Designing a Theatre of Change:
A Reading of Lina Bo Bardi’s Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona
Text and Photography: André Kullmar and Tove Grönroos
While Design och Arkitektur center in Stockholm celebrate the memory of Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914 – 1992) with an exhibition about her, we; an exchange student in Brazil and a master student at the Bartlett, UCL, took the Christmas holidays to discover the works of Bo Bardi up-close. Our main focus was on the Teatr(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona in São Paulo, one of her less famous works. It has, like much of her work, passed by rather unnoticed. This is regrettable because, as well as being an excellent work of architecture, it is also significant in its connection to the theatre group with the same name whom were an important part of the Tropicália movement of the late 1960’s. Tropicália, or Tropicalism as it is called in retrospect, strived for change, a way for Brazil to get away from the nation’s dependency upon its colonial past, which in the case of Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona materialized in theatre. Because of this unique background, it raises questions about the architectonic spaces created by Bo Bardi – in the way they are designed in order to produce an architecture that encourages critique and change, and by extension, if this is something that is still credible, several decades after the end of Tropicália.
Although seemingly simplistic, almost like a non-architecture, the design and program contains elaborate ideas about theatre and how to submerge the audience into the politically and culturally critical content of its plays. This favour of program more than pure form give, as we will come to see, the building the ability to transcend traditional limits of architecture, in the same way Bo Bardi transcend the traditional limits of Modernism. She is, through her ideals, which she materializes in her buildings, much closer to those of the American architect Bernard Tschumi (b. 1944), than of her contemporary, Brazilian architect Oscar Neimayer (1907 – 2012). To quote Bernard Tschumi’s post-modern ideas on program: “Space is not simply the three-dimensional projection of a mental representation, but it is something that is heard, and acted upon’[1] Even though Bo Bardi refuses to be called a post-modernist,[2] her process focused on the tenants, and the history of the people and the actions in need of space, which she incorporated in a modernist form. For Niemeyer on the other hand it was always mostly about form: “My work is not about ‘form follows function’ but ‘form follows beauty’ or even better, ‘form follows feminine’. [3]
Following the idea of promoting engagement rather than observation, we will participate in one of the theatre’s plays and, through literature on the subject, try to decipher this theatre of change and investigate its relevance in the context of today’s Brazil.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo and the promenade to Teat(r)o Oficina
[Westernization as a continuation of colonialism]
Before setting off for Teat(r)o Oficina, we visit another Lina Bo Bardi building – MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo in the centre of the city. MASP has been going through change as alterations have been made both to its interior as well as parts of its exterior. These alterations have been made with the agenda to gentrify in order to turn it into a more appropriate structure to display modern art, thus being able to hold exhibitions of more popular nature and draw more visitors.[4] These alterations do, however, have spatial consequences that are at odds with the original design and the architectural agenda of Bo Bardi which shine through in most of her work including the Teat(r)o Oficina.
On the ground level of the museum, beneath the exhibition spaces, barriers and fences of glass and steel have been installed, together with metal detectors, a ticket stand and cloakroom. The original staircase entryway has been shut off and the only way to enter the building is now by elevator. Once inside the building, the continuous exhibition space, one of the emblems of the building, have been cut up into a linear labyrinthine space by plastered walls. The windows have been completely covered up. While walking through the paintings on display, Lucian Freud and Impressionist [European] Painters, one does not feel any connection with the surrounding building. The interior of MASP is now completely generic.
Although Bo Bardi favoured transformation and architecture viable to change along with changing conditions, this commercialisation MASP is undergoing is completely contradictory to the rest of her ideals. Bo Bardi’s original design may be viewed as a continuation of the city, the space below the floating museum volume are used as a market space, just a few steps up the stairs and you would enter the exhibitions, displayed in glass sheets arranged in easels in one continuous space, giving you, the observer, the freedom to choose which work of art to engage.
