Press Kit Milo Rau / Iipm Antigone in the Amazon Re-Enactment, Video Installation and Theatre Performance

PRESS KIT MILO RAU / IIPM ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZON RE-ENACTMENT, VIDEO INSTALLATION AND THEATRE PERFORMANCE

> 16 MAY 2020, 4 PM, WIENER FESTWOCHEN, BURGTHEATER OPENING SPEECH „AGAINST INTEGRATION“ OF KAY SARA AND MILO RAU > NOVEMBER 2020, PARÁ, BRAZIL RE-ENACTMENT > JANUARY 2021, AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE, BERLIN VIDEO INSTALLATION AS PART OF THE EXHIBITION “SCHOOL OF RESISTANCE” > APRIL 2021, NTGENT, BELGIUM THEATRE PERFORMANCE

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

CONTENTS

0 CREDITS 3

1 ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZON 4

2 INTERVIEW WITH KAY SARA AND MILO RAU 8

3 MOVIMENTO DOS TRABALHADORES SEM TERRA 14

4 MILO RAU / IIPM 16

5 ACTORS 17

6 APPENDIX INTERVIEW FROM "THE ART OF RESISTANCE" 18

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 2 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

CREDITS

ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZON

DIRECTION AND CONCEPT MILO RAU TEXT MILO RAU AND ENSEMBLE WITH KAY SARA, GRACINHA DONATO, CELSO FRATESCHI, ZÉ CELSO, ARNE DE TREMERIE, CÉLIA MARACAJÁ AND MANY MORE DRAMATURGY AND CONCEPT EVA-MARIA BERTSCHY DRAMATURGICAL COLLABORATION CARMEN HORNBOSTEL, DOUGLAS ESTEVAM AND MARTHA KISS PERRONE SET DESIGN AND COSTUMES ANTON LUKAS AND OTTAVIA CASTELLOTTI COSTUME ASSISTANCE GABRIELA SANTOS CHERUBINI VIDEO MORITZ VON DUNGERN AND FERNANDO NOGARI GRAPHIC DESIGN NINA WOLTERS SOUND VANESSA SILVA PHOTOGRAPHY ARMIN SMAILOVIC DIRECTORIAL ASSISTANCE PAULA SERRA PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT MASCHA EUCHNER-MARTINEZ AND GABRIELA GONÇALVES PROJECT COORDINATION MARIA RAIMUNDA CÉSAR, SECRETARIA MST PARÁ AND COLECTIVO NACIONAL DE CULTURA MST PRODUCTION ELISA CALOSI AND EVA-KAREN TITTMANN PRESS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS YVEN AUGUSTIN, TOM DE CLERCQ, MÁRCIA MARQUES AND CANAL ABERTO

“Antigone in the Amazon” (re-enactment and video installation) is a production of the International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM) in collaboration with the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST) and NTGent, with support from the Pro Helvetia programme COINCIDENCIA – Swiss & South American Cultural Exchanges, the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Goethe Institut São Paulo. “Antigone in the Amazon” (theatre performance) is a production of NTGent in collaboration with MST and IIPM.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 3 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

1. ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZON

The images of the burning Amazon from last summer caused quite a stir throughout the world. The attack by the Brazilian agribusiness on the world’s largest contiguous jungle, which was strongly supported by President Bolsonaro, not only threatens the planet’s “green lung”, but also puts the peoples living there and their traditions dating back thousands of years at risk. After the productions “Orestes in Mosul” in the former capital of the Islamic State and the Jesus film “The New Gospel” in the southern Italian refugee camps, Milo Rau and his team travel to the Amazon Basin in Brazil to conclude their “Trilogy of Ancient Myths”. In the federal state of Pará, the government has fuelled land conflicts for decades through large-scale mining projects, the construction of dams and the state promotion of monoculture soy farming. In a new project which will take place on an occupied piece of land in coopera- Plantation ("Acampamento") tion with indigenous people, ac- occupied by the landless tivists and actors from Europe and Brazil, the tragedy of “An- movement MST near Marabá, tigone” will be retold: as a bloody encounter between tradition- Pará, Brazil Photo: Nieves al wisdom and global turbo-capitalism, as an epos of the strug- Rodrigues, 2019 gle of mankind against its self-inflicted decline into greed, de- lusion and hubris.

It is probably due to the archetypal simplicity of the plot that no other classic tragedy has experienced as many adaptations as Sopho- cles’ “Antigone”, written in 472 B.C.: Antigone buries her brother Poly- nices even though King Creon has forbidden the burial as Polynices is considered an enemy of the state. According to the philosopher Hegel, the conflict between Antigone and Creon can be read as a dispute between the traditional, divine law and the rational, modern state. To the philosopher Judith Butler, however, Antigone’s destabilisation of the

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 4 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

existing symbolic order is much more radical: she undermines it from its utopian exterior, from a fundamentally different concept of human coexistence, of the living and the dead, of man and nature.

