Gerald Thomas & Dry Opera Company

SUICIDE NOTE - an autobiography
Gerald Thomas is extremely nervous about his return to New York and the opening of Anchorpectoris. He is working like a maniac on his autobiography SUICIDE NOTE which begins in London (where he was living until early February 2004), by pacing back and forth on the same pedestrian crossing where Alan Schneider was killed back in the 80's by a cyclist. Beckett told Thomas that Godot was in fact a Tour de France runner who, one given day, never showed up and whose name happened to be Godeaux. So, sadly, Godeaux did show up, albeit 50 years too late, for Shneider, in Hampstead and Thomas uses that as a way to beg for his own Godot to come and run him over. This book is made out of entries, as if it were a diary and it simply relays incredible stories of how the meetings used to be with Samuel Beckett and Heiner Mueller and what it was like to be brought up in such diversified cultures as the US, Brazil, Germany and the UK, collaborating with Philip Glass, Fernanda Montenegro, her working methods, Thomas's own directing process, watching Peter Brook direct Midsummer Night's Dream, direct and learn from Julian Beck's generosity and genius. Gerald Thomas has staged about 69 pieces (theater and opera) in about 12 countries around the world. There are 4 books, documentaries and thousands of articles about him. He has screamed, shouted, scratched and thrown vinagre into political wounds through the thousands of columns he has written in 10 years, for O Globo, Folha de Sao Paulo and other newspapers. Maybe it is time to call it quits.

2006
There will be FOUR new productions opening on March 23rd in Sao Paulo and a brand new Opera in Germany (place and time will be disclosed in due course). These four productions will run in repertory and can be seen every weekend, as of the end of March, in Sao Paulo.
- "Brasas no Congelador" (Ashes in the Freezer) will introduce TV talk show host Sergio Goisman to the theater.
- "Um Bloco de Gelo em Chamas" (A Cube of Ice in Flames) was written for actor Luiz Damasceno and company.
- "Terra em Transito" - a solo for Fabiana Guigli (performing with a swan) shows a diva trapped in a dressing room while she slowly goes mad and never stops feeding the animal for "foi gras" purposes....
- "Asfaltaram o Beijo" - Was written for Gerald Thomas.

2005
"Um Circo de Rins e Figados" or, a Circus of Kidneys and Livers has simply been a phenomenal and unprecedented success in Gerald's career, critically as well as with the audience. Since it has opened, on April 30th, it has been seen by moore than 80 000 people across Brazil and Argentina. It's a political comedy with Marco Nanini in the title role (it was written specifically for this magnificent actor) and the play will continue to tour.

2004
"Anchorpectoris" subtitled the United States of the Mind will open at La MaMa on March 6th, almost 20 years to the date of the premiere of All Strange Away,

2003
Thomas staged Tristan and Isolde at the Rio de Janeiro's Opera House (for which Richard Wagner had written the piece, commissioned by Emperor Don Pedro and paid for by a rich Brazilian industrialist living in Dresden), but the Theatro Municipal wasn't completed until 1908. So, Wagner premiered it in Dresden and in Munich in the mid 19th Century.
Well, almost anyone knows what happened at the Rio staging (for specific details please go back to 1996 and the Weimar production or simply click press and read the New York Times version of the event).

2002
Gerald Thomas was invited by several venues to direct movies (including the Danes) and Kampnagel as curator of the Laokoon Festival (this case is now in the German Court).

2001
"Deus ex Machina" was the Brazilian Version of the Danish piece Thomas wrote and directed for the Dr Dante Aveny Company, "Chief Butterknife" back in 1996. With his Brazilian company, the piece took a completely different meaning, especially since the attacks on the World Trade Center (which Thomas saw from his Williamsburg apartment and later became a relief worker at Ground Zero for 21 days)

PS: It is rather odd to note that in the original Danish version, Superman can be seen, in the final scene of the play, walking into a huge crack, an enormous hole (a Hole in the Earth may contain the Whole Earth). When the Brazilian version came to be, one could not help but to associate that hole with Ground Zero.

2000
"Nietzsche Contra Wagner" was commissioned by SESC-Ipiranga in Sao Paulo and performed there for one month.