The president of the museum, Julio Neves, who initiated this restructuring of the museum holds opposite ideals close to heart. He sees this transformation as a way of adapting the museum to contemporary conditions, letting it become a museum like “all other museums in the world”, homogenizing and westernizing it in order to attract a wider audience.[5] By so doing, the connection to the local, what Bo Bardi “spoke of [as] ugliness, mixing the ‘primitive’ of the popular with the civilized of the erudite” and which had been solidified through the continuous exhibition spaces she designed, is lost.[6] MASP, just like Neves’ reference of inspiration – The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, then become reduced into being a symbol, a structure without content, not bound to the local and real, but to the global and generic. In the words of Tschumi, this conversion “reduces architecture to a system of surface signs at the expense of the reciprocal, indifferent, or even conflictive relationship of space and events”.[7] The museum become transformed into a “passive object of contemplation instead of the place that confronts spaces and actions”[8]
After leaving MASP we walk up the streets towards Bixiga, one of the oldest parts of the city, the neighbourhoods cut off by the Minhocão highway and which, in the old days, were what’s called a Quilombo,[9] and which are now the grounds for the Teat(r)o Oficina theatre.[10] On our way over we raise the question of how westernization, in a way, may be seen as a second coming of colonialism in Brazil, and how this stands in conflict with the ideals of Bo Bardi and the design and program of Teat(r)o Oficina.
Common ground for all of the work done by Bo Bardi is an interest in the history of the Brazilian nation, or more so for the parts of its history which have been neglected due to its European domination during its long period as a colony, stretching as far back as to the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese in the 16th century.[11] As an effect, the foundations of the nation in the early 20th century were strictly European – economy was English and culture was French.[12] This is something that was beginning to come into question in the early days of Brazilian modernism. In 1928 Oswald de Andrade writes “Manifesto Antropofaglia”, a cannibal manifest, a sort of recipe on how to construct a true Brazilian national identity.[13] In his writings, he proposes a “devouring what comes from abroad, digesting what’s worth keeping and vomiting the rest”, creating a synthesis between the indigenous native cultures and the essentials of abroad influences.[14]
This notion will re-emerge during the 1960’s through the Tropicália movement, based in the arts, music and theatre, in a time coloured by the military dictatorship and repression. It is in this context a group of law students open the original Teatro Oficina de São Paulo, which still resides on the same site, still under the directorship of José Celso, and since 1984 housed in the building designed by Bo Bardi.[15] This also relates, in a very literal way to Bo Bardi, being a product of Europe, displaced in her twenties within the new context of Brazil.
After a brief promenade we find ourselves at a junction above the Minhocão highway, and discover the modest entry to the theatre. The title of the theatre is marked in the pavement in front of the small foyer with a ticket booth and the metal doors leading in to the theatre. We are early, ticket sales start an hour before the play, so we continue our walk around Bixiga. Whilst the central parts of São Paulo, the areas surrounding MASP, are homogenously commercial and stretches as far as to Minhocão, the highway acts as a divider, cutting of the neighbourhood, lending it a radically different feeling. The buildings are medium-rise concrete or brickwork, mostly residential, some seemingly abandoned. There are lots of small bars; some people lie sleeping on the side of the roads. One may say the theatre straddles the borderlands between the old traditional and the new commercial districts. As we will come to see, the theatre become a sort of metaphorical entrance to the old quilombo, not only in the way the interior is inspired by a typical neighbourhood street, but also in the way it incorporate traditional native elements in its plays. Many decades ago, these might have been performed in its natural setting not far from where the theatre lay today.
In discussion with visitors and the first act of CACILDA!!!
[Breaking historical narratives]
After buying our tickets, we head around the building to the neighbouring parking lot of yellow gravel and dust, startling bright under the intense sun. In the corner behind the theatre, at its rear entrance, there is a bar under the shade of a tent, where we spend the hour before the play talking to some of the other visitors. We speak to Marcello and Aduoto, two Paulistas,[16] who frequently visit the theatre. We ask them about the process of the theatre, what the theatre is like now in relation to what it was before, during the Tropicália movement. We’ve read that the theatre is now going though a hard time because of a dispute about the fate of the empty lot next to the theatre. The theatre’s ambitions, which stretches back to the days of Bo Bardi, is to extend the theatre with additional outdoor amphitheatres, which has recently been materialized in a proposal by Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha (b. 1928). The landowner’s agenda, however, is to build a mall.[17] We ask whether the phase of capitalization Brazil is undergoing may be seen as a continuation of colonialism and whether this is something the theatre expresses in its plays? ‘Definitely’ says Adouto ‘if you view colonialism in a wider perspective [not just as a historical phase], and yes, the struggle against the powers who’s interest it is to build malls and further westernizing Brazil is definitely a recurring theme.