After having realized his political and trial-based projects (“The Congo Tribunal”, “General Assembly”) and narrative and representa- tive pieces (“The Europe Trilogy”, “Compassion”, “The Repetition”), Milo Rau has been focusing on the founding myths of modern society for some time now. In Mosul, which was the capital of the Islamic State until two years ago, last April, Rau and his team created “Ores- tes in Mosul” (2019) in collaboration with Iraqi and European actors based on the “The Oresteia” by Aeschylus. In the middle of the war zone, the ensemble posed the possibly most important question of all civilizations: how to end tragedy, how to forgive and bring about a new beginning. In the “The New Gospel” (2019/20), in which Rau worked in and around the European Capital of Culture Matera with refugees, non-professional and professional actors from the Jesus films by Pasolini and Mel Gibson, he recreated a social-revolutionary message for the 21st century – and at the same time documented the struggle for the rights of migrants who are working on to- mato plantations and being exploited by the Mafia.

The project “Antigone in the Amazon” concludes his work on the great myths and Kay Sara (Antigone) in a issues of humanity, and just like in the previous projects, the central deforested piece of forest in question is: which actors, what kind of political constellation allows this the Amazon 2019 text to speak to us about the conflict between traditional and modern societies in a new way? That is why, for the production of “Antigone”, the director and his team travel to the Brazilian state of Pará, where state-sponsored mining projects and monoculture soy farming are spreading into the forests of the Amazon, seemingly eating up the nat- ural environment as they do. In collaboration with MST – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, the world’s largest landless workers’ movement – they are creating an allegorical play about the violent devastations and displacements caused by the modern state, which places private property – and accordingly, worldwide trade and specu- lation – above the traditional right to land.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 5 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

The battle of words between Antigone and Creon, but also the choral passages, which have been reinterpreted for 2500 years, acquire a new meaning: the liberal world order comes into contact with the holistic cosmology of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, who cultivate a progressive approach to nature in the age of an impending climate collapse. “Monstrous, a lot. But nothing more monstrous than man”: Sophocles’ critique of human hubris, of the ideology of exploitation and feasibility, the question of the justification of state violence and civil resistance are also reflected in the cast itself, in the personal stories of the actors cast in the play and in the debates that develop amongst them. As in “Orestes in Mosul” or “The New Gospel”, “Antigone in the Amazon” also brings European and local as well as non-professional and professional actors together.

Antigone is played by the indigenous actress Kay Sara, who grew up in a Tukano village in the Amazon. The role of Ismene is performed by a black activist who grew up in a quilombo, a traditional settlement founded by escaped black slaves. The chorus is made up of local activists from the landless workers’ movement, who defend their right to the use of the land against the big landowners and speculators in the Amazon. In a parallel to Polynices’ re- volt against the state in the mythological background to Antigone, “Antigone Josimar Pereira de Freitas - in the Amazon” begins with the 1996 massacre of Eldorado do Carajas, Survivor of the massacre of in which 19 landless persons were shot by police on a highway, with April 17, 1996 and member of the dead Polynices of the Greek myth finding his counterpart in a mur- the choir of "Antigone in the dered activist. Creon is played by Celso Frateschi, an established actor, Amazon" Photo: Nieves Ro- director and leftist politician from the white upper class in Sao Paulo – drigues 2019 not by, for example, a right-wing, politically motivated criminal, but by someone who grapples with his own position of power. The production itself takes place in a location where, for many generations, the ex- panding Brazilian state has run up against the indigenous cultures in bloody clashes. Haemon, the son of Creon and Antigone’s fiancé, is played by the Belgian actor Arne De Tremerie, who – as the director’s alter ego – plays the role of the European – prisoner of his privileges – alongside the doomed Antigone. Finally, the blind seer Tiresias, who predicts Creon’s self-destruction, is performed by a living legend of Latin American theatre: 82-year-old Zé Celso, the inventor of a Brazili- an theatre based on indigenous traditions.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 6 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

“Antigone in the Amazon” will be premiered and documented in November 2020 in the Brazilian state of Pará. The production culmi- nates in a re-enactment of the massacre of Eldorado do Carajas, in which the events at the scene of the crime are reconstructed and re- enacted together with the survivors. On May 16, 2020, Antigone actress Kay Sara and Milo Rau will open the Wiener Festwochen with the speech "Against Integration". Parts of the production will be shown for the first time in Europe in January 2021, as a video installation in the exhibition “School of Resistance” at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. The theatre performance “Antigone in the Amazon” will have its premi- ere at NTGent in April 2021, and will then go on tour and also return to Brazil.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 7 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

2. INTERVIEW WITH KAY SARA AND MILO RAU

Eva-Maria Bertschy: The myth that forms the background to Sophocles’ Antigone tells of the rebellion of Antigone ’s brother, Polynices. When he falls in the civil war as an enemy of the state, he is denied a burial. With that begins the tragedy around the tyrant Creon – who seeks to maintain his power at any cost – and Antigone – who wants to bury her brother. How do you deal with this conflict in “Antigone in the Amazon”?

