HOLLAND FESTIVAL 2015

WHAT IF THEY WENT TO ? CHRISTIANE JATAHY musician and video operator Felipe Norkus

INFO sound operator SUN 14.6, MON 15.6* Pedro Montano starting time sound mixer cinema 5 pm * 6:30 PM Francisco Slade venue technical diretor and light operator Frascati Judicael Montrobert running time stage manager Sun 14.6 - 5 hours, including one interval (90 minutes) Thiago Katona Mon 15.6 – 4 hours 30 minutes, including one interval (60 minutes) tour manager Henrique Mariano language Portugese with Dutch surtitles production Cia. Vértice de Teatro introduction Cia. Vértice de Teatro is sponsored by Petrobras by Justin Waerts Sun 14.6 - 4:15 pm coproduction Le CENTQUATRE-PARIS, Zürcher Theater Spektakel and SESC

world premiere Rio de Janeiro, 13 March 2014 byCREDITS Christiane Jatahy featuring the characters from by with Isabel Teixeira, Julia Bernat, Stella Rabello adaptation, script and live editing Christiane Jatahy cooperation on script Isabel Teixeira, Julia Bernat, Stella Rabello, Paulo Camacho photography and live camera Paulo Camacho set design Christiane Jatahy, Marcelo Lipiani art director and scenery Marcelo Lipiani costumes Antonio Medeiros, Tatiana Rodrigues music, video operator Domenico Lancelotti light design Paulo Camacho, Alessandro Boschini sound design Denilson Campos grounds, including many immigrants, about their personal and political utopias. They also discussed this amongst each other. Gradually, a personal, recognizable document emer- A NEW VISION ged about the desire to change something about your lives or the world. She incorporated the most inspiring of these en- ON CHEKHOV’S counters in a video installation that is part of her film about the three sisters, making a first connection between reality and fiction, theatre and film, present and past. byMOSCOW Christiane Jatahy But Jatahy went further. What if they went to Moscow? is just Three Sisters as much a play as it is a film, and takes place simultaneously The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) wrote each evening in two different halls – she calls the film and Three Sisters in 1901. We follow the daily lives of three adult the play ‘two halves of the same stone’, which seamlessly fit sisters, Olga, Irina and Masja, in a small provincial Russian together. Each evening, part of the audience sees the theatre town where practically nothing happens. They had come piece about the three sisters, who are followed around by there from Moscow as with their only brother, Andrei, three camera operators – one camera for each actress. The and their father, Prozorov, who as an Army officer had the footage from all three is mixed together on the spot and opportunity of being commander of a small garrison in the transmitted to the hall where the other half of the audience town. Their mother had already passed away. follows the filmed version – and where the live theatre foo- tage is interspersed with pre-filmed and pre-edited material. After their father’s death, the lives of the three adult sisters take place in and around their house; they hardly have any In Jatahy’s version of Three Sisters, the pre-filmed images social life at all. The provincial town is beneath them, re- testify to our contemporary utopian longings, but the three ally; they long for a grand life, a compelling love, a perfect sisters also stand firmly in the present. Jatahy takes Olga, existence in their dream city of Moscow. But, paralyzed by Masha and Irina out of Chekhov’s original framework. With boredom and dissatisfaction, they do nothing to actually her, they are three contemporary women of different ages, realize that dream, and meanwhile they also do not become living in today’s Brazil, each cherishing their own dreams and involved in the society in their own surroundings. When on top longings and each bumping up against their own walls. Their of it all their father’s garrison pulls out of town, their very last personal fears and dreams are all that Jatahy has retained illusion is shattered. Life is empty and almost without hope. from Chekhov’s play in her theatre and film project. Their The best way to carry on is resignation. brother Andrei, his sweetheart/wife Natasha and Masha’s older husband Fyodor are missing on stage, as are the six sol- With Three Sisters, Chekhov drew a sombre picture of soci- diers from the garrison of their dead father, the doorkeeper ety. He wrote his play toward the end of his life, as the 19th Ferapont and the elderly family retainer and former nurse­ century was moving into the 20th and an urban bourgeo- maid, Anfisa. Jatahy transports the three 19th-century sisters isie was on the rise. Just as in his other great plays, , to her own era, the 21st century, where they are surrounded by , and , in Three cosmopolitans living contemporary lives, dreaming of some- Sisters Chekhov bore witness to the development of a new thing different, better, more genuine, fairer, happier. social class, those who no longer had to work as labourers or farmers and spent their lives without real purpose, in dissa- Film, Theatre and ‘The Making of’ Rolled into One tisfaction. Throughout the decades since, Three Sisters has Christiane Jatahy has been experimenting with new forms often been staged as a play that poses the question of the of theatre since 2000. She uses the qualities of film and meaning of life in a more general sense, no matter where we cameras in theatre while at the same time she uses elements live, no matter who we are. of theatre in film, all in order to lessen the distance between her work and the audience and to demolish the bounda- Jatahy’s adaption of Chekhov’s Moscow ries between disciplines. In her trilogy Uma cadeira para a Oh, to be in Moscow! That city – the place where they were solidão, duas para o dialogo e três para a sociedade (One born, where they used to be happy, where there was always chair for solitude, two for dialogue and three for society), something to do is the object of all their desires for the three she explored the boundaries of reality and fiction, actor and sisters in Chekhov’s eponymous play. The Brazilian theat- character, theatre and film. The first part, Conjugado (The re director and filmmaker Christiane Jatahy took this play studio apartment, 2004) was a combination of documen- as a starting point for her production What if they went to tary and live theatre. Jatahy filmed the second part, A Falta Moscow? Que Nos Move ou Todas as histórias são ficção (The lack that pushes us, or all stories are fiction, 2005), in 13 uninterrupted Jatahy knew immediately, however, that she did not want to one-hour takes. A third part, Corte Seco (Cut, 2009), was a retell Chekhov’s story about the three sisters. What intrigued performance with edited live images from security cameras her was: What sort of desire would Moscow represent if Mo- set up around the theatre. scow could be anything you wished? Would Moscow be a step toward change? A settling of accounts with the dead weight JULIA (2011), an adaptation of Strindberg’s Freule Julie, was in your life? A fresh new start? She tried to find the answers to the first time Jatahy took an existing play and added new these questions in the studio and on the streets. She initiated theatrical and filmic elements. She gave Strindberg’s 19th a discussion about utopia, a place all of us sometimes picture century plot a contemporary twist by interweaving social and to ourselves but never live in. Jatahy and her team in Paris, political scenes about today’s Brazil. With each presentation Frankfurt and São Paulo asked people of all ages and back- of this play, a new film resulted from the mixing of previously recorded scenes with live footage of the performance shot in both fiascos when staged, after which Chekhov resolved the presence of an audience. never to write for theatre again. But The Seagull finally turned out to be a success when the great Russian theatre innovator In the meantime, the fusion between theatre and film has Stanislavski put that play on the boards at his brand-new become Jatahy’s trademark. In JULIE and What if they went Moscow Art Theatre. This encouraged Chekhov to start writ- to Moscow? this fusion clearly takes place on three different ing again, and with Uncle Vanya (1899) and Three Sisters (1901), levels: Jatahy uses edited pre-shot footage, live acting in the he definitively established his name as a playwright. presence of an audience and throws a ‘making of’ into the mix by having camera operators move amongst her actresses Using very little action, his plays sketch the complex lives on stage and by editing and broadcasting their shots live. and personalities of his characters and their inter-relation- The presence of the camera operators has an influence on ships, ensnarled in an impossible social situation, against the the actresses’ performance; they sometimes ask if a scene background of the Russia of the late 19th century, the period can be done over, try to change the camera angle, give in which the nobility was losing ground to commoners and the instructions for the shots. All of this creates a refreshing con- nouveau riche. Chekhov portrayed the upper middle class as fusion amongst the audience: are the camera operators also petty, blasé individuals who have lost their sense of purpose playing a role, are they actors in the play, part of the act? in life and are governed by egoism and opportunism Or are the actresses actually film stars, and are we looking (, Ivanov) or by apathy and dissolution (Three Sisters). at a film set? Sometimes they grandly and explosively throw themselves into their roles, as can only happen in theatre, Chekhov himself was not a misanthrope, by the way. He took other times they perform in a modest and underacted way, up the cause of the common man, and although he worked because only the camera is capable of noticing the smallest as a doctor only for two years before devoting himself com- details. One moment they are actresses who are doing their pletely to writing, he organized a campaign to relieve famine work for the audience and the camera, the next moment they amongst poor farmers in 1881 and helped fight an epidemic of are characters. Three women with a longing for their own cholera in the environs of his country estate near Lopasnya, Moscow, for example. where he had gone to live with his parents.

