BRAZIL
Everyday Superheroes
Against the Mad, Bad World
By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO (IPS) - They fight
against a crazy world, armed only with
dramatic improvisation. A programme of
urban inverventions from a university in
Río de Janeiro is battling "the mad
world" based on the archetype of the
anti-hero.
Yelling in unison "Everyday heroes,
against the mad, bad world!" five
strange-looking superheroes burst into a
busy plaza and attract the attention of
the people hurrying by. Their capes do
not help them to fly, nor are their
masks infrared sensors, by any stretch
of the imagination.
Their only aim is to "investigate and
analyse" what it means to be an everyday
hero, untainted by clichés such as the
comic strip superheroes in the United
States, choreographer Tania Alice, head
of the theatre school at the Federal
University of the State of Rio de
Janeiro (UNIRIO), told IPS.
The Everyday Heroes Collective was
awarded the 2009 National Arts
Foundation (FUNARTE) prize for street
theatre, and its designs and proposals
are acted out in performances throughout
the city, and in small-scale actions of
everyday heroism. These might include
cleaning the statue of some historical
hero, or climbing up to a "favela"
(shanty town) atop one of Rio's hills to
ask the people who live there about
their daily worries and concerns.
In what Alice calls "poetic and
political interference," the Everyday
Heroes collective wants society to
rediscover and define its own heroes.
"What is a hero, to you? What does
someone have to do to become a hero?
Have you ever done anything heroic?
Would you recognise a hero in your
everyday life?" the superheroes ask
anyone who has a minute to spare.
Just taking a moment to answer creates a
pause for reflection in the midst of the
daily hustle and bustle.
"A hero is someone who helps the needy,"
one woman answers. "Who helps not only
with money, but with a few kind words as
well," adds a man next to her.
"Who are the villains? Corrupt
politicians, obviously," is the
confident reply of another person taking
his lunch break in the plaza.
"Evil is everywhere. It can only be
combated with unity, which is what is
missing," says a street trader.
One of the members of the collective,
Gilson Motta, explained that the idea is
to raise questions so that people
themselves will seek, identify and
overcome social problems.
"Although we make our appearance as
superheroes, we are not superior to
anyone else, nor do we have special
powers to solve anyone's problems," the
actor and university professor told IPS.
"We're not interested in acting out a
play to see how people react. The point
is to construct something positive
together with them," said the group's
director, Alice, who is dressed, like
the other performers, in a colourful,
form-fitting leotard and an iridescent
cape.
Finding the roots of social evil is part
of this collective construction.
According to the group, many people
respond that politicians are the
personification of evil. "But there are
some good politicians," said Motta, who
argued that part of his job is to awaken
people's political awareness, by showing
that political activity is not evil in
itself.
These days, everything is so complex
that it is hard to identify the
villains, Alice said. "Are they the big
multinational corporations? Or those who
control agribusiness? Or people who fail
to educate as they should?" she asked.
"The real world is not the way it is
portrayed in comic books, where the
fight is against a clearly identified
villain. Evil is so diffuse that it is
inside each one of us," said Alice, who
was born in France where she studied
arts and literature.
The urban interventions are also aimed
at refreshing people's memories of the
history of the city. Armed with buckets,
soap and water, the performers clean a
statue of Pedro I, the emperor of Brazil
from its independence in 1822 until his
abdication in 1831, while they ask
passersby what he did to deserve a
statue.
"When a statue is made for someone it's
because he did something important in
his life," says one pedestrian,
attracted by the spectacle of
industrious cleaning. "But not everyone
who has a statue is a hero," says
another.
The idea of washing statues is "to play
around a bit with the idea of cleaning
up the image" of someone who is not
exactly a hero, said Motta.
The reactions from the public are
varied. Some completely ignore the
superheroes, even when they lie down
beside a panhandler asleep in the open,
whereas others give free rein to their
curiosity and come to look, ask
questions and participate.
To attract attention, the street theatre
performers play the roles of universally
famous superheroes, running and hiding
around their improvised "stage," leaping
about, or simply getting people to sit
down and meditate.
Motta says that not infrequently,
someone will shout "go and get a real
job, you layabouts," but other people
will sit down and meditate or talk. An
urban cleaner employed by the city once
joined them, because he saw what they
were doing as "social criticism."
Through real acts of heroism and small
gestures of solidarity in the middle of
a city overwhelmed with problems, the
group helps to raise awareness about
environmental issues. And when they
infiltrated a military parade for
independence day, together with the
people they discovered some heroes
closer to home than the ones in history
books. "What they are doing is turning
values around. They want to make us see
something, through art," was the
spontaneous interpretation of one of the
people in the street.
When the time comes for them to depart,
they do so as unexpectedly as they
arrived.
Alice, Motta and the other three
superheroes join hands and shout their
slogan again: "Everyday heroes, against
the mad, bad world!" and they go off
stumbling, flapping their arms like
chickens trying to fly, and tripping
over the capes that fail to give them
lift-off. |
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