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by Renata Collaço

Paul Heritage Talk on Rio de Janeiro - City of God/City at War

Rio de Janeiro, 1994. Julita Lemgruber, Director of the State Prison System, received a visit from the English director, Paul Heritage, a specialist in bringing theatre into prisons who wanted to start a similar kind of project in Brazil. The prison system lacked the most basic necessities and Julita faced serious problems involving violence and corruption. Theatre seemed far from a priority. As she listened to Paul, though, she gradually felt that the very gentle young man knocked down her previous beliefs, and showed how much art could be meaningful. She decided to give him a chance to put his ideas to the test.

More than ten years later, last 5th May, Julita was specially invited from Brazil to act as chairman of her friend Professor Paul Heritage’s inaugural lecture at Queen Mary, University of London. The theme was one of Paul’s last projects, Love in Time of War, the staging of two Shakespeare plays across four contrasting neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro. Julita recalled the story of their first meeting, the starting point of a series of successful projects designed, coordinated and implemented by Paul, which have reached 27,000 prisoners and 1,000 staff members of probation centers. And she added: “He taught me and so many in Brazil how much art matters for both the captive and the free. How much through theatre you may find ways to challenge an oppressing reality.”

Paul created in 1996 an NGO, the People's Palace Projects (PPP), dedicated to enhance social welfare and development through theatre anywhere in the world, inside or outside prison walls. As an example of that, in Love in Time of War PPP’s activities extended to the shantytowns of Rio ("favelas"), areas where the combination of poverty, lack of social infrastructure and drug trafficking create a vicious cycle between misery and crime. The project inspired a documentary, Shantytown Shakespeare, exhibited after the lecture as a “work in progress” screening. Directed by Kristiene Clarke and produced by Immaculate Productions in association with People's Palace Projects and Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae, the film covers the last days of the production and will be released in September.

The two plays chosen for Love in Times of War were Antony and Cleopatra and Measure for Measure, both rarely presented in Brazil. The cast combined famous TV actors and musicians from the group Afro Reggae, who live and work in two of Rio's most violent favelas - Vigário Geral and Parada de Lucas. For three months, both plays were presented in three shantytowns - Vigário Geral, Parada de Lucas and Rocinha - and Leblon, one of the most privileged neighborhoods. Since the very beginning, interchange was built into the project. During that period, artists, technicians and musicians crossed every day the city’s geographical and social map, and free transport and tickets were arranged to take the residents from the favelas to watch the play in the Leblon theatre.

In the first part of the lecture, Heritage introduced the social context in which the project was launched, focusing on the issues of violence and drug traffic, which are especially visible and critical in the shantytowns, but impact the whole city. With the help of research reports and statistics, he described how the dispute between different drug gangs and their confrontation with police creates gun-related death rates equivalent to a real war, disturbing figures even for the Brazilian members of the audience at Queen Mary. He also explored - and questioned - the image of "Cidade Partida" ("Divided City"), coined by the Brazilian journalist Zuenir Ventura in the 90s. Zuenir's hypothesis is that the planning of the city in the twentieth century facilitated the urban elite’s desire for separation. Misery was confined to the more than 600 shantytowns situated on hillsides and in the borders of the rich Southern zone, leading to the division of the city, with the "favelas" being alternatively idealized or rejected by the “official” Rio.

With the level of planning of a military strategist, Paul used the production of a theatrical event to create as many opportunities as possible for encounters between those different realities. This is inherent, for example, in the choice of the mixed cast and the different venues for the play. Mixture, contradiction and inversions are at the heart of Love in Time of War. The aim of the project, as he defines it, was "to speak about love in time of war and conflict. To define the act of performance as an act of love and to take it onto the battleground of Rio, was intended both to invert the social practices of theatre and its confinements as well as the discourses that control the way in which we negotiate the city and its violence".

Rather than concerns with the performance, the core of Heritage's lecture was the negotiations involving the opening night in one of the most violent lines of conflict of the city - the narrow track which separates the shantytowns of Vigário Geral and Parada de Lucas. The two shantytowns where Afro Reggae is based have a historical rivalry, but now, under the control of two different gangs, they are isolated by a gun-fire line of armed drug "soldiers", a no-go zone where at night anyone venturing to cross might be shot dead by either side. After an unsuccessful search for a public indoor space, Junior, the leader of Afro Reggae, suggested staging the play at such a borderline between communities. The fact that hardly anyone would dare to cross that frontier set a clear goal to the project - if ten people came to the opening night, it would be successful.