Milo Rau: For our version of “The Oresteia”, we travelled to Mosul, the former capital of the Islamic State, and collaborated with local actors and activists. At the heart of the project was the question of the possibility, or impossibility, of forgiving: how can you forgive the jihadists? For “Antigone in the Amazon”, we’re also going on a journey – to northern Brazil, where last summer the forests burned, where the indigenous cultures clashed with the predatory capitalism of the big agricultural corporations. As always, we’re going about it very »In this new ‘Antigone’, a concretely, adapting the project to the conditions on the ground there. power struggle becomes a class struggle – a fight be- Together with indigenous people, activists and actors from Europe and tween big landowners and Brazil, we’re going to film Sophocles’ Antigone on an occupied beef landless workers, but also plantation over the next few months. Our adaptation puts in the place between indigenous tradi- of Polynices’ rebellion a big 1990s massacre of landless farmers by the tions and neoliberal capital- Brazilian police. On 17 April, as the climax, we’re going to re-enact this ism.« with hundreds of activists on a blocked-off federal highway in the Eva-Maria Bertschy location of the actual massacre. A young indigenous woman, Kay Sara, is playing Antigone, and the chorus is made up of survivors of the massacre.

For “Antigone in the Amazon”, we’re working closely with the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). What is it about this collaboration that interests you? What are the parallels between Sophocles’ Antigone and the current political and social conflicts in Brazil?

For over 2,000 years now, Sophocles’ Antigone has been the play about the question of the justification of resistance against the abuses of a bureaucratic and, in extreme cases, dictatorial state. Our

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 8 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

collaboration with the MST is a clear statement, of course: the »Our collaboration with the Bolsonaro government has labelled the movement a “terrorist” MST is a clear statement, of association multiple times, and the conflicts have intensified since he course. The MST stands for took office. The MST stands for civil, unarmed resistance. And in civil, unarmed resistance.« Milo Rau addition to that, there’s a strong, long-standing theatre tradition in the Landless Workers’ Movement: choral speaking is a true speciality of the MST, an established part of their training. In the last few decades, a lot of plays and major political – and also artistic – events have been held, some using the methods of the “theatre of the oppressed” of Augusto Boal, who worked closely with the MST. So there are a lot of points of connection, including in the MST’s attempt to conceive »We focus less on the dicta- identity politics and class struggle, the emancipation of minorities and tor’s conflict with Antigone than on the various ques- distributive justice, as a whole. But we also avoid clear attributions. tions and figures that this For example, we didn’t cast Creon as an extreme right-wing politician, conflict illuminates: most but as someone who clearly has his doubts, and who fails in the end. centrally, the clash between Creon’s son, however, is played by a Belgian actor – he reflects our capitalist state logic and the own position in a sense. We also focus less on the dictator’s conflict utopia of a holistic life in with Antigone than on the various questions and figures that this harmony with nature and traditions.« conflict illuminates: most centrally, the clash between capitalist state Milo Rau logic and the utopia of a holistic life in harmony with nature and traditions.

We’re staging the piece on the “Assentamento 17 de Abril”, a settlement of the MST that was founded by occupiers in the immediate aftermath of the massacre. The state has meanwhile expropriated the property from the previous landholder and legalised the settlement. What made this particular place such an appropriate site for the production of “Antigone”?

The setting is part of a region that’s been one of the focal points of the Brazilian land conflicts for decades. When a dam was built in the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of farmers and workers from north- eastern Brazil were resettled to the region. This mass migration was intensified by the Serra Pelada gold rush – the gold mine that was made famous through the photographs by Sebastião Salgado, which attracted a half-million landless farmers in the 1980s. The displaced farmers pushed into the territories of the indigenous people who lived in the region and came into conflict with them. The activist Douglas Estevam Da Silva, who has worked with us on the project from the start, said to me: “The MST was founded out of respect for the heritage and the rights of the indigenous.” Instead of fighting against the indigenous people, they worked with them to organise the resistance against the big landowners. Out of respect for the differences in their world view and their strategies of resistance, they

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 9 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

never tried to integrate the indigenous people in the movement. There’s a whole range of movements in the region that pursue common interests, but that are very different. These include the quilombolas in the autonomous communities founded in remote regions of the Amazon by escaped slaves beginning in the 16th century. And a new movement has just been launched in the region, one that’s fighting for the sovereignty of the people in mining and against the destruction of the living environments of disparate population groups by the gigantic iron mines in the region. Representatives of all of these movements are taking part in our production. We’re telling the shared story of their resistance.

In this new “Antigone”, a power struggle becomes a class struggle – a fight between big landowners and landless workers, but also between indigenous traditions and neoliberal capitalism. On our first trip, the activists from the MST pointed out to us another very direct parallel between Antigone and today’s Brazil: after occupying big landowners’ estates, they often discovered anonymous mass graves of slave labourers and insurgents who had been denied a regular burial. The history of Brazil is full of anonymous deaths, of people who were abducted and disappeared.

And Antigone isn’t just defending her brother’s right to a burial. She’s also defending a human right that must remain sacrosanct. Whenever rulers have denied people their right to a burial, whether in the times »Antigone is at the same of slavery or under modern dictatorships, they were elevating themselves above the gods. Antigone is at the same time a play about the origins of the Western ideology of the domination of nature. The most famous choral passage of the piece says: “Much is monstrous, but nothing more monstrous than man.” But the hubris of the ancient Greeks, who sailed the Mediterranean in wooden boats and tried to fend off death with rudimentary medicine, looks almost childlike from today’s perspective. In contrast to that, a cosmic horror grips us when we think about how in the Amazon all of humanity is stumbling towards its own doom – just as blind as the self-righteous heroes of the Greek tragedies. Next door to the occupied estate where we’re staging “Antigone”, the biggest iron mine in Latin America is eating its way into the forest, huge dam projects are drying up the rivers and Bolsonaro’s militias are murdering environmental activists every day. Last August, it rained ash on Sao Paulo. It was like night-time in the middle of the day. The winds that have brought rain south from the Amazon forests from time immemorial brought darkness and fire. We’re at a watershed moment. In unusual agreement, traditional

