State of the Art

I haven’t seen much theatre yet, despite my best intentions before I came (save a piece of puppet theatre in Paraty which featured a female puppet masturbating to very intricately-observed climax - powerful stuff but another story entirely.) My excuse is that real life is providing more than enough to reflect on right now, and I don’t think there’d be much point in me seeing much stuff until a) my Portuguese is better and b) I understand the context in which it’s being made a bit more thoroughly. Hence A and I are now living in a favela - the one which the Morrinho is situated, in Rio, staying in the house of the girlfriend of one of the Morrinho boys - more of which later.

Anyway. Back in London, the theatre world is up in arms about recently-announced changes to Arts Council England funding processes. I haven’t been able to get to grips with the complexities of the furore, but I’m getting twenty emails a day via the Young Vic Genesis Directors project, as the ensuing debate rages and arts professionals organise protests and meetings. Equity has the big guns out, and 500 people attended a packed-out meeting at the Young Vic theatre, unanimously voting a motion of no confidence in the Arts Council.

I imagine a fair amount of media coverage and debate is currently surrounding the recent Arts Council changes. Here in Rio, the situation of arts funding is even more dire, though the response far less vociferous or organised. By coincidence, my attention was brought to the issue via an interesting feature on the front page of the Sunday Arts section in one of the Rio broadsheets last weekend (I’ve been patiently translating it over breakfast for the past few days.)

Apparently, there are only 16 theatrical works on in Rio at the start of this year, compared to 30 last January; a 60% drop in cultural output, due to a combination of factors. Projects are funded here through a combination of state funding, via the Ministry of Culture, and ‘patrocinismo’, or sponsorship, mainly through large corporations. Caixa, one of the major banks, seems to fund visual arts spaces and exhibitions, the film industry is buoyed up by Petrobras, the state-owned petrol company, and the theatre industry by Electrobras. In 2007 though, Electrobras made no public announcement about the normal open competition for funding awards, and instead funded a few projects, privately selected. In the same year, state funding was radically affected by a strike in the Ministry of Culture, and much chopping and changing, sacking and reappointment amongst cultural ministers and the secretariat. Funding decisions were radically delayed – a flurry of delayed funding decisions came through in the last two weeks of December, generally seen by the theatre community as a pacifying gesture, but much of this money was unusable as projects had faltered as other funding relationships dried up during the delay. Theatre producers rightly complain of an indifference in cultural politics – indeed, a lack of cultural policy, full stop. Without any reliable and publicly accountable system of arts funding, the industry here is in a state of crisis.

Of course, creative output under these conditions is fiendishly difficult – but of course, the issue of theatrical funding is pretty low on both the media and political agendas. I’ve been keeping an eye out since I saw that article, but the issue seems to have once again submerged under the weight of fear-inducing articles about car-jackings, drug traffickers, political corruption, police counter-crime manoeuvres and people being arrested for forging Bolsa Familial coupons (food stamps).

There’s certainly no shortage of subject material in Brazil to make art about, and certainly no shortage of artists wanting to make it. You can feel the creativity bursting out here – it’s in the Morrinho, in the incredibly skilful grafitti, it’s in the musicians gathering informally on street corners, the rodas de samba, the rodas de capoeira (every young guy here commands a decent ginga and can throw a respectable martelo or meia lua de frente, it seems). It’s on little stalls at the side of the roads that sell beautiful naïve sculptures made of junk, it’s in the sketches of the boy in the local shop here in the favela who’s refining his self-taught drawing skills in order to become a tattoo artist (“it’s one of the only ways to make money as an artist here’ he told us).

Believing as I do in art’s function as a space for society to debate issues, in its essential transformative process (O Morrinho stands as indisputable evidence of that) it’s incredibly saddening to comprehend the massive problems that the creative industries here have to overcome. Concerned as I am about the issues at home, I at least feel reassured by the instant, forceful and vociferous response that threat to artistic output engenders, which I’d be part of if I was there. But right now, I’m much more consumed by the crisis in Brazil - about the things here that are dying to be creatively explored, but for which there is virtually no endorsement, no platform, no money and no structure of political support. The social and political problems here, obviously, are manifold and complex – and nearly everyone is massively affected by them, one way or another. Clearly, in a county where basic access to the essentials (housing, healthcare, education, even food) isn’t happening, theatre is a luxury that’s hard to pay for. But art here has the potential to be incendiary, radical – to break through the sinister silence that serves to maintain the incredible disparity in living standards here, and which underpins the extreme anger (and resultant violence) which is such a marked feature of Brazilian everyday life.

A and I have been discussing recently how the only Brazilian films which break the international consciousness are those about the violence and crime here – the only ones that have hit our local arthouse cinema in London in recent years are Carandiru (about the prison riot in Sao Paulo), Bus 174, (the documentary about a bus hold up in Rio), and of course, the ubiquitous City of God. I dunno what that tells you really – maybe our radars need to tune in to the other stuff that must be being made. Maybe the violence is what fascinates us about Brazil. Maybe that’s why we’ve ended up, for all the hassle it is, eschewing the nice comfy pousada up the road and living in a favela.

A got our first dose of guns this morning. On the way from our room in the favela to the NGO offices, we walked through the little gaggle of young men who sit on the corner at the entrance to the favela. We said hello to them, they gave us slightly odd looks and asked us if we were lost. When we said we weren’t thanks, they decided amongst themselves that we must either be staying in the Favelinha or going to get the bus. When A walked back past them all a bit later, they had the guns out, they clearly wanted her to see they had it, passing it from one to the other as she walked past. We’ve had a chat with the women at the NGO about our situation here; they said, you need to make it clear that you’re living here and have friends here, and are not just dim gringos walking around with cameras. They’ve clearly got their turf to protect and their business to look out for. We just have to make it clear that we have no intention of messing about with it, and make sure we’re not rocking the boat. We’re hoping that friendliness will prevail, and that we are sharp enough to judge the intricacies of the situation and not disturb the existing equilibrium that keeps this favela trouble free. “No-one wants the police here” said Gabriella, “because if they come, it’s a war.”