At six p.m. the back entrance (which do not really feel like a back entrance as the building is linear) opens up and we enter. The entire ensemble greets us, cheering us on with song, confetti and streamers. While some take to the floor, we mount the scaffolds, which functions as mezzanine floors and give a view down over the stage. The sun is coming in through the large window facing west. A brief introduction is held, wherein the audience is encouraged to participate in the oncoming play – “This is a collaboration between us and you”, says one of the actors, standing on a platform in front of the window. Then the first out of two acts begins, which excluding a thirty minute long intermezzo will span an astonishing five hours.
CACILDA!!! explores the faith of Brazilian actress Cacilda Becker and revolves around themes of love, sex, sexual diversity, militarism, ritualism and local tradition. Although set in the 1940’s and 50’s, links are constantly being made to contemporary society. The entire play is filmed, projected on screens and linked to Youtube. The audience is encouraged to use their smartphones to document and share certain parts of the act. Most of the themes explored feel current, even though the play is retrospective.
The first act may be described as kind of a cabaret, with frequent dancing where the audience is invited to participate. It is lively and loud, the sun still shining in through the large window. At one point the entire ensemble retreat to the outside street, not as a way of interrupting the act, but as a continuation of its narrative, an actual part of the manuscript. In another instance we see Cacilda giving birth under ritualistic forms, sitting legs spread apart in front of a shrouded man wearing the mask of a Taurus, a folkloric figure known as Boi-bumbá, derived from the traditional culture of the northeast, often referenced throughout Tropicalism.[18]
During the intermezzo, Gabriel, another Paulista come to chat with us. We talk briefly about the theatre, its context and audience. When asked about what kind of people come here he says it’s a mix, but with a tendency towards socialists, queer and artists. We tell him we find it hard to comprehend everything; the play is in Portuguese and the historic references are many and confusingly mixed. Gabriel says that, even among the Brazilians, not everyone who comes to the theatre understands its narrative, but that you can appreciate it nonetheless. The American theorist Fredric Jameson’s question whether there can ever be such a thing as political art, as its message is always in the eye of the beholder, comes to mind: “A great political art (Brecht) can be taken as a pure and apolitical art; art that seems to want to be merely aesthetic and decorative can be rewritten as political with energetic interpretation”.[19] Would we have understood the political agenda of the theatre if we had not known about it beforehand?
We understand, however, that this kind of theatre is not supposed to be didactic but rather impulsive.[20] The same ideas are found within the original continuous exhibition spaces of MASP, wherein the visitor was free to choose which work of art to engage and in what order, and thereby not being bound to any pre-established, linear, historical narrative. As with the case of SESC Pompéia, the factory turned into education cum sports and leisure centre, as well as Teat(r)o Oficina, the idea is to activate the viewer instead of pacifying him/her. Presence, process and engagement are more important than representation. Whether in the workshops of SESC Pompéia, the open exhibition spaces of MASP or the interactive plays at Teat(r)o Oficina, the key aspect is taking part on your own conditions. Before we go back in for the second act Gabriel tells us that some parts of the play are more improvised than rehearsed. Again, presence proves to be more important than representation.
