Ricardo Bittencourt

In six decades, Teatro Oficina has done more than revolutionize theatrical language in the country: the aesthetic influence of José Celso Martinez Corrêa's company extends from Tropicalism to the renewal of Brazilian audiovisual languages ​​from the 1960s onwards. The film revisits a story that it involves personalities such as Caetano Veloso, Glauber Rocha, Lina Bo Bardi, Chico Buarque and Zé do Caixão, brings together scenic art, ecology, architecture and sexuality, and mixes art and life in the search for a Brazilian based language.

Sant'Ana do Agreste, petit village brésilien, est en effervescence : c'est le retour de Tieta, une enfant du pays, après 26 années d'absence. Chassée par sa famille à 17 ans à cause d'une sexualité un peu trop libérée, Tieta revient comme la riche et puissante veuve d'un industriel, et tous entendent bien profiter de ses largesses.

Regina and Valerio are a happy and sexy couple, casually enjoying their fortune from their luxurious villa on top of the Rio de Janeiro’s hills. Since the death of Valerio’s father, the biggest mobster in town, they desperately seek a way out of this criminal hornets’ nest. But Valerio’s uncle, Linduarte, insists on him assuming his responsibilities. One night, attempting to reason with Linduarte, the couple accidentally kills him. They then fall into a spiral of violence, leading them onto the very path they wanted to escape.

Horacio, an old smuggler hiding from the law, lives in a surreal, baroque apartment with Petulia, his daughter, and Milton, his favorite thug. While he keeps his daughter locked up in her bedroom, Horácio flirts with his goon, for whom he has had repressed feelings for years. However, Milton's love for a mysterious woman, and Petula's attempts to free herself with the help of a former lover, clash with Horacio's tyrannical whims.

From 2000 to 2007, Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona worked on the staging of Euclides da Cunha's epic book, Os Sertões, which describes the 19th Century War of Canudos in the Brazilian "sertão"(backlands). The result was the pentalogy of plays: A Terra (2002), O Homem I (2003), O Homem II (2003), A Luta I (2005), and A Luta II (2006). This first play is a carnival opera, the actors are the earth, the vegetation, the wind, the animals, the rivers, the drought. It reveals the most intimate secrets of nature, that also vibrate in the human and trans-human arteries. This work enriched by the experience that the subsequent works brought gains an updated insight into the human interference in the environment. Destructive power is proportional to financial power, and the discussion about the way space gets occupied was brought to the forefront, including the real-estate boom that surrounds today not only Teatro Oficina, but the whole world, now hotter and more arid.