Ciganos (Gypsies)

Ciganos (Gypsies)

1st mounting - 1995
After being received with applauses by the public and by the critic, the first version of Gypsies, besides traveling for several Brazilian cities, being presented to thousands of students of several schools, took part of the 1st. Festival of Portuguese Language, in Lisbon and of the 1st. Meeting- ”Ciganos, different but alike”, in Aveiro and it traveled for forty days for several cities of Portugal. Some books of Bartolomeu Campos de Queirós were adopted at Portuguese schools, from the strong impact caused by the show.

The Ponto de Partida brings the public, with Gypsies, a dense work full of beauty, in that the audience feels before an accomplishment marked by the excellence. Regina Bertola, always in the lead of the contemporary theatrical staging, is careful in the construction of each detail put in scene, so that the show, in its whole, never slides for the improvisation or the casual. Gypsies is well resolved as adaptation and as staging in all aspects. Clara Arreguy - Newspaper Estado de Minas


Of the reasons for doing
The mounting of the Gypsies is fixed on two pillars.

Bartolomeu's text, its poetic force, the words to hide and to reveal the history, the secrets they reveal, the mystery they keep, the openings and the horizon, the transitory and the eternal, the magic of, when counting a boy's history, to rescue pieces of the childhood of all of us is a fundamental part of the immense “patchwork quilt” that configures our state of Minas Gerais.

The taste of trying, alive again, the gypsies' time. That colored and noisy race to break the monotonous silence of the small city. Their shine, the sonority of their language and their music, their clothes to make them princess or demons in our fantasy, but always magic and powerful to wake new desires and remote fears.


Of the research
The characters were created by the actors and to the basic text, that it is maintained integrally, they incorporate passages of other texts from Bartolomeu as: Mário, Indez, Para se Criar Passarinhos, Por Parte de Pai, O menino de Belém. From that tasty mixture the text of the show was born.

The research on the gypsies, besides countless readings, happened in an enormous tent, around of the fire, where a powerful gypsy family gave us a present with the secrets of their rituals, their myths, their language - essential factor of their unit, their family and social organization.

During that contact with the gypsies, the force of that oral and millenarian culture conquered us definitively. The fidelity to their roots close to a frightening capacity to adapt, their power to resist the so many prejudices and persecutions, their condition of being wandering, transitory and almost eternal.

It is with respect and affection that the show tries to show nuances of the culture of that people that brotherly presented us their hospitality and their history.

The research of the music put us in contact with our musical memory and with the gypsy music of the world. Therefore in the show there are Brazilian, Flemish, Spanish, Russian, Indian songs, that are marked by the trail of the guitars, the touch of the castanets and their exuberant movement.


Of the staging
The staging reinforces the research of the Ponto de Partida of a language for the Brazilian musical where not only the songs have a special treatment, but all the show has a musical configuration, with a rhythm strongly demarcated and with scenes that are drawn as in a choreography. There are also the elements that walk through all the show and that are the registered mark of the Ponto de Partida.

The city they present is built with parasols and umbrellas and the gypsies are counted with immense cloths.

The light once again is scenografic, seducing the public's retina so that it surrenders to the magic.

In spite of being based in a solid research, the gypsies that appear in this show are not real. They are images kept by the author's memory and by our own fantasy. The costumes reinforce that proposal.

It is a show built in the persecution of the beauty and of the simplicity and, it surely has a poetic and entertaining result.
The author

Bartolomeu was a silent boy, of attentive eyes and ears. In Papagaio,a small country city of Minas Gerais, where he was born, he grew up dreaming about the sea. “Far away from the sea we invent the ocean.”

In Belo Horizonte he studied at Benedictine school, thinking about being a friar. He was graduated in Philosophy and he specialized in Education. He worked several years with Education and his projects were turned to the children.

During the years he lived in Paris, studying art-education, he liked to read on the edge of Seine for hours and hours. It was in Paris that wrote his first book. “I was longing for Brazil and so I wanted to write about the impossibility of the things, when each one has its room.”

“The Fish and the Bird”,a history-poem that tells of the love between a fish and a bird appeared. That first published text also conquered his first literary prize. All their 21 published books were awarded, some internationally.

The passion for the word is declared in their technical and poetic texts. He is able to spend days seeking for the appropriate word in the company of the countless dictionaries that he possesses as the one of psychoanalysis, of numerology, of freemasonry, of etymology, of music, of religion, of languages and many others.

For the poetic content of his text, the critic points Bartolomeu's work as one of the most important in the current literary production of Brazil for children and youngsters.


Main prizes:
Selo de Ouro, from the National Foundation of the Infantile and Juvenile Book
Prêmio Bienal Internacional de São Paulo
Prêmio Prefeitura deBelo Horizonte- the best for youngsters
Prêmio Jabuti from the Brazilian Camera of the Book
Grande Prêmio of APCA - Association of the Critics of Art from São Paulo
Prêmio Orígenes Lessa, National Foundation of the Infantile and Juvenile Book
Diploma de Honra from IBBY, London
Octagonal Quatrième, France
Rosa Branca from Cuba
Biennial of Belo Horizonte.

Translations
Canada
Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Mexico

Cast
Ana Alice Souza: Dona Lipa and Ximenes
Beth Carvalho: Mário
Carolina Damasceno: Beautiful woman and Amália
Fátima Jorge: Zé of the Bell
Felipe Saleme: Tibúrcio and Bartolo
João Melo: Priest Libério and Júlio
Read Loschi: Mr. Aristides and Norman
Loló Mendes: Rosalina and Esperança
Lourdes Araújo: Dona Cotinha and Olga
Soraia Moraes: Corina and Natasha

Musicians: Pablo Bertola and Leandro Aguiar

Technique file
Text: Bartolomeu Campos de Queirós
Adaptation: Ponto de Partida
Program and direction: Regina Bertola
Costumes: Tânia Werneck
Making of Costumes: Vera Viol
Illumination: Jorginho deCarvalho
Illumination assistant and operator: Rony Rodrigues
Light assembly: Ronaldo Pereira
Vocal arrangements: Gilvan de Oliveira
Musical research: Ponto de Partida e Via Negromonte
Original music: Gilvan de Oliveira on Bartolomeu Campos Queirós text, “Mário”
Vocal preparation: Babaya
Dance and castanets: Karine Cobucci
Sonorização: Murillo Corrêa and Co.
Popularization programming: Felipe Saleme
Graphic project of the program: Gutt Chartone
Graphic production: Felipe Saleme
Popularization: Ponto de Partida
Production team: Fátima Jorge, Felipe Saleme, Loló Mendes, Pablo Bertola and Regina Bertola
Executive production: Fátima Jorge
Production direction: Fred Furtado
General production: Ponto de Partida