This idea of breaking historical lineage, and thereby opening up for interpretation is not only strong within the designs of Bo Bardi, but also within the theatrical narratives of German play writer Berthold Brecht (1898 – 1956), whom are a sort of predecessor to Teat(r)o Oficina. One of Brecht’s signature qualities are in the way he used epic narrative to create a form of “[…] ‘autonomization’, from the way in which the episodes of the narrative thus cut up into smaller segments tend to take on an independence and an autonomy of their own”.[21] This fragmentation of the narrative then creates collage-like links between historical events, which conventionally are expressed linearly. By actively questioning historical linearity, Brecht puts the audience in a position wherein they have to take part by making their own analysis – activating instead of pacifying. The effect, by extension, is that by changing the reading of the past, with it come the ability to change the future.
This is strengthened further by what Brecht come to call a Verfremdungseffekt, where he inserts unconventional elements into the play, like letting the actors engage the audience directly, or deliver their dialogue in third person, or by use of placards or song, thereby “stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity […]”, a kind of estrangement.[22] By doing so he comes to remind the audience that the theatre, just like everyday life, is something that is created and therefore may be changed.
This re-writing of history can also be seen in CACILDA!!!! as well as in the works of Bo Bardi. In fact, Teat(r)o Oficina is, in more ways than one, carrying on the legacy of Brecht. For one, his play “In the Jungle of Cities”, wherein the scenography depicts the dismounting of a theatre, was a reference during the design process for Teat(r)o Oficina. As Brecht transcends the traditional limits of theatre, deconstructing narratives and extending the actors’ dedicated stage into the seating of the audience, Teat(r)o Oficina aspire to extend these ideals further and use architectural design as a tool to accomplish this. Colleague Edson Elito described the process like this: “On one side [there was] us architects and our modernistic schooling, the concepts of formal simplicity, the purity of elements, less is more, constructive rationalism, asceticism, and on the other the theatre of Zé Celso, with symbolism, iconoclastic, baroque, cannibalism, the sense, emotion and desire for physical contact between actors and audience, the ‘te-ato’”.[23]
“This is a collaboration between us and you.”
The second act and discussions with the ensemble
[Transcending into being actors, out into the city, out into the ether]
The way the play makes use of the building in order to break up the narrative and merge the actor and the audience as one, the design of the building as an extension of the city and the digital distribution of the their play through social media, form three levels wherein Teat(r)o Oficina transcend conventional boundaries.
First of all there is the dialogue between the actors and the audience. Through its Brechtian legacy, the plays of the theatre are written with the idea of letting them merge, as a way of breaking up historical narrative and as a way of sharing the ideas and ideals of the theatre.
Secondly there is the building. The interior as a continuation of the outside street, complete with scaffoldings, plants and trees. The large window facing west provides a panorama of the outside city; the highway, the empty lot and the backdrop of the surrounding neighbourhood. Throughout the play this view, for as long as the sun is up, creates a feeling of being interwoven with the surrounding urban fabric. This is strengthened by the fact that the building in itself is the only means of scenography used, and it is constantly re-imagined and reconfigured. Along the window on its left side are ladders stretching up to platforms. The actors swing themselves across these, as well as the scaffolds. As an observer you may sit on the floor, on benches, on chairs, stand or lean on the scaffolds. The plays performed within the theatre are long, generally five hours or more, which further encourages the audience to re-position themselves during the play. During CACILDA!!! we spent our time sitting on the floor, sitting or standing on the scaffolds, or lying on benches.
Thirdly there is the way the play, whilst being performed, is also being filmed by two cameramen and projected on screens hanging from the scaffolds. This is a further way of breaking up the narrative by, through the lens, focusing on certain aspects or details within the play. The same goes for the instances when the audience is encouraged to document parts of the play with their own devices. What is more interesting though is the way the material is then distributed online through social media such as Youtube and Facebook, thereby freeing it from its bounds of time and space. These digital exclamations become an extension of the theatre and the last way in which it transcends the physical boundaries of building.
These three levels may also cross and merge with each other. During the intermezzo Gabriel tells us that his favourite moments in earlier plays included the leading lady climbing the ladders, exiting through the window to an outside balcony in order to scream her monologue to the audience inside as well as the rest of the city. Another included the entire group (actors and audience alike) in procession, stretching from inside the theatre, continuing to the outside street, parking lot and back inside.
