Oco Teatro Laboratório (Brazil)

Oco Teatro-Laboratório began with 18 members taking part in systematic training, day to day, without thinking of a performance, or presentation, or an end result. Our energy was concentrated on developing our scenic presence and working with energy and expressivity. After one month, the group had whittled down to 7 people. Then, we began to work towards our first performance, based on the life of the Jewish population of Brasil.

I am one of three brothers – the youngest. My brothers work as puppet masters in Cuba. One night, when they returned home after a performance, they left their puppet in the back yard at home and it rained a lot. The puppet, which was made out of papier-mâché, broke. The next morning they saw what had happened and remembered that they were taking part in a theatre festival the following weekend. They both looked at me and forced me to be their puppet.

I had two important masters in Cuba; the theatre director Pepe Santos, from whom I learned the discipline of body and ethics in the practice of theater; and Flora Lauten, a director and actress of Teatro Buendía, who taught me the art of theatre direction and how to work with the actor. Now my master is Iben Nagel Rasmussen, actress of Odin Teatret. Each time we meet, she reveals to me that the actor’s craft boils down to a simple act of being; it is the experience of being present on stage without labels or stereotypes. The work I have developed in relation to the body’s energy and expressivity stems from my collaboration with Iben and the Bridge of Winds.

Theatre is the only space in which I can understand and give meaning to life.