From that point on, the Dry Opera Company started a one and a half year residency at SESC-COPACABANA in Rio. Gerald Thomas was to write and direct six plays a years and conduct workshops, lectures and so on.

Plays included "ESPERANDO BECKETT" (Waiting for Beckett) with Television Talk Show Host making her debut as actress, Marilia Gabi Gabriela. This continued a metaliguistic tradition in Thomas's work of mixing reality with fiction where, for instance, real mother and daughter (Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres) would play it in its fictionalized version on stage, or, Julian Beck - who was terminally ill - played a character who was paralyzed by the fear of death (or even almost dead already in Beckett's That Time) hearing his own memories from the past, Etc.

"The Prince of Copacabana", with model turned TV Soap KING Reynaldo Gianechini. Obviously and needless to say, this is based on Hamlet, a prince who is not prepared for real life in Elsinore Castle or in any Castle and only lives off of fiction. Gianechini was not prepared for his overnight reign either, so the play was based on his inability of dealing with life and acting and all the sudden demands placed on him.

Solos Secos: improvisations with any actors who had previously enrolled during that week.

1999
Bonn Opera House "RAW WAR" (title by Gerald Thomas) for an opera By Brazilian composer living in Cologne, Paulo Chagas. This fiasco was called a "techno opera" but it might as well had been called - from the beginning - a "fiasco opera".

NEW BEGINNING REFORMING THE DRY OPERA COMPANY NOVEMBER 1999

"THE VENTRILOQUIST" opens in Sao Paulo's SESC Festival "Reticencias" (curated by Ricardo Fernandes) and the new company injects new blood into the work. Fabiana Guglielmetti, Camila Morgado, Marcos Azevedo, Bruce Gomleswski, Ludmila Rosa, Muriel Matalon, Milena Milena, Cassio Santiago and Elisa Band and Domenic Barter made up a wonderful cast and the company's most successful play was launched. When it moved to Rio - on the first day of Carnival - nobody thought it would get a single member in the audience. To everyone's astonishment, the house was FULL. Following in the path of "Nowhere Man unplugged", the set consisted of almost nothing, except one hundred empty wine bottles on the stage, a ladder and two fucked up easy chairs.

Ventriloquist became a media fenomena: due to its cult status and increasing audience, the most important Rio daily and the Brazilian version of Time magazine ran front page articles describing the unprecedented: most theaters in Rio were running at 50% capacity and the Ventriloquist had lines forming outside from noon onwards. The show was in repertory for three years.

1998
"Un Chien Andaluz" - Lorca's 100th anniversary. A Truck was built and toured 32 cities inside Brazil. Gerald Thomas wrote a piece based on Lorca and SESC-Sao Paulo produced and toured it. Luiz Damasceno played the main role and Michelle DiBucci composed the music.

"MOSES und ARON", by Arnold Schoenberg at Graz Opera. By far Gerald Thomas's high point in his 20 plus year career. With Arturo Tamayo in the pit (a wonderful collaborator to have) and an extra chorus from Latvia (totalling 260 people on stage), this production was outrageous. Costs? Too pornographic to even mention in today's cultural recession. Guenther Domenic's set was a scandal (especially in the ending scene where Mount Sinai moved as if it were a spider. On top, Moses himself, stuttering, no words, looking at the decadence promoted by Aron, his brother, down below).

Thomas set the opera inside a TV studio as if it were one of these cheap talk shows like Jerry Springer where the audiences manifest themselves all the times, shouting, interfering and so on. Gerald Thomas made an inventory of deconstructivism out of this unfinished opera, placing on the stage every icon of the 20th Century art scene (from Duchamp to Pollock, to Koons, Warhol and Helio Oiticica and Christo) on stage. Iconoclasty was also the big issue simply because (for very personal reasons) Thomas believes that the 20th Century has already analyzed all that it had to analyze, destroyed all that it had to destroy, and put under a very acute microscopic lense every broken piece of the mosaic that there possibly was. The French semiologists have done their part. Now, as Karl Loebl put it brilliantly in his live review on the ORF channel live during the curtain call "Gerald Thomas very intelligently staged the consequences of the conflict between the two brothers and everything that can be read in between". The production was hailed as one of the best ever and Nuria Nono Schoenberg herself was there and seemed very moved by what she saw.