Bernard Tschumi stresses program and human interaction arguing that “[…] it is evident from the role of isolated incidents – often pushed aside in the past – that architecture’s nature is not always found within building. Events, drawings, texts expand the boundaries of socially justifiable constructions”.[24] Teatro Oficina would be an extreme example, not only because the theatre in itself is an actual playground, but also in the way it encourages total interaction and diffusion between the observer and the observed, merging them both into becoming actors. As an actor, part of the ensemble, you come to share the ideas and ideals of those next to you. This creates a new kind of negotiated space, which does not have to confine itself within the boundaries we are used to. Through this merge between the professional and the amateur, the observer and the observed, a space based on equal basis is created – a kind of utopia, strengthened in the way it, through its break with historical linearity, does not restrain itself by the limits of time. Within this new setting, critique may be exclaimed and shared amongst everyone on equal terms. This is used as a way of raising issues of delicate character, like those of the native, the Other, a term used by Indian theorist and philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak whom argue that the West can not raise issues about the third world, without maintaining colonial agenda for as long as the subject is someone other. “Everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern — a space of difference”, she says, and this, of course, relates back to the core issues of Brazilian Modernism and Tropicalism throughout the 20th century – the question of how to connect with its native roots and create an own identity, free from colonial ideology.[25]
The second and last act begins. The sun has now set, so the interior is darker but its stage lit by artificial lighting. The second act too begins with dance, for actors and audience alike. Some of the actors take to the scaffolds. The act soon transgresses into a more gloomy state though, raising issues of sex and jealousy. The lack of visual contact with the outside world strengthens its themes of angst and torment, as it is now dark outside. A lot of the content is sexual, at one point a live sex act is performed. The theatre group’s wish for provocation is obvious. The act ends with another reference to the Brazilians-Africans, this time a black woman is giving birth in an act that refers to those of Umamba and Macumba.[26]
When the play is over we stay for an hour to chat with some of the actors, the director and a cameraman. We ask them too about the theatre’s transition from colonial to capitalist criticism and the struggle against the landowner and his plans for a mall. About the theatre’s transition of content, the actors explain to us that while the plays change (new ones are constantly being written) the underlying structure of critique is always the same, which is today directly connected in a very literal way through the struggle of the building. The director’s vision is to expand the theatre with additional outdoor scenes to create an informal university for actors. We believe, however, that through the narrative and the fusion of the actor and the audience, this process is something that was set in motion within the theatre from the very start of its existence. As you enter those rustic doors and continue into the building you are no longer just a visitor, but also an apprentice.
Leaving the theatre and further analysis
[A wider perspective]
After leaving the theatre, we continue our journey across Brazil, which will go on for another two weeks. Throughout São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília we further discuss the themes that have been introduced to us through Teat(r)o Oficina. The pockets of resistance infused with post-modern ideals of localization, traditionalism and interaction, but also the formalist legacy dominated by the work of Oscar Niemeyer, as well as the westernization bursting forward at full throttle.
As in the case of MASP, being homogenized into “a museum like any other”, Teat(r)o Oficina is at odds with capitalism in a very actual way through the plans to construct a mall on its neighbouring lot and thereby hinder the ambition to extend the theatre. The mall also offers a form of homogenization, wherein culture is focused around consumption; in effect, the same way art is consumed in a generic museum. Linearity reduces the visitor into a pacified consumer and reduces her ability to make analysis, draw her own conclusions.
The Teat(r)o Oficina building which echo diversity, carefully adapted to the history of its surroundings, creates a vacuum in the global city of São Paulo. A city that in Saskia Sassen’s terms is an object of investment for the global market which constantly hungers for “[…] central places where the work of globalization gets done”.[27] In other words: São Paulo is today more of a strategic centre in a global network, rather than the creation of and for its citizens.[28] This is something which was observed as early as in the 1970’s by Bo Bardi, whom during the construction of SESC Pompéia started referring to São Paulo as a “skeleton” city and “world title-holder in self-destruction”, because of its rapid adoption of mass-culture and industrial modernization, which subsequently diluted its native cultures.[29]
As the decades go by, the relation towards the Other within Brazil has changed. From total neglect into being noticed during the early days of Modernism. Then into being infused and blended with influences from the West a few decades later during Tropicalism, and now, again, rapidly falling into neglect, pushed aside by capitalist and commercial interests.
