Abstract
Shakespeare’s tragedies are fertile ground for mythmaking in Brazil. One of the main policies is superimposing local issues upon the Shakespearean matrix to contest hegemonic discourses and expose political scandals. José Celso’s Ham-let (1993) at the Teatro Oficina is an anarchic, tragicomic, Dionysian appropriation of Shakespeare’s play that articulates the director’s non-conformism with Brazilian social and political realities. Caixa-Preta’s Syncretic Hamlet (2005), directed by Jessé Oliveira, is a cultural translation enacted by a group of Black actors, highlighting the significance of negritude. This chapter discusses both productions, available on the MIT Global Shakespeares Video & Performance Archive, in the light of theoretical concepts by Oswald de Andrade and Silviano Santiago. Although the Brazilian Hamlet versions take liberties with Shakespeare’s text, paradoxically, they also show the deepest respect for it.
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Notes
- 1.
For quotations and references, I am using the Second Quarto/ Q2 (1604–1605) of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor in 2006, mentioned in the references.
- 2.
Full videos of the productions Ham-let and Syncretic Hamlet can be accessed at MIT Global Shakespeares. Available at: http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/brazil/#
- 3.
As I am aware that the mythic potential of Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been widely discussed by a great number of scholars, I have restricted my discussion to those mythical patterns and motifs that are reconfigured in the Brazilian productions chosen as case studies.
- 4.
- 5.
A new translation and adaptation of Shakespeare’s text was worked out by Zé Celso, Marcelo Drummond, and Nelson de Sá. The production premièred on October 1, 1993, running for nine months in São Paulo and for one month in Rio de Janeiro. It won Shell awards for best director and best costumes and was nominated for best lighting and music.
- 6.
The random and brutal shooting of 111 inmates of the Carandiru penitentiary by the Brazilian police to crush a rebellion in 1992 shocked people in Brazil and abroad.
- 7.
The mythic identification of Hamlet and Orestes was first discussed by Gilbert Murray in 1914.
- 8.
All translations of Portuguese texts into English are mine unless otherwise mentioned in the bibliography.
- 9.
Umbanda is a syncretic Brazilian religion that combines and fuses African traditions with Roman Catholicism, Spiritism, and Amerindian beliefs.
- 10.
In Brazil, the African slaves were not allowed to practice their religious rituals. This is why they syncretized their deities, called Orixás (Orishas), with Catholic saints.
- 11.
Zé Pilintra is a folkloric entity of the Catimbó, a regional variant of religious syncretism that mixes elements from African, Amerindian and Catholic beliefs. He is represented in Afro-Brazilian mythology (and in Syncretic Hamlet) as a Black or Mulatto, wearing a Panama hat, a bright red tie, a white suit, and white shoes. The stereotype of Zé Pilintra was popularized in Chico Buarque’s creation of the malandro carioca (a bohemian character that lacks dignity and respectability) in his Ópera do Malandro (1978). The play is a cultural translation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1724) and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera (1928), relocating the action to the bohemian Lapa district in Rio de Janeiro in the 1940s.
- 12.
Batuque is an African dance ritual which originated in Angola and Congo. It mixes dance (in a circle or in rows), song and musical percussion instruments. It was sung in a call-and-response form—the leader sings a line (the call) and is answered by a chorus (the response)—commenting on aspects of life, community news, gossips, and so on. The rhythm of the batuque is carried on in samba and is called batucada.
- 13.
In the performance text, a collective creation inspired in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a great number of dialogues, mainly those by supporting characters, are translated into the parlance of Afro-Brazilian descendants.
- 14.
Tranca-Rua is an Afro-Brazilian mythical entity, messenger of the Orishas and guardian of human trajectories, in charge of opening and closing roads to be taken in lifetime.
- 15.
In the Second Quarto/ Q2, Hamlet does not mention that “Denmark’s a prison” (2.2.242), in the scene of his first encounter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This reference, quoted in my text, is included in the First Folio/F1 (1623), published by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor in 2007, mentioned in the references.
- 16.
Interview by Folha de S. Paulo. “Folha – Em que medida o Ham-let do Oficina contradiz Shakespeare?/ Zé Celso – Acho que em nada. É Shakespeare chegando ao país da antropofagia. Shakespeare em tupi.” Available at http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/1994/9/18/mais!/21.html.
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Camati, A.S. (2018). “Tupi or Not Tupi, That Is the Question”: Brazilian Mythical Afterlives of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In: Mancewicz, A., Joubin, A. (eds) Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance. Reproducing Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89851-3_7
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