Nelson Rodrigues was one of the most renowned Brazilian playwrights, novelists and journalists of the 20th century. One of his well known plays is The Wedding Dress (Vestido de Noiva, 1943). The aforementioned play portrayed its characters in three distinctive realms: memory, hallucinations and reality which allowed the audience to see into the characters psyche and soul. This film was shown to the Irish public on July 17th during a theatre workshop as part of the Nelson Rodrigues Festival, Dublin.
Rodrigues was born in Recife on the 23rd of August, 1912 and moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1916, where he lived until his death on the 21st of December, 1980. He started his career as a police reporter, but he started to appreciate dramatic writings. His work was mostly known as “obscene”, “vulgar”, “polemic”, considering the traditional theatre of the time as he portrayed socio political conditions with raw perspectives. He analyzed the psychological conditions of the Brazilian family and their sexual lives. Consequently, Rodrigues theatre created a huge impact within Portuguese speaking countries.
I had the opportunity to meet Nelson Rodrigues grandson, Nelson Vinicius “Sacha” Rodrigues who is a Brazilian actor and producer and the theatre director Nina Thereza ní Mendes who brought Nelson Rodrigues’s last play, The Serpent to the Smock Alley Theatre. Sacha launched 7 Selected Plays translated into English and published by Oberon Books with support from The University of Essex, King’s College, East15, Nelson Rodrigues Estate, supported by the Brazilian Embassies in Dublin,and London, and others. The event was followed by the presentation of The Wedding Dress (directed by Joffre Rodrigues, starring Marília Pêra, Simone Spoladore, Leticia Sabatella and Marcos Winter). A discussion with Sacha, Mendes and Dr. Daniel Love Peacock (novelist, actor, playwright, lecturer and translator) and Dr Almiro Andrade,from Kings College, followed the movie and topics of dramatic translations were raised as well as how to maintain the pragmatic with such poetic script—which is an issue that always happens in translation, the translator would focus more on either the pragmatic and “correct” translation of each word or focus on the poetic features of the languages.
Additionally, Nina explains that the theatre of Nelson Rodrigues is raw and it encourages the actors to be in the moment, to be completely emotionally engaged. Rodrigues’s theatre, as she describes, does not need a huge budget or set, or anything; it is the actors who do the job. The actors are responsible for giving a cathartic experience to the audience. Everything else is a “plus”, which is good but not essential.
Nina also performed for the Shakespeare production at The Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin and was based in Madrid for years.
Nelson Rodrigues has been a research topic at Trinity College Dublin. Dr Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento from Wesleyan University, Connecticut was a Visiting Research Fellow in collaboration with the School of Creative Arts. Her main focus was his conciliation and multicultural communication on stage, the creation of site-specific performances and experimental theatre.
“Sacha” was in Dublin at the Smock Alley Theatre and in London, he’s back in Rio and promising for new future projects.
