There is little writing for theater in Portugal, few young writers, why?
JC: There are few authors in Portugal, because we never had a great history of drama in our country. We are a people of poets, writers, but playwrights never. You must have a theatrical vein, we have prose, when we read Eça we can imagine it on stage, a good playwright can make a good adaptation. They count on the fingers of one hand the theater authors, which is a shame because we have the revista, which has a very critical component, closely related with the Vincentian theater, but that was lost this ability and when it arrived April 25th of 1974, everything disappeared. Nobody writes for theater. Right now, the play that I'm doing is from two Spanish authors and became an adaptation. The Spaniards still have new authors, new people, Eduardo Galan and Pedro Gomez are young. We had a playwright who won a prize and who killed himself soon after, what is the output of this?
Many consider this to be one of the darkest periods of theater in Portugal, you share this idea?
JC: No, no. The theater in Portugal is always in crisis.
Rui de Carvalho: There was a revolutionary man, at a time when there was only the National Theatre and nothing more, it was Vasco Morgado. In his madness invested everything he had in the theater and managed to lift it and animates it.
So what needs the theater today?
JC: Captivating young people in schools. In Portuguese classes is essential to show that it is attractive to entry in the arts, which does not happen, there is no youth theater, the serious kind. I remember in the national theater was formed a group for young people and was a success. They put up various authors, from Carlos Ferreira, to António Torrado; I'm talking about established authors of Portuguese literature, writing drama. Alberta Meneres Maria made a beautiful adaptation of "speaking truth to lie" of Almeida Garrett, not distorting the text, turning it into a musical. These shows were a financial success for D. Maria II and after it ended.
So is lack good management?
JC: They do not know anything about theater. The theater lives of its artistic elements, actors, technicians, writers and musicians. The national theater is over, but all bureaucrats are still there, earning fortunes, as much when there was company. More, has a great budget and does not even have a production, because all are earlier.
RC: It has 123 people and only 23 are actors.
JC: You cannot get people to avant-garde theater; you have to teach people to enjoy. You start at the bottom, at the youngest. I was a teacher in high school and the first thing I taught my students was going to the theater. I started to take them to see Oscar Wilde, an Almeida Garrett, great writers for the stage. Nowadays, they are all great theater viewers, no one fails, because in one my surface a good actor. Now, they were made, created and directed by me to be theater lovers. This is basic. Young people with little more than twenty years are all returning to the theater. They are tired of talk shows and be in front of television. They go everywhere. Crisis is something that we talk a lot, it is more economic issue. A theater that charges twelve euros to watch a two-hour show is nothing extraordinary. The difference you notice of the previous generation is that young people go, boys and girls, before it was only women who went to the theater and the men went to football.
So the future of theater in our country is to continue to be funded by the state, or the companies will have to fetch ways of funding?
JC: The state should support. An independent theater is the most dependent of all. I agree that there is a support, but companies must work to raise public, because otherwise the theory is Carrilho is right, the theater is only for elite. But the theater is not just for some, it is for the general public. We have to give what they want to see. In Spain they have a referendum asking the people if they wanted to keep the zarzuela and the public said yes and they renewed it. Here we are accustomed to companies that do one or two productions that can be very good and I do not put it in question, but they spend public money only to pay wages. There must be money for production. In my production I do not need much, I just want someone to open the door, they can charge 10% in the value of the tickets, but help us in spreading, nothing more. Now, if nothing appears to advertise the shows that is bad. I've been in the last week-end in Póvoa do Varzim in the casino, a week before they spread posters in pubs and had Mopis all over and we had full house. It does not take much. That is a little help.
In Madera, the work done for theater is little? You stressed the fact that companies from the mainland cannot perform in theater Baltazar Dias.
JC: How long you do not have a theater here? Previously this house had a protocol of collaboration with the National Theatre. This agreement ended and the shows that were here from this consignment and thereafter should have sought a solution, but nothing. We have to reactivate it, it may work, and we cannot lose this momentum. It is been created the habit of saying that the locals do not like theater, is bullshit. And proof of this was like that "pass thru me on rossio" had full house. You must create the custom and it takes work. In my county, in Vila Franca de Xira, there was a house that was the Philharmonic Society recreational of Alverca that was empty; little by little I started to get companies to do theater, first a Fernando Mendes, Marina Mota and then John Lagarto and conversations about Eça de Queiroz and what happens? People start to come and eventually go back to see the other shows. Every month people have come to see theater in Alverca. You need to do the same, this theater is beautiful. Sure, it has some costs to the municipality, but is offset, to see this house with its doors open and theater of high caliber. I think that would be wonderful.
Tell me a little bit of this play that you are touring. The curve of Happiness by Eduardo Galan and Pedro Gomez. What drew you to this particular text?
JC: It's a very funny text. It is a conversation of men over women. This is a man who is abandoned by his wife and that will have to sell the apartment, there are several buyers, one of them is a childhood friend and the whole play revolves around this space racket and what others want to do, even the friend without major qualms wants to keep the apartment. Many people will review themselves several times. It is a text that women love, especially the older ones who have lived some time with men
Why speak ill well of bad?
JC: They speak bad things, but cannot live without them. It's a bit like the Monty Python. It has a funny end and will see four dudes, four crazies who decided to do this show. The next performance is in Porto, in Rivoli, from October 13th, but I liked to come to Madera and the Azores.