1997
Saw the worst of Gerald Thomas. A terrible partnership with Ismael Ivo also in Weimar was attempted (but not completed: Thomas was forced to throw in the towel by then Artistic Director Guenther Beelitz because of artistic rivalry between the choreographer and Thomas). This piece, written and designed by Thomas was called "A Brief Interruption of Hell". And so it was.

Yet, the Curitiba Festival produced a Dry Opera Company reunion which Thomas baptized "Os Reis do Ie Ie Ie" based on a Translation of the Beatles movie "A Hard Day's Night". Thomas himself played the part of John Lennon.

In this same year another attempt at choreography was made, this time with a company from Belo Horizonte (no, not Grupo Corpo), Grupo Primeiro Ato. Again, something didn't work out. Written and designed by Thomas, the piece was called "A Brief Interruption of the End". Choreographer Sueli Machado and Thomas got along well but somehow the piece needed more work done on it.

The Schwetzingen Festpiele, curated by Klaus Peter Kehr, together with Mannheim's Deutsches National Theater invited Thomas to direct the world premiere of Detlef Heusinger's "Babylon" (a sleeper!!!!). Although the cast was fun to work with, this incredibly pretentious composer was a brat! The production, well.........There was Andy Warhol on stage, as there was Basquiat and other painters....Oh yes, Thomas revived Warhol's version of Marilyn Monroe (in all her colors) but still the production was as dull as the FDR drive.

"Graal, the Portait of Faust as a Young Man", written in 1952 by the creator of concrete poetry in Brazil, HAROLDO DE CAMPOS (and many times a collaborator of Thomas and curator of the two books on Gerald's work, published by Editora Perspectiva and Jaco Ginsburg), this piece had original music composed by Michelle DiBucci - a great composer from New York City (a constant collaborator of Thomas's work). This piece was staged with Bete Coelho in the role of FAUST and 32 graduating students from CAL (Casa de Arte das Laranjeiras) one of the best Acting Schools in Rio. Amongst the students graduating then, are well known actors and directors who were directly integrated into the Dry Opera Company, such as Camila Morgado, Bruce Gomlewski and Ivan Sugahara. This took place at Theatro Carlos Gomes in late 1997.

1996
Thomas wrote and directed (in co-production with the Curitiba and Copenhagen 96 Festivals) his most autobiographical play, NOWHERE MAN. This piece was conceived especially for actor Luiz Damasceno and toured several countries, ending at Eurokaz in Zagreb. It's "unplugged" version opened up new ways for the director and the entire stage paraphernalia (enormous amounts of lights, huge sets, Etc) became reduced no nothing but rehearsal clothing and a minimal amount of household props.

In that same year, Gerald Thomas directed his first TRISTAN UND ISOLDE at the Deutsches National Theater in Weimar with unprecedented success (the 2004 version -in Rio- was exactly the contrary: it brought him to Criminal Court because the director mooned the audience (see the New York Times press clipping of 11 November 2003 in "press") and had the extraordinary tenor Hans Aschenbach in the role of Tristan. The two versions of Tristan and Isolde (Weimar and Rio de Janeiro differed entirely: although both took place in an abandoned movie theater that was being developed as a permanent fashion building, the Rio version introduced a "main" or central character around whom all the singers revolved: Sigmund Freud.

It was in Freud's office or cabinet that the three acts took place and - therefore - the love potion became a statement of delirium against neurosis and, little by little, Freud would be seen losing his job. In the last act, Dr Freud is seen being a make up artist in today's fashion industry. "Fashion kills passion". The boos were so loud and the nazi cries from the audience so outrageous that Thomas could not help but retaliate: he took off his pants (see his frontal nude protest a few pages along from here)

1995
Thomas directs Busoni's Dr Faust at Graz Opera House with Arturo Tamayo in the pit with enormous success. This was Thomas's second time at Graz. He had been there the previous year, directing the world premiere of Beat Furrer's "Narcissus", also at the Opera House (moderately successful and immensely boring).