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 10 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

Western science and the sages of the indigenous peoples both give the Amazon ecosystem ten years. Failure to achieve a fundamental reversal by then will bring its collapse. Irreversibly. Which at the »A cosmic horror grips us human scale of time means forever. The biggest, most complicated when we think about how in and most important coherent ecosystem on the planet will disappear. the Amazon all of humanity is stumbling towards its own Casting an indigenous actress as the lead character of Antigone doom – just as blind as the of course means positing the indigenous population of the self-righteous heroes of the Greek tragedies.« Amazon as a counterworld to the liberal, modern state, whose chief purpose is to protect private property.

The cosmology of the indigenous peoples is a holistic counterdraft to the “monstrosity” of predatory Western capitalism. For the indigenous people, there’s no such thing as a person owning land, forests or animals. While Westerners live in a sort of all-encompassing present, consciously wiping out traditions and future possibilities for the benefit of a total exploitation of what we have at hand, in the indigenous cosmology there’s no such exanimated disposability of the world. Rather, nature spirits and ancestors preside over the human scope of action; everything – all times and things – is interconnected with everything else. Re-establishing this coherence in a third, holistic modernity would of course be a dream. Marx Sauvage, “wild Marx”, is »The cosmology of the in- the title of a book by a Brazilian intellectual and friend of mine – a re- digenous peoples is a holis- reading of the great Marxist tradition of resistance from the tic counterdraft to the ‘monstrosity’ of predatory West- perspective of indigenous cosmology. “In southern Brazil, they take us ern capitalism.« for savages from the jungle – but now we’re shooting a film,” one Milo Rau indigenous activist said to us, laughing, during one of the discussions. Because in the hands of these “savages”, who Bolsonaro mocks in every one of his speeches, lies the future of humanity.

Kay Sara, you grew up far away from the city, in the endless Amazon rainforest. When you were seven years old, you moved »In the city, I learned a lot of things. Most of all, I with your family to Manaus, the state capital of Amazonas. learned to defend myself, to What motivated your family to take this step, and what did you resist certain things and learn from it? demands, to be proud of who I am and where I come Kay Sara: I was born in Iauaretê. Our move to the capital didn’t come from. I learned that the suddenly. My mother had eleven children. One died and the five older world is big and that I’m an indigenous or native person. children were already living in the city. My father divided his time I learned that there are between Iauaretê and Manaus, and my sixth brother had graduated social inequalities, that high school and wanted to go to university. My mother had found a prejudices are cruel and that house in the city for us to move to. So she made the decision with this they kill people.« assuredness. In the city, I learned a lot of things. Most of all, I learned Kay Sara to defend myself, to resist certain things and demands, to be proud of

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 11 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

who I am and where I come from. I learned that the world is big and that I’m an indigenous or native person. I learned that there are social »We need the ecological inequalities, that prejudices are cruel and that they kill people. In the balance, in order to live and year we moved, I made my first film. I come from a family of artists for the survival of the generations to come. We have and artisans. We have a long tradition of this work – only a few of us to stop thinking that only we chose other occupations. native people need the forest for our continued life, In his book about the cosmology of the Yanomami people, the because it isn’t true. All of indigenous shaman and activist Davi Kopenawa writes that the us human beings need the spirits of the Yanomami’s ancestors live in the forests. Where ecological balance if we want to continue to exist.« will they go when monoculture and mines swallow up the Kay Sara forests of the Amazon?

Among my people, we believe that our ancestors don’t need the forest so very much for their continued existence. What they need most are their descendants. In fact, as soon as we’re born, we’re given the name of one of our ancestors, who then lives on through this name. So we, who still have this human body, are the subject of the greatest concern. We need the ecological balance, in order to live and for the survival of the generations to come. We have to stop thinking that only we native people need the forest for our continued life, because it isn’t »We believe that everything true. All of us human beings need the ecological balance if we want to has life – trees, rivers, continue to exist. We believe that everything has life – trees, rivers, mountains, rocks – and that mountains, rocks – and that all of this disrespect for the beings of the all of this disrespect for the beings of the forest brings forest brings an ecological imbalance. People need to quit being so an ecological imbalance. blindly ambitious and begin to open up their perspective to include People need to quit being so everything else, especially nature, which has to be protected. At the blindly ambitious and begin moment, as indigenous peoples, we’re the most important to open up their perspective representatives of this resistance, but when it comes to nature, we all to include everything else, must fight for it. My ancestors are with us, wherever we go. But the especially nature, which has to be protected.« creatures in the forest have a life of their own. Kay Sara

What does it mean to you to play the figure of Antigone – as an artist, but also as an indigenous woman? What do you think about this woman, this “terrorist”, possibly the most famous in the history of literature?

