Founded in 1990, Teatro Andante has built its career on a significant repertoire of contemporary theatre that seeks to combine great technical and artistic depth with direct communication with various audiences, always seeking a horizontal and democratic contact. Investigating body, vocal and musical techniques and dramaturgical construction, the group has circulated throughout Brazil and has performed in other countries such as Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany,Colômbia and Venezuela. Walking through these years, Andante has built several plays, including: Musiclown, A Quinta Sanfoninha de Beethoven, O Grande Cello, A História de Édipo, BarbAzul and Olympia. Beyond the timelight, the group develops formation activities and participates in artistic-cultural networks and movements.
LAMA (show)
LAMA is a documentary play that deals with the biggest mining disaster in Brazil known as Mariana's tragedy. It presents diverse voices to compose the history: characters that create the bucolic environment of life in the region, testimonies of the victims made in the immediate period of the disaster, reports of the actors themselves in their contacts with the places and people affected, the voices of the press since to date, official reports of parliamentary and justice investigations.
The play interposes between reality and fiction to present, from various angles, the catastrophic failure of the Fundão Dam occurred in 2015 and its unfolding. It deals with themes such as memory, the past - the present - the future, the brutal interruption of daily life, the traditional communities affected, the struggle for reparation.
LAMA uses various scenic languages and audiovisual resources - cameras, projectors and computers, as well as cell phones and tablets - handled by the actors themselves. In a dialogue of continuous flow, these resources are presented in an innovative way, forming a rhapsodic, dynamic and poetic work, that makes the theme arrive in a touching way to the spectators.
Direction: Marcelo Bones
Dramaturgy: Guiomar de Grammont and Grupo Teatro Andante
Olympia (show)
ABOUT THE PLAY
The play is a monologue conceived by Angela Mourão, directed by Marcelo Bones and written by Guiomar de Grammond. It had its first night in Belo Horizonte city, in June of 2001, which was considered by the public and the critics a very successful event, which also guarantees the play a significant path, both during seasons and festivals.
Olympia is based on the history of Brazil’s famous good walker among the streets of the baroque complex of Ouro Preto, a small and historical brazilian town , where she used to delight tourists, artists, and locals, telling in her own funny way, stories and cases. She met many important people and had famous friends such as the poet Vinícius de Moraes, the rock singer Rita Lee and Juscelino Kubistchek, the popular Brazilian president of the fifties. She considered herself the portuguese emperor Dom Pedro II’s fiancée, the slaves most important leader Chico Rei’s lover, and the greatest leader of Brasil’s independence Tiradentes’ friend.
Throughout this story, the play deals with themes such as women, loneliness, the limits between sanity and madness, the real and the imaginary, and the frontiers of theatrical games.
In a marvelous vocal and body language, the actress Angela Mourão uses many techniques of the contemporary theater to make a transition between the character Olympia, the narrator, the mask, which represents Olympia’s insanity, and the actual actress, who reveals herself during the scene.
With this play, the theater group Grupo Teatro Andante goes deeper into their researches: body techniques for representation, the work with masks, the building of dramaturgy, to approach issues that involves each one of us: “ Olympia’s drama is the existence drama, the drama of each one of us, the eternal drama of being alive...”
The play surrounds the limits between the simple, the deep, but also the grace and the lightness. “Like Olympia’s steps sometimes enhanced by the shadows of the past, sometimes reduced to bargains of the present”.
In a refined acting job, and a excellent direction, the play takes us to a walk through our memories, our history, conducing the public to participate in a game surrounded by great emotions and taking them to the joy of the meeting, main goal of the play and of the theater.
TRAJETORY OF THE PLAY
Its first opening night was in June of 2001, at Galpão Cine Orto, a theather in Belo Horizonte(BH). Considered the best play of BH in 2001 by the greatest newspaper of the state, Estado de Minas of December 27th, and also receiving compliment reviews from other newspapers, Olympia has done several seasons in the city.
It had also been presented in many festivals in Brasil and rtístic and cultural events and celebrations, among others, in more than two hundred presentations, including other countries – Argentina, Colombia Venezuela, Portugal and Espanha.
ABOUT OLYMPIA COTTA
Born in 1889, lived until 1976. Unique figure, even having good family references and fine economic conditions – she was supposedly rich and beautiful during her youth! - by the age of 40 she decided to make of the street her own “stage”. Considered a legend because of her way of receiving tourists with stories that showed her great and fertile imagination and sensibility, the lady used to join historical facts of many different periods of times e created interesting stories in a language in which was noticeable her culture and education. Olympia was portrayed by famous photographers, painters, composers, and by the national and international press. She was shown on television programs and was the theme of one of the most famous samba school called Mangueira, in the carnival parade of Rio de Janeiro city.
Olympia became famous all over the country and contributed effectively for the projection of Ouro Preto in Brazil and abroad because, with her peculiar and archetypal presence, she borrowed life and humanity to that historic town and gave human colors to the barroco monuments.