Gerald Thomas' Official biography
Born in 1954,Gerald Thomas has spent his life between England, Brazil,Germany and the United States, graduating as a reader of Philosophy and beginning his life in the theater at La MaMa Experimental Theater. There, Thomas adapted and directed 19 world premiere Samuel Beckett prose and dramatic pieces. In the early eighties, Thomas began working with Beckett in Paris, adapting newfiction by the author. Of these, the more notorious were "All Strange Away" and "That Time" staring the legendary Living Theater founder, Julian Beck in his only stage acting role outside of his own company.

In the mid-eighties, Thomas became involved with German author Heiner Müller, directing his works in the US and in Brazil, and began a long term partnership with American composer Philip Glass.

In 1985 Thomas formed and established his Dry Opera Company, in São Paulo, Brazil.It has, since, performed in 15 countries with yearly returns. With the Dry Opera Company, Thomas has written and directed Eletra Com Creta, The Kafka Trilogy, Carmem Com Filtro, Mattogrosso, The Flash and Crash Days, The Trilogy of the B.E.A.S.T. and M.O.R.T.E, performed worldwide at several prestigious venues, such as Lincoln Center in New York, The Munich State Theater, Vienna's Wiener Festwochen, The Taormina Festival and others. Most of the productions were televised by the national networks of the respective countries.

In 1987, Thomas directed his first opera, Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" at Rio de Janeiro's Opera House. Brazil had never seen such an efervescent uproar. Public and critics alike were divided into profound love and hatred over Thomas' unconventional staging. Discussions over Thomas' placement of the story at the Berlin Wall occupied entire pages of newspapers and hour-long television debates, for months.The last performance was televised live to Germany and later broadcast in 5 different countries.

What followed was a complete turn of events in Thomas' life. Soon he completed a new work withPhilip Glass, "Mattogrosso", and accepted invitations to work with international companies at several European opera and heater houses. Thomas and Glass have worked on 8 different pieces together. In 1990, Thomas wrote and directed "Sturmspiel" for the Cuvlliés; Theater, with the Munich State Company and premiered "Perseus and Andromeda", by Salvatore Sciarrino, at the Stuttgart State Opera. Also in 1991, Thomas wrote and directed "The Said Eyes of Karlheinz Öhl" for the Pontedera Theatre Company,the home of Jersy Grotowski in Italy, and re-staged Beckett's"Waiting for Godot" at the Munich State Theater.

In 1993, Thomas toured "The Flash and Crash Days", "The Empire of Half Truths" and "Unglauber" around the world. In 1994, he directed the world premiere of the opera "Narcissus", by Beat Furrer, at the Graz Opera, in Austria. Later in 94, Thomas directed a new version of "Don Juan", by Brazilian author Otavio Frias Filho. In October of 95 Thomas opened Busoni's "Doktor Faustus" at the Graz Opera and in August of1996, it will be Richard Wagner's turn again with "Tristan and Isolde", for the Deutsches Theater at Weimar.

In January of 1996, Thomas premiered a new work in Copenhagen, "Chief Butterknife, and the hauting spirit of his archenemy, kryptodick"with the Danish theater company Dr. Dante's Aveny. His Dry Opera Company was back in Copenhagen in September 96, premiering a new work,"Battleship Faust". Future projects include Schönberg's opera "Moses und Aron", at Graz; Bizet's Carmen, and Mozart's Don Giovani at the Opera Comique inParis; two new operas with Philip Glass, based on Chaucer's "Cantebury Tales" and "Western Union", about cowboys and indians. In December 96, Thomas will be choreographing a piece for Ismael Ivo, openingin Weimar for the National Theater and in1997, Thomas will be choreographing "Janacek's Mass".

Gerald Thomas is the recipient of three Moliere Prizes, and eighteen other awards, and has been the subject of television documentaries for the German network NDR 3, the Brazilian network TV Cultura, USA's public network PBS and Austrian TV, ORF. Three books on Thomas' work are due to be published early next year by Chigago University Press and Perspectiva Publishers, of Brazil. Gerald Thomas writes regularly for the Brazilian newspaper O Globo and will begin to work with the Cricot 2 Company (of the late Kantor) in 1988.