Interpreting a figure means giving life to her, and I feel honoured to have the opportunity to breathe life into this Antigone, who in her time was so militant. And because she is in a position to speak about such important questions of the Amazon region and concerns of the indigenous people of Brazil, “Antigone in the Amazon” will demonstrate the strength and power that we women have. As a person and an artist, I have to fight my own battles. I see this engagement as an

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 12 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

opportunity for more people to hear about my struggle and understand how important it is that there are indigenous people with traditional and mythological knowledge – people who know their culture and make a difference in the world with their projects. My whole life, I’ve »Interpreting a figure grown up surrounded by strong women who make things happen. At means giving life to her, and some point, I understood that the women have long fought battles and I feel honoured to have the wars without showing their faces. It’s time now to proclaim our truth. opportunity to breathe life In this battle, four women will speak through me – the figure of into this Antigone, who in Antigone, me as a person and an artist, as a woman and as a native. her time was so militant.« We all have our ways of pursuing what we believe in to the end. It just Kay Sara depends on where we stand in society and before the law.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 13 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

3. MST

The MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra) was founded 30 years ago in response to Brazil’s rural exodus and the nation’s extremely unequal land distribution. About 10% of the population owns around 80% of the land, and 20 large landowners possess 20 million hectares of land – the same amount as that held by 3.3 million small farmers. From the mid-1990s, and increasingly after the financial crisis, large landholdings passed from big Brazilian landowners to international banks, pension funds and other companies. Approximately half of the country’s agricultural land is held by speculators and isn’t farmed.

Since 1985, the MST has been occupying unused or illegally cultivated land, thereby putting pressure on the state authorities, who under the constitution are obliged to guarantee the legally defined “social utility” of agricultural land. The MST brings lawsuits against the landowners with the aim of exposing the illegitimacy of their holdings and transferring title to the land to the people on the occupied estates. Through its actions, the MST has so far won official land titles for over 400,000 families. On their properties, the new owners now have innumerable cooperative farms, their own clinics and over 3,000 schools. They have also established higher-level educational facilities for children and adults, including their own university, where their activists are trained. The MST also has a long theatre tradition. For many years, it has collaborated with the Brazilian director Augusto Boal to further develop his “theatre of the oppressed”.

The overriding objective of the MST is the democratic development of Brazil, which is marked by stark class disparities. It fights for a land development model based not on the ruthless exploitation of human beings and nature, but on social justice and autonomy. The indigenous cosmology and traditions of coexistence figure just as prominently in this as do socialist cooperative models and the ideas of sustainability of contemporary ecological movements.

Conflicts around land in Brazil frequently lead to violence. On the one hand, the landless face direct state repression. On the other, they are at the mercy of the big landowners’ brutal private militias, the

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 14 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

“jagonços”, who largely enjoy impunity from prosecution. In 1996, a confrontation arose on the federal highway BR 155 between the military police and activists from the MST, who were marching in protest on Belém, the capital of the state of Pará, to fight for the expropriation of a cassava farm – 40,000 hectares of land that had lain fallow for decades and that they had occupied. Nineteen landless persons were shot to death in the clash and more than 70 were injured. The massacre of Eldorado do Carajás set in motion a worldwide movement of solidarity which induced the Brazilian government to expropriate numerous occupied estates and make them available to the landless.

During his presidential campaign, Jair Bolsonaro made multiple references to the MST activists as “terrorists” and promised to arm the big landowners to enable them to take action against this threat. In the first months of his presidency, he announced that all MST activists would be cleared from land they had occupied.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 15 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

MILO RAU/IIPM

Critics called him “the most influential“ (DIE ZEIT), “most awarded“ »Milo Rau is currently the (Le Soir), “most interesting“ (De Standaard) or “most ambitious“ (The most influential director on Guardian) artist of our time: the Swiss director, author and artistic the continent.« director of the NTGent Milo Rau (born 1977). Rau studied sociology, Die Zeit German and Romance philology in Paris, Berlin and Zurich under Pierre Bourdieu and Tzvetan Todorov, among others. Since 2002, he has created over 50 plays, films, »Milo Rau is currently the books and actions. His productions most interesting artist in have been invited to all of the Europe.« De Standaard major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d'Avignon, the Venice »Scandal lover« Biennale Teatro, the Wiener La Vanguardia Festwochen and the Brussels Kunstenfestivaldesarts, and have »Theatre innovator« toured more than 30 countries Der Spiegel worldwide. Rau has received numerous awards, including the Peter-Weiss-Prize 2017, the 3sat- »Milo Rau is one of the most ruthless and intelligent critics Prize 2017, the 2017 Saarbrucken of our time: a visionary.« Poetry Lectureship for Drama and, Jean Ziegler in 2016, the prestigious World Theatre Day ITI Prize. In 2017, Milo Rau was voted "Acting Director of the Year" in the critics' survey conducted by the Deutsche »Where understanding Bühne. In 2018 he received the European Theatre Prize, and in 2019 ends, Milo Raus' work be- he was awarded the honorary doctorate by the Theatre Department of gins.« Lunds Universitet (Sweden), and in 2020 by the University of Ghent. Neue Zürcher Zeitung Rau is also a television critic, lecturer and a very productive author.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 16 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

