Interview given by Zé Celso to "O Globo" about Oswald de Andrade

The world eates Oswald

On the 50th death anniversary of the modernist writer, theatre director invents the "trans-shopping centre" and worships D2.

"Contemporary anthropophagic swivel machine gun" - this would be a nice definition for theatre director José Celso Martinez Correa today. As a kind of demiurge heir of Oswald de Andrade, he celebrates the day on which 50 years of Oswald's death are counted. Zé Celso compares Oswald to Nietzsche, and declares that the world is going through an anthropophagic revolution, based on the movement created by the modernists, which extols the cultural eating up as the way for creation. During the celebrations at the Oficina Theatre - his greatest achievement and creation - Zé Celso will announce the transformation of the real estate which belongs to the entrepeneur Silvio Santos in a "Stadium Theatre" in the "Greek-tropical" manner.

- What does Oswald have to teach us, 50 years after he's gone?

ZÉ CELSO: Oswald is the biggest antennae of the Brazilian culture for universal export. I'd say more: Nietzsche and Oswald are the two most contemporary figures of the century. Oswald exploded and then vanished in midst of socialist realism. He was disapproved of by the University of São Paulo USP, and was blamed for being colonialist and for defending the northern hemisphere. Yet, the only originally thinking movement produced in Brazil was "anthropophagy" ["cannibalism"]. The success of the artists from Bahia overseas has aroused the interest for the Tropicalism movement, and so Oswald is being rediscovered. Oswald will certainly be recognised in the whole world as one of the greatest men in the 20th century. He is still devouring us. He was the first post-modernist, as he himself stated in the twenties. He has seen that the world would become a place moved by anthropophagy. Everything which today is called "mix", all the immigration flux surrounding cities and devouring Western culture - this all is culture in itself, which is eating and which will eat up the world. The peoples devour and vomit moralistic stuff, the notion of good and evil, the puritan culture, utopias and churches. What it's about is no longer being socialist or going to heaven. There's no moremessiah, there's only the act of devouring. The Christian communion itself is a sublimation of an anthropophagic scream. One can't advance without receiving influences and vomiting them - but not in the colonialist manner, not in the fundamentalist WesternJewish-Christian-Muslim manner. It wakes up the world and pulls it off its Eurocentric and North American-centric hinges, shakes the reputation of Freud and Marx, and redeems Nietzsche.

- Is there something anthropophagic in the present North American situation ?

ZÉ CELSO: The problem with the United States is that they don't manage to assume themselves as an empire, because of a beclouded vision. An empire has at least to take care of its dominions, but the US doesn't take care of anybody. This rootingfor Kerry is already an interesting aspect, there is a big immersion of the world in it. It's sad to admit it, but terrorism is a symptom, a really bad symptom of the unfeasibility of the capitalism as it presents itself today. The impasse can only be solved by means of culture. Culture has regained an immense power. Technocrats and diplomats are no longer capable of solving anything; neither is education. The roots of problems do not lie in education. It's necessary to go beyond education and technique, and this can only be done if culture is viewed through a critical sense, through anarchy, through discussions. When capitalism tends to become antagonistic to life itself, an anthropophagic reaction takes place. Capitalism depends on the creation of taboos.But all taboos are bound to become a totem. Everything is a part of life. I would say that the daily Dionysian philosophy will become hegemonic in the world. In a sense, this is already the case with the African music. What is still needed is that the world vomits the ideological constructions.

- When Lula took up as President, the Minister for Culture, [Giberto] Gil, said that in his government culture would be seen in way which integrates the political doings. Did this happen?

ZÉ CELSO: The PT [Worker's Party] has a classic Marxist education; it was strongly influenced by the Catholic Church, and it is a party which was set up at the Volkswagen plant. It has never taken into account Brazilian history; it doesn't accept the heritage of Getulio Vargas, and only recently Lula has acknowledged the state of Pernambuco, he, who was born in Caeté, in the region where Bispo Sardinha [Bishop of Salvador who was slaughtered by Indians in 1556] has been devoured. PT's mind is positivist and colonised. But Gil is simply the best: besides the fact that he is something of a Pelé for the whole world, he is struggling to make people understand that culture is an economic, financial value. And what concerns my work, the Ministry has been supporting us so that we may represent our country in the Year of Brazil in France; it's taking measures to put the buildings around the Oficina theatre under a preservation order as historic monuments, and it's helping us to become a more stable ensemble, an ensemble worthy of what whichhas been build in all these decades. For eight years I have refused to go to the Culture Ministry - there was that horrible guy, [Francisco] Weffort. The other day, when I went there, I felt there was such joy and such a drive to do things, that it reminded me of JK [Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian President in the sixties], even though there is not much money to spend. I think Gil may still become a Capanema [Gustavo Capanema, Minister for Education and Health, under Getulio Vargas' "Estado Novo" 1937-1945]. Well, after all, Lula's election in itself was the overcoming of a taboo. The only thing is that as long as nobody tackles the taboos of economy and foreign debt, the PT party will not manage to become even social-democratic. One day or the other it will be necessary to change the president of the Banco Central [Brazil's central bank].