Chekhov wrestled with the symptoms of tuberculosis for years, and moved for that reason to a country estate in Crimea, where he met Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorki. In 1901, he mar- ried the Russian actress , who had appeared in ABOUT THE his plays Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters. later, he died from advanced tuberculosis at the Badenweiler health resort in Germany. He finished his last play, The Cherry ChristianeARTISTS Jatahy (Rio de Janeiro, 1968) is a writer and direc- Orchard, on his deathbed. tor of film and theatre who from 2000 has been experiment- ing with new theatrical forms. She started out with perfor- mances in unusual spaces and since 2003 has investigated the boundaries between reality and fiction, actor and charac- ter, present and past. She does this by combining documen- tary, theatre and live camera, among other things, always with the aim of creating a lively, dynamic relationship with the spectators. Besides her own productions (see ‘Film, Theatre and “The Making of” Rolled into One’), Jatahy headed up a project called Rio Occupation London, a residency of 30 art- ists from various disciplines who created new work during the 2012 Cultural Olympics in London. During this period, she also worked on In the Comfort of Your , a project in which British people allowed participating artists to take over their homes. The performances were filmed and then screened at a film installation in London.

Her production JULIA (2012) received invitations to many international festivals, including the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, the Festival Temps d’Images in Paris, the Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival in Groningen and Festival De Keuze at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg.

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), the son of a grocer, was a Russian writer and doctor. During his lifetime he attracted a wide readership and could count on great appreciation in literary circles. He earned praise for his short stories and, after a somewhat difficult start, also for his plays. His first Hoofdbegunstiger / Patron serious play, Ivanov (1887), was well received but the two that followed, (1889) and The Seagull (1896), were