ACTORS

Kay Sara – in the role of Antigone – (born in 1996) grew up in Iauaretê in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, on the border to Colombia. Her father belongs to the indigenous Tariana people, her mother to the Tukano. At the age of seven, she moved with her family to Manaus, where she made her first film in the same year. Ever since, she has dedicated herself as a young activist and performer to the worthy representation of the indigenous – her own – way of life and its mythological basis in the public sphere and the culture of Brazil, as well as to the preservation of its living environment against the threat from mining companies and agribusiness. Acting is a central means of Sara’s political involvement. There is a tradition of acting in her family dating back to her grandparents, who played in the feature film “Brincando nos campos do senhor” (1991) by Hector Babenco. Since then, her parents and family members have appeared in many films about the indigenous people of the Amazon. Sara has performed in numerous feature films and television series, including “Un giorno devi andare” by Giorgio Diritti (2013) and “Antes o tempo não acabava” by Sérgio Andrade and Fábio Baldo (2016). In 2018, Sara left Manaus in search of new opportunities and experiences. She currently lives in Sao Paulo. In addition to her work on camera, Sara is active with various theatre collectives. She mounted her first solo performance, “PÊ'TÍA'NÃWE-EXTERMÍNIO”, in 2018.

Celso Frateschi – in the role of Creon – (born in 1952) is a Brazilian actor, author and director, as well as a politician affiliated with the Workers’ Party (PT), the party of former president Lula. Frateschi co-founded the groups Teatro Núcleo Independente and Teatro Pequeno and for years has headed Ágora – Center for Theatrical Development in Sao Paulo. He began his acting career in 1980 at the Arena Theatre in Sao Paulo in a production by Augusto Boal. Frateschi has worked with the most important directors in Brazilian theatre, including Enrique Diaz, José Possi Neto and Domingos de Oliveira. He is a professor at the School of Dramatic Arts at the University of Sao Paulo, and has served as municipal secretary of culture of Santo André and Sao Paulo and as president of Funarte, Brazil’s national cultural foundation.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 17 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

José Celso Martinez Corrêa – in the role of Tiresias – known as Zé Celso (born in 1937), is a director, actor and playwright, and one of the most important names in Brazilian theatre. In the early 1960s, he founded the Teatro Oficina, which became a regular source of political controversy prior to and during the military dictatorship before being forced into exile due to intensified repression. His staging of the play “O rei de vela” by Oswald Andrade, whose “Anthropophagic Manifesto” of 1928 had a lasting influence on the work of the Teatro Oficina, is legendary. The manifesto’s famous opening line, “Tupi or not Tupi: that is the question,” celebrates the indigenous ritual form of cannibalism, while at the same time “eating up” Shakespeare. In Europe, Zé Celso first caused a sensation with his almost 24-hour staging of Euclides Da Cunha’s non-fictional Os Sertões (“Rebellion in the Backlands”) at Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre. The account of the occupied city of Canudos, where the itinerant preacher Conselheiro founded an autonomous community at the beginning of the Brazilian republic, is a central historical motif for many left-wing movements in Brazil, in particular the MST.

Arne De Tremerie – in the role of Haemon – (born in 1992) is a Belgian actor. He appeared in the feature films “Coffee” (2016) and “Bastaard” (2019) and in the television series “L’aquila – grandi speranze” (2018) and “Black-out” (2020). In theatre, he has performed in productions by, among others, Lies Pauwels, Berten Vanderbruggen and Siona Houthuys as well as the young collective Camping Sunset.

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 18 von 19

PRESS KIT ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZONE

6. APPENDIX DOUGLAS ESTEVAM DA SILVA & MILO RAU IT’S COLLECTIVE ACTION THAT WILL HELP TO OVERCOME DIFFER- ENCES INTERVIEW IN PREPARATION OF “ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZON” | NTGENT 2021 GOLDEN BOOKS, VERBRECHER VERLAG BERLIN 2020

PRESSEKONTAKT: AUGUSTIN PR WWW.AUGUSTINPR.DE 19 von 19 douGlAs esTevAM dA silvA & Milo rAu IT’S cOLLEcTIVE AcTION ThAT WILL hELP TO OVERcOmE DIffERENcES Interview in preparation of “Antigone in the Amazon” | NTGent 2021

MIlO RaU: Douglas, you work in the cultural sector of the Landless Workers' movement (mST), mainly in São Paulo. you worked together with Augusto Boal for a long time for his “Theatre of the Oppressed”, and now you are one of the dramaturges of Antigone in the Amazon. Now we're in the state of Pará, near marabá, one of the Amazonian states of Brazil. Where did this movement come from? Who founded it and why? dOUGLAs EsTEVAm dA sILVA: The Landless Movement was offi- cially founded in 1984. It was the result of a series of land occupations and agrarian conflicts in the late seventies, during the dictatorship. Military repression against the peasants was very strong after the coup d'état in 1964. But at the end of the seventies, there was a resumption of the struggle for land, it started to grow stronger. Many national organisations were being established and the worker’s unions began to gain more and more autonomy. It was at that time when Lula became president of the Steel Workers' Union in 1975. And that was when CIMI was created, the Indigenous Missionary Council. It was the church that – together with the organisation of the indigenous people and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), the peasant branch of the church – had also begun to help this peasant movement even more. The occupations started to take place all over the country.

