Universidade Federal De Santa Catarina Pós-Graduação Em Letras/Inglês E Literatura Correspondente 'Is This the Promis'd
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UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS/INGLÊS E LITERATURA CORRESPONDENTE ‘IS THIS THE PROMIS’D END?’ REINVENTING KING LEAR FOR A BRAZILIAN AUDIENCE por MARINA BEATRIZ BORGMANN DA CUNHA Dissertação submetida à Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina em cumprimento parcial dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de MESTRE EM LETRAS FLORIANÓPOLIS SETEMBRO 2003 ii Esta Dissertação de Marina Beatriz Borgmann da Cunha, intitulada “Is This the Promis’d End?” Reinventing King Lear for a Brazilian Audience, foi julgada adequada e aprovada em su a forma final, pelo Programa de Pós- Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, para fins de obtenção do grau de MESTRE EM LETRAS Área de concentração: Inglês e Litera tura Correspondente Opção: Literaturas de Língua Inglesa _ ________________________________ Mailce Borges Mota Coordenadora BANCA EXAMINADORA: _________________________________ José Roberto O’ Shea (UFSC) Orientador e Presidente _ ________________________________ Roberto Ferreira da Rocha (UFRJ) Examinador _ ________________________________ Anelise Reich Corseuil (UFSC) Examinador Florianópolis, de setembro de 2003. iii For my family who believed and supported. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In completing a project that has engaged me for a good number of days and nights, I would like to thank the PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM INGLÊS of the UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA, and all its professors who enabled me to write this thesis. I have to thank CAPES for a research grant in 2002. I am especially indebted to professor José Roberto O’Shea, my advisor, who promptly accepted me and gave me fundamental academic support. I cannot sufficiently express what I owe to his critical judgment combined with scholarship and sensibility. I am also happy to remember that when the mornings were still night, Joe Rega, my colleague in studies distracted a sometimes sleepy driver with Sufi stories and loud Gospel songs. Among all people I think especially of Ron Daniels, who generously shared his expert knowledge of Shakespeare and whose comments have been invaluable. Sergio Britto, who, being a king, personally provided controversy upon which I have drawn. Samuel Coppage, Kitty Penny and Robert Bray, my friends from America, for encouraging me. Madame Andrietta Lenard with the example of her life. And to Beatriz Niemeyer, who not only read but listened at the most inconvenient hours, not once but several times, I am more indebted than she will ever know. …. de setembro de 2003 v ABSTRACT “IS THIS THE PROMIS’D END?” REINVENTING KING LEAR FOR A BRAZILIAN AUDIENCE MARINA BEATRIZ BORGMANN DA CUNHA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA 2003 Supervising Professor: José Roberto O’ Shea As its title suggests, the core of this thesis is the play King Lear by William Shakespeare and the various possibilities and impossibilities inserted in the performances of different productions, starting from the Elizabethan theatre in England, when the play was originally released, until Brazilian contemporary years. Although this study has King Lear as its primary focus, other Shakespearean plays in performance during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Brazil were also addressed especially in their relatedness to their socio- cultural context. Drawing mostly on Jay L. Halio’s theoretical paradigms this study proceeds with a detailed examination of Rei Lear production directed by Ron Daniels in 2000-2001, a production simultaneously concerned with commercial issues and the desire to communicate with a contemporary Brazilian audience. Número de páginas: 130 Número de palavras: 40.965 vi RESUMO Como o seu título sugere, o núcleo desta dissertação é a peça King Lear de William Shakespeare e as várias possibilidades e impossibilidades inseridas em performances de diferentes produções, começando com o teatro Elisabetano na Inglaterra, quando a peça foi originalmente estreada, até chegar ao Brasil contemporâneo. Apesar de o presente estudo ter King Lear como objetivo principal, outras peças de Shakespeare em performance durante os séculos dezenove e vinte no Brasil também foram consideradas especialmente em suas relações com o contexto sócio-cultural. Baseando-se principalmente nos paradigmas teóricos de Jay L. Halio este estudo prossegue com um exame detalhado da produção Rei Lear dirigida por Ron Daniels em 2000-2001, uma produção simultaneamente preocupada com questões comerciais e o desejo de comunicar-se com uma audiência brasileira contemporânea. Número de páginas: 130 Número de palavras: 40.965 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: King Lear in Performance: Possibilities and Impossibilities 1 Chapter 1: King Lear in Performance in England 9 1.1: At Shakespeare’s Time 9 1.2: In the Restoration 18 1.3: In the Eighteenth Century: The “Age of Garrick” 22 1.4: In the Nineteenth Century 25 1.5: In the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries 30 Chapter 2: Shakespeare in Performance in Brazil: King Lear 39 2.1: The Nineteenth Century: João Caetano 39 2.2: The Nineteenth Century: European Companies 46 2.3: The Twentieth Century: “O Teatro do Estudante do Brasil” 50 2.4: A Contemporary Approach: Some Recent Productions in Brazil 53 2.5: Tereza Amaral’s Rei Lear with Luiza Barreto Leite: 1975 57 2.6: Celso Nunes’ Rei Lear with Sérgio Britto: 1983 64 2.7: Ulysses Cruz’s Rei Lear with Paulo Autran: 1996 72 Chapter 3: Ron Daniels’ King Lear with Raul Cortez: 2000-2001 78 3.1: Preliminaries 78 3.2: Constructing the text 83 3.3: Constructing the set design and costumes 95 3.4: Constructing the characters 103 3.5: Stage business, reception and overall coherence 112 Conclusion: “Is This The Promis’d End?” 119 References 123 Appendixes 130 INTRODUCTION KING LEAR IN PERFORMANCE : POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES The life a play has in the mind may be very different from the life it has on the stage. King Lear, which is a long and complex work, may rarely have been acted in full, and has usually been cut, rearranged or reworked for performance. R. A. Foakes (“King Lear” The Arden 4) Many versions of performance criticism have been written, and the above epigraph works nicely as an introduction to text/performance dichotomy questions since the craft of theatre involves a great deal more than people talking on a stage. Foakes perceives that “What perhaps most distinguishes Shakespeare’s language from everyday modern usage is its richness, density and flexibility; the cumulative effect is to open up resonances and implications in such a way that the possibilities for interpretation seem inexhaustible” (8). In practice, even under the best of circumstances, when scrupulous care has been taken to establish what the original state of the work might have been like when originally written, the simple act of performing Shakespeare for a contemporary audience constitutes an intention — sometimes controversial — to integrate the play into the experience of the modern world. Jay L. Halio considers that “the evidence from multiple-text plays shows that neither Shakespeare nor his fellows regarded his scripts as beyond revision or in any sense untouchable” (Understanding 9). If we try to situate Shakespeare in this spectrum it is easy to note that this attitude allows contemporary directors to use Shakespeare’s language and plots as occasions to deliver their own messages. Performances are aesthetic experiences that should 2 not be reduced to some easily-articulated message, since the meanings and significances of a given production are always primary in importance. To the audience is left the choice to accept them or not. Although this study has a single primary focus, King Lear on the stage and in the provoked responses from the audience, each chapter approaches its particular topic. In the first chapter I unfold a brief panorama of theatrical performances in England, starting with the period referred to as the Renaissance, since this period sees a major cultural shift, and also because King Lear was written and first performed at that time. The analysis of King Lear in performance involves yet another complicating circumstance. Though I have referred to the text of the play, the text does not exist in a single authoritative version, since it is a conflation of two originals, Quarto 1(1608) and the Folio (1623). I adopted the position that neither of the texts is to be dismissed, but rather represented the play as a valuable reference which provides a model of discourse contributing to theatre studies. At the same time, of the many controversies that surrounded King Lear, I certainly have to add the manner in which its reconstruction can be seen as an expression of political and social beliefs. Consequently, my study locates codes and meanings under a specific historical circumstance, rather than assuming that the performance text itself contains or produces immanent meanings. In simpler terms, chapter I provides a historical overview of the play in performance in England. It starts with a hint of the Elizabethan period and follows until the contemporary advent of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and my intention is to show the relationship between culture and commodity as it emerges from the past to an age of mass- produced cultural artifacts. Chapter II presents a short survey of the trajectory of Shakespeare in Brazil in the nineteenth century, having as its main objective understanding performance in its historical 3 relationship to a mixed Portuguese/Brazilian audience. It starts with João Caetano, who under the social and political tensions of his time, struggled to create and maintain a national company, competing with the antagonism of some of his compatriots and the foreign troupes, which by the end of the century regularly visited the country. João Caetano, who, being an actor-manager performed mostly French adaptations, transcended the barriers separating the classics and was simultaneously an icon of popular and elite culture. Moving on to the third decade of the twentieth century I take a look at the successful attempts made by Paschoal Carlos Magno and the Teatro do Estudante do Brasil, having students as actors recasting Shakespearean texts translated from English.