Teatro da Vertigem may lose its headquarters in Bela Vista due to lack of funding

One of the main theater companies in Brazil, the Vertigo Theater who turns 32 this year, is at risk of lose your address in the Bela Vista neighborhood, where his collection is also located. The group deals with the accumulation of debt with rents, which increased with the difficulty of being approved in cultural notices that could guarantee resources for their activities.

Faced with charges for paying off outstanding debts, the company has already had to discard equipment important. Projectors, a soundboard and two high-value computers were sold, one being essential for creating and transmitting tracks and the other for projecting images.

The debt has been going on for seven years. The only truce that has existed since 2017 was an open notice based on the Aldir Blanc Law, with an emergency nature.

At the headquarters, several items relevant to the company's history are currently stored, such as costumes and sets for the plays.

According to director Eliana Monteiro, the donation campaign that the group started a few days ago and was publicized by actors such as Matheus Nachtergaele has already raised 60% of the amount needed to settle the debts and guarantee six months of rent at the current address.

Censorship, conservatism and dismantling

For the director, factors in the country's political situation contributed to the situation the company finds itself in, something that also affected the artistic class as a whole, such as the way in which the governments of former presidents Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro conducted policies of incentive. According to her, the current federal government has sought to reverse the dismantling scenario in the area, but it is still too early to fully achieve this objective.

“If you think about what has happened in the last six years [de golpe com o impeachment de Dilma Rousseff em diante], it was scorched earth. We became, both the press and artists, enemies [do governo]. My perception is that there was a lot of destruction,” said Eliana in an interview with Agência Brasil. “Anything that was collaborative, brought together thinking minds, would make us personas non gratas,” she adds.

“The debt accumulated last year because, since 2017, we ended up losing sponsorship from Petrobras, which would last until 2018, but, with Bolsonaro's perspective, they have already cut sponsorship from all theater groups and other areas, such as movie theater. It was really scorched earth,” he added.

The director also suggests that many people might think that the company would never go through a financial crisis, as it had already consolidated its name. “Maybe because we are a long-lived group, people might think that we have more resources. But, in Brazil, we have never been able to make a living just from theater, we teach, we do thousands of things to maintain our own lives”, she points out.

Origin

Teatro da Vertigem was created by people linked to the University of São Paulo (USP), such as director Antônio Araújo and actors Daniela Nefussi, Johana Albuquerque, Lúcia Romano and Vanderlei Bernardino. After brainstorming ideas for about a year, he performed for the first time in 1992, with the show The Lost Paradise, based on the poem by John Milton, with the Santa Ifigênia Church as its stage.

In 1995, The Book of Job premiered at the Humberto Primo Hospital, in São Paulo, thus consolidating one of its characteristics, which consists of occupying unconventional scenic spaces, such as churches, prisons and rivers, and which caused a stir.

The company incorporated influences such as Antonin Artoud and Jerzy Grotowski, as it understands that theater is capable of offering a pedagogical experience. Among the most recent works is the performance-film Marcha à ré, recorded by Eryk Rocha, son of Glauber Rocha, in 2020, commissioned by the 11th Berlin Biennale.

Other features that mark the company's trajectory and working method are the exchange between areas and the collaborative and in-depth work, which includes field research. One of them took place in 2004, in the community of Brasilândia, on the outskirts of the capital of São Paulo, where they developed free workshops and trained multipliers.

Eliana points to these as essential parts of the creative process. In the case of research, it serves to “lose the tourist perspective on places”. Just like the stay in Carandiru, the one in Brasilândia, which was designed within the process of creating the BR-3 Project, lasted a year and involved passing through 14 spaces.

“The Teatro da Vertigem was born with the perspective of theoretical research work. We spend a lot of time focusing on a subject, trying to uncover what lies between the lines of the problem, so as not to end up on the edge. So, the research takes about two years, sometimes, for us to start. Then, it moves on to field research”, explains the director.