- In the generations which came after yours, who are the heirs of Oswald?

ZÉ CELSO: There are many of them. Arnaldo Antunes, José Miguel Wisnik, Carlinhos Brown...and Marcelo D2, who is the most recent instance of Oswald's presence among us. [The rapper] D2 is someone of the kind who connects himself to the universe and stays in harmony with it. One who abandons the classifying mentality that belongs to the 19th century but is still strong in our days. D2 makes a revolution by means of rhythm, which is a god, a real divinity, and in its devotion to rhythm D2 has shaken up the samba, has eaten up the samba again, now in the 21st century, and gave it an universality which has passed through a regressive evolution. Euclides da Cunha, who is completely Oswaldian, has talked about this, as also has Nietzsche in his teachings about the eternal recurrence. Time and time again, it is necessary to return to the archaic forces to be contemporaneous. This matter of always going forward, always denying, this "modern" and nihilist thing will find an end. The Brazilian culture is a kind of anthropophagic Hellenistic culturewhich incorporates the Orient, the Occident, the Hindu - it encompasses everything. Such is the generation which is coming up. There is a resurgence of Paganism and a recurrence to Oswald.

- How will Oficina celebrate the 50 years of his death?

ZÉ CELSO: There will be a series of events. We will open the activities with the drums of that "terreiro" [outdoor place for voodoo practices] inspired by him. Then we will have a performance of "Diário confessional", music composed on Oswald's verses by Ernst Widmer, who was brought to Brazil by Koellreutter. We will have a performance by the boys and girls from the Bixiga district who belong to the Oficina Theatre. After that, we will show the Third Expedition of "A Luta" [The Fight], which is the first treatment of the script of this part of the "Os Sertões" [Euclides da Cunha's novel from 1902] designed for staging, and which will be read with participation of the audience. And then we'll have an anthropophagic banquet. But the highlight will decidedly be the first version of the Programme on Architecture, Urbanism and Management of the Stadium Theatre, a written version which I created on request of the architects Marcelo Ferraz and Marcelo Suzuki, who were commissioned by Silvio Santos Group to make the project of the new space.

- What is the Stadium Theatre project?

ZÉ CELSO: It's an approach which begins with the staging of "O rei da vela" [first staged in the sixties]. The Electronic "Terreiro" and the existing Oficina designed by Lina Bardi and Edson Ellito make it possible to stage anthropophagic mixed culture productions inspired by Oswald, as well as to recreate the universal and Brazilian dramaturgy. With productions ranging from the Greek "Bacchae", Hamlet, the Japanese Nõ drama, Cacilda Becker, up to Euclides da Cunha's "Os Sertões", one can say that Oficina is one of the contemporary epiphanies of Oswald de Andrade. The Stadium Theatre will represent a leap to another phase, to the most ambitious phase, that is, the fulfilment of dream expressed in the article "Do teatro queé bom" [Of good theatre], which was published 1943 in the book "Ponta de lança" [Spear head], and in which Oswald talks to himself and has an insight about a "theatre for the people's will, designed according to the wishes and emotions of the people, as it has been once in Greece". Silvio Santos, who first wanted to build a shopping centre there, has agreed to the idea of housing this carnival like Greece. They will build parking places, bars, bookstores; but it will become a trans-shopping centre in the sense of a "trans-man", not of a "superman", which is a bad translation of Nietzsche's Übermensch. We will set up a forests workshop, and we will transform the existing synagogue in an university of Brazilian culture of mixed races. And there will also be a shopping centre emerging from this secluded place. We are working together with the homeless children who used to crack open the cars parked in the neighbourhood, and this process of social inclusion will assure the safety of the place so the bourgeoisie may consume its culture. Silvio Santos has understand everything perfectly well. After all, he is an artist, he is a clown, and so am I, and I'm proud of it. I'm sure we will act together on the stage one of these days.