RaU: And that’s how everything started? dA sILVA: Yes, these first occupations, carried out in 1979, were at the origin of the Landless Movement. There were occupations in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and land conflicts in the state of Pará. For the construction of the dams, the state had displaced

210 IV. DISOBEDIENCE AND SOLIDARITY | FOCuS BRAzIL peasants and put them in conflict with indigenous people. And there was already a strategical reflection at that time. First, one observation was that... one way to stop the military reaction would be to take massive actions. We have seen that huge actions, with hundreds of citizens, were more difficult to dismantle for the state, for the military. And later, there was also the percep- tion that it was necessary to build a national aggregation of all these struggles that existed everywhere. Gathering each protest, each individualised occupation, was needed to have more political power. During the first 5 years, from 1979 until 1984, there was a process of meetings, organisations, occupations that led us to the idea of this movement, with these conceptions of mass action, of national aggregation, to find a form of organisation. Already early on, there was also this spirit of international action, a certain hope for the Nicaraguan revolution, and even at the very beginning, in 1984, there were already representatives from other countries, other peasant organisations, who took part in the first national meeting of the Landless Movement. There was also a very strong influence from the peasant population with their religious traditions and the movement initial- ly had a powerful presence among people linked to the church, who came from the CPT (Pastoral Commission for the Land), or people who were part of the liberation theology that came from this more progressive conception of the church.

RaU: That's something I'd like to explore a little bit more, the idea of liberation theology. As you know, I shot a Jesus film in South Italy the last months, and I see a book here on the table, called Ocupando a Biblia, that you read in the schools of mST. What's the impetus for this theology and how does it relate to the protest of the Landless Workers? dA sILVA: Well, liberation theology started in the late fif- ties, early sixties. It was a theology that had developed a principle of social justice, bringing the social question to the

IV. DISOBEDIENCE AND SOLIDARITY | FOCuS BRAzIL 211 centre of religious reflection, to the centre of the notion of religion, and it began to influence many branches of the church. During the dictatorship in 1974, there were even a few priests, a few branches of the church that went into the armed struggle. The collective way of organising was also a method that came from liberation theology, which had a great impact on the movement. Liberation theology was also very critical of the institutionalisation of religion, there was the side of social justice, but there was also a profound criticism of the institutionalisation of religion, the Church, the Vatican, all that. A concrete example: conservative priests from the city didn’t want to go to the countryside, because this wasn't something that could strengthen their power. And because of that, people who were in the countryside couldn't carry out the religious services. So, local religious authorities were created, autonomous groups that began to study, and read the Bible in relation to reality, to life, in this principle of social action. Later on, there was the case of several people who were excommunicated, like Leonardo Boff, and they began to recognise indigenous cosmologies, they began to recognise the roles of women. “We’re going to sit down and we're going to read the Book together, and we're going to think about this collectively,” was the idea and they had a principle, a motto consisting of three words: see – you have to see reality, you have to see what's going on, judge – you have to judge, you have to think about what's going on, what you see – and finallyact . Those were the three words of the church’s principle. See, judge and act. And then of course there were other influences as well, more in the Marxist field, people who had other experiences. But the majority of the militants came from the church, some came from the union who were already not happy with the union, either through state control, military control, or through the bureau- cracy of the union itself.

212 IV. DISOBEDIENCE AND SOLIDARITY | FOCuS BRAzIL RaU: But I guess there were also conflicts: between a purely theolo- gical and the marxist perspective? dA sILVA: Of course. There were people who wanted to radicalise against the church. The church was very advanced, but even so, there was a limit, it didn't want to go further in certain areas. The movement was a way of moving forward, further than where the church had arrived: it needed to become more independent of the church. Because sometimes the church also wanted to determine the strategies of the movement.

RaU: There are two things that I would like to explore further. During my research for Antigone in the Amazon, I had the impression that the role of women, ecology, and indigenous cosmologies are important factors in your movement, more important than in, let’s say, classical leftist movements as we know it in Europe. dA sILVA: Oh yes. Women's participation in particular, it's developed a lot, since the beginning of the movement. Because the main action, the base of the movement, is the occupation of land, and it is a political action that is done by the family, by all social subjects. Not only the man who works in the company, who joins the union, who goes on strike, and his children and his wife stay at home or elsewhere. For the land occupation, we all go together: the man, the woman, the children, the whole family, all are involved in the political action. And at the same time they all become political subjects in the action. It's no longer just the man who will decide what to do, the woman is also starting to take her place, and many times women have pushed men to take the decision. As a result, the women were there on the territory, on the field, and they began to organise things, to organise themselves, and this is something that has developed continuously, until it took on a form of organisation itself. There is always this parity of people, that distinguished the movement. But you had another question, too?

