Coordination of video, subtitling and editing: Rodrigo Gava | Technicians: Enrique Casas, Fernando Zimolo, Rafael Alcântara and Wanderlei Wagner da Silva | Editing assistants: Rick Nagash, Jemima T and Carolina Bertier | Production: Performas Produções Artísticas and prod.art.br | General management: Andrea Caruso Saturnino and Ricardo Muniz Fernandes | Project coordination: João Moreira | Executive production: Ricardo Frayha 

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Realisation: Sesc São Paulo

Sesc Consolação

São Paulo, SP, Brazil

31/10/2017 to 27/01/2018