During two months leading up to the performance, a ceasefire between rival gangs was painstakingly negotiated by Paul and the members of Afro Reggae. On 8th June, over 2,000 people stepped into the no-go zone to watch the play. The vivid reaction of the audience - laughing, standing up, walking around, talking to each other and pointing at the actors - was to Paul a clear sign of acceptance, but the chaotic ambiance and the distance imposed by the rock-concert stage built by the Mayor made it difficult for the actors to gauge the success of the performance, and for some the night was an artistic failure. But can you speak of failure when a theatre event provoked a ceasefire of 18 days in one of the most violent areas of Rio? When 2,000 people come together in a forbidden territory to appreciate the story of a Roman who lost his empire for the love of an Egyptian queen, told by the translated verses of a seventeenth century English bard? As Paul asserts, this project was not about what theatre is, but about what theatre does.

Such young men, in the midst of the intricate process of Love in Time of War, make us think of art as meaningful and inspire a deep feeling of hope. But, after advocating the right to believe in heroes and defining theatre as an act of love, Paul Heritage concludes his lecture by emphasizing that, although art can create a sphere in which perverse power relations might be temporarily shifted, real change also depends on the social actors - the citizens and the government which should represent them.

The performance of Antony and Cleopatra led to some other projects offering artistic and leisure activities to both communities. People's Palace Projects runs the "Parada Geral", a continuous series of drama and animation workshops offered to young people. The city council initiated a series of weekly activities on the frontier of the shantytowns, with sports, music and games. Two of Afro Reggae bands moved their rehearsals to the area. But the ceasefire ended 11 days after the performance of Antony and Cleopatra. And, last April, in the same track where those cultural events take place during the day, two girls were shot - one of them fatally - while playing in the no-go frontier.

As many theatre groups and practitioners turn to activities in which art makes partnership with social development, it's worth quoting Paul Heritage's words of conclusion, a lucid comment on the reach and the effectiveness of Love in Time of War.

"For all the noise that could be heard as the play finished - from the drumming to the gunfire - it is the silence that remains. We can each hear different failures and absences in that silence. The failure of the ceasefire to hold beyond the 18 days, or the State's failure to negotiate even one day of peace in over twenty years. The absence of a sustained civic programme to address the multiple needs of these residents, or our own absence from those communities tonight. Perhaps in the silence we can hear the echo of the work that was done, the processes that were established, the relationships that were forged, the promises that were made. I like to think we can hear the call to build each day the new practices on which social justice depends."

Created by Paul Heritage in 1997, the organization has offices in London and in Rio de Janeiro, developing activities not limited to the U.K. or to Brazil. For example, the PPP has worked from 1997 to 2002 with the Atelier-Théâtre Burkinabè in a Forum Theatre project in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The project, funded by the U.K. charity Comic Relief, offered training on the techniques of Forum Theatre (created by the Brazilian director Augusto Boal) to people based in rural areas across the country, so that they could create their own plays and use them as an instrument to trigger debate and discussion about key issues for the community.

The PPP is currently running three major projects: Changing the Scene, Staging Human Rights and Lives on-line. Based in Rio de Janeiro and endorsed by UNESCO, Changing the Scene is a multi-arts project looking to promote and protect the human rights of young people in conflict with the law. Staging Human Rights is an educational theatre programme in prisons of five states across Brasil which explores how human rights can be addressed and realized with those who live and who work in probation centers. Lives on-line is a year long performance, visual art and web-design project with teenagers who have been excluded from school, supported by the Bromley council.

The support from local governments, other charities and international organs such as UNESCO shows the recognition and respect conquered by PPP in more than 10 years of existence, confirmed by the several awards received by its coordinator, Paul Heritage. In 2001, he was offered the Prêmio Betinho, a major human rights prize. The Brazilian government made him a Knight of the Order of the Rio Branco in 2004, same year in which Heritage stood among the ten people chosen around the world by the British Council to receive the British Council 70th Anniversary Award, in recognition of major contributions to international cultural relations. Finally, last March he received the Prêmio Orilaxé from the group Afro Reggae, created for important contributions to Afro-Brazilian culture.