IV. DISOBEDIENCE AND SOLIDARITY | FOCuS BRAzIL 213 RaU: The other question is about indigenous cosmology. dA sILVA: In terms of indigenous cosmology, there's always been a relationship with the natives. These occupations I mentioned from 1979, this land conflict, the land conflicts in Pará, it was because of the construction of a dam. The state displaced the peasants. It's important to understand that it was the state that created this conflict because they expelled the peasants and put them on a territory that was the indigenous peoples’ territory. And there, the peasants said: "No, the indigenous people, they have the heritage, they have seniority, we're going somewhere else". And that's when the Landless Movement started, out of respect. The main issue is that there still is a cultural difference between the peasants and the indigenous people. It's different from other Latin American countries where it's much more mixed. To give a very concrete example: the conception of agricultural production is different. The farmer, he will assemble, he will have a production planning. The indigenous people, they are more aware that there already is another relationship with nature itself. The movement understood that there was a common subject, the struggle for land, there was a common unification, the colonial heritage, slavery, all the issues around the land that have been constituted since colonisation, since these models of production for export. And the indigenous people had a different conception of social struggle as well. We said to ourselves: "We're going to fight together. But we're going to respect the particularity of each group, the cultural particularity, and the particularity of political notion, and mainly the particularity of the way of life, the way of living and all that." In the Amazon especially, it's a way of life that could not be linked to the organisational form of the movement as it was in the beginning. And that's when we said: "We're not going to impose, we're not going to say, we have the model, you have to fit us." No, we said: "There are differences, we're going to do

214 IV. DISOBEDIENCE AND SOLIDARITY | FOCuS BRAzIL things together, but we're going to respect the differences”. Today in the countryside, there are several movements that have been inspired by the Landless Movement itself, but they are independent, there is the quilombola movement for example, for the black communities. And there are the communities that live, for example, next to a river with their own movements, linked to the Landless Movement. You have to respect each one, and at the same time try to bring all these organisations together.

RaU: And this is perhaps one of the key questions for the whole movement: how can we respect differences but still have universal solidarity? how do you do that? dA sILVA: Yes, I think the basis of everything, from the beginning on, was the respect for differences. Not wanting to impose, not wanting to be a hegemonic force, not wanting to use the other movements as mass-of-maneuver. There are two approach- es. One is the continuous process of dialogue, of exchange, of meeting each other, of trying to envisage collective and common strategies. There are organisations like Via Campesina, the large international peasant organisation, that tries to unite landless movements in all different countries. There are indigenous organisations that even at the international level have begun to understand the indigenous people as peasants too, with their spec- ificities, their particularities. So there is dialogue, exchange. And the other, the main strategy is to do actions together. It’s collective action that will help to overcome differences.

RaU: That’s the most interesting question, as we are discussing practi- cal strategies of resistance: how does a concrete action take place? What is the reaction of the state, how do you react to this reaction, and so on. dA sILVA: The occupation of land starts with what we call the groundwork. That means it's the members of the movement who

IV. DISOBEDIENCE AND SOLIDARITY | FOCuS BRAzIL 215 will start meeting people, who will organise several meetings. At each location, it depends on the local reality: we will hold meetings at the church, at the premises of a union, with a political party, at a community centre, in someone's home. There, we will explain to people what the agrarian reform is, what the struggle for land is. We will tell them: “This is not an outlaw action. We don't want to steal from anyone, it's not about private property, it's about public property. We are going to carry out an action of land occupation to push the state to implement the law of the agrarian reform.”

RaU: What's this law? dA sILVA: It's the legal framework of the constitution, sections 184 and 186. These are the sections of the constitution that ad- dress the reorganisation of the land. The articles say that un- developed, unused land should be used for the efforts of the agrarian reform. That was part of the 1988 constitution, the constitution that was made at the end of the military dictatorship. And then, we are going to explain to people: "We do not know how it will be done. The land occupation can last six months, it can last 10 years." The preparational work starts, it can take a year or six months, it depends on the maturity of the group, how it develops and the numbers of people too, because it has to be an action of the masses. And that's it, we're going to prepare people, we're going to organise all that. The main thing is to already make them understand that they are the ones who are going to conquer the land. No one is going to do that for them. They're the ones who will be the subject of their conquest. And meanwhile, we're already starting to do some research to see where we could occupy the land: “Well, in this region, there are such properties with these irregularities." And then there’s the preparation of the security measures.

216 IV. DISOBEDIENCE AND SOLIDARITY | FOCuS BRAzIL And one day, we go and do the land occupation. The first thing to take care of is to organise the work teams, which then become the sectors. There is the security team, the infrastructure team that will help with the construction of the tents, there is the team for children, for health, for education. And all of a sudden, all the people who are doing the occupation are involved in a collective. That's where all the organisational processes start. We also have legal support, because the police, either the state army, or the police, can come and try to expel us. And that's when the moment of resistance begins. There's this song, which was also a watchword, called: "Occupy, resist and produce". That means we're occupying, now we've got to resist the expulsion. The "see, judge, act" from the church became: “occupy, resist, produce.” Because we are peasants.

RaU: how do you convince people – who were perhaps never involved in political actions – to take part in these occupations? dA sILVA: We don't hide the risks involved in this action. We don't hide the failure that can happen, the evictions and all that. We don't hide anything from the people. And then we go in, we do the occupation, and we start the organisation of the community, together with everybody involved. In order to resist, we have to organise ourselves. When the occupation is ongoing, it becomes more visible to people, people start to get interested and as a result, the camps start to grow. And the regularisation of the land begins. Again: these are not outlaw actions, it’s about push- ing the state to implement the law of the agrarian reform. It’s like in your film about Jesus, like in this very well-known phrase in Matthew's Gospel: "I have not come to abolish the law; I have come to fulfil it." And that is what resistance means: to fulfil the law, to humanise society.

Transcription and translation (from French): Kaatje De Geest

IV. DISOBEDIENCE AND SOLIDARITY | FOCuS BRAzIL 217