Teat(r)o Oficina recognizes capitalism as a continuation of colonialism and continue its struggle against homogenization, linearity, consumption and passiveness by transcending conventional borders – borders between actor and audience, building and city, theatre and social media. The theatre group’s ways of merging stories of the past, rewriting them and putting them into the context of the present makes them stand out from everyday life, cultural production and architectural development of São Paulo.
[1] Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction (USA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 111
[2] Lina Bo Bardi, Architecture Words 12: Stones against Diamonds, Architectural Association Publications, 2013, London printed in Belgium p. 119
[3] http://www.archdaily.com/303376/quotes-from-oscar-niemeyer-1907-2012/ 2013-02-08
[4] Olivia de Oliviera, ”Concerning Lina Bo Bardi”, 2G, volume 23, (2002) pp. 9
[5] Oliveira, (2002), pp. 16
[6] Styliane Philippou, ”The Primitive as an Instrument of Subversion in Twentieth-Century Brazilian Cultural Practice”, Architectural Research Quarterly, volume 8, number 3 – 4 (December 2004), pp. 295
[7] Tschumi, (1996), pp. 140
[8] Tschumi, (1996), pp. 141
[9] A maroon settlement founded by escaped African slaves.
[10] Patrick Campbell, “Traces of the (M)other: Deconstructing Hegemonic Hitstorical Narrative in Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona’s Os Sertões”, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, volume 21, number 2 (June 2012), pp. 304
[11] Fernando Peixoto, ”Brazilian Theatre and National Identity”, TDR, volume 34, number 1 (Spring 1990), pp. 60
[12] Styliane Philippou, ”The Primitive as an Instrument of Subversion in Twentieth-Century Brazilian Cultural Practice”, Architectural Research Quarterly, volume 8, number 3 – 4 (December 2004), pp. 287
[13] Christopher Dunn, Brutality Garden (USA: Univerity of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 50
[14] Peixoto, 1990, pp. 60
[15] Peixoto, 1990, pp. 63
[16] Synonym for the people originating from São Paulo.
[17] “The Street is a Theatre”, http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2012/05/21/the-street-is-a-theatre.html, (accessed 6 January 2014)
[18] Patrick Campbell, “Traces of the (M)other: Deconstructing Hegemonic Hitstorical Narrative in Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona’s Os Sertões”, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, volume 21, number 2 (June 2012), pp. 293
[19] Fredric Jameson, “Is Space Political?”, in Cynthia C. Davidson (ed.), Anyplace, (New York, Anyplace Corporation, 1995), pp. 195
[20] Campbell, 2012, pp. 289
[21] Fredric Jameson, Brecht and Method (London & New York, Verso, 1998), pp. 47
[22] Peter Brooker, “Key Words in Brecht’s Theory and Practice of Theatre”, in Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sachs (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brecht, (USA: Camden Press, 1994), pp. 191
[23] “Te ato”, which is a play with words within the title of the theatre, Teat(r)o Oficina, translates into “You act”.
Lina Bo Bardi, Teatro Oficina- Oficina Theatre 1980-1984, (Lisbon, Portugal, Instituto Lina Bo Bardi, 1999), pp. 9
[24] Tschumi, (1996), pp. 112
[25] “Interview With Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers Conference in South Africa”, http://ariel.synergiesprairies.ca/ariel/index.php/ariel/article/view/2505/2458, (accessed 12 January 2014)
[26] Brazilian religion blending African religions with Catholicism and spiritualism.
[27] Saskia Sassen, “The Global City: Introducing a Concept”, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, volume 11, number 2 (Winter – Spring 2005), pp. 35
[28] Saskia Sassen, “When Cities Become Strategies”, AD, volume 81, number 3 (May – June 2011), pp. 125
[29] Oliveira, (2002), pp. 7
The City As Theater 