A few things I didn't have time to note down or work into the flow:

Kites. Tiny kites dot the sky. A national pasttime? These kites are quite small and flimsy, and the kids who fly them slice them through the air on short strings rather than let them soar high up.

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I've exposed Dito's alter ego as the Most Famous Drag Queen in Philadelphia. Much you-tubing of Martha Graham Cracker's exploits at the Pig Iron cabaret. One night, Cesar takes us to the finals — the finals! — of a drag competition (youth category) at “Le Boy… by Gilles,” a club downtown. Men, $10. Women, $100 to get in. To our surprise, the event is sparsely attended, and the four contestants are uniformly unimpressive.

Hearing about Enrique's early training in Paris at the Decroux school. Eating at a neighborhood Japanese restaurant exactly like Dojo once was in the East Village: cheap and only nominally Japanese, with hearty miso soup supercharged with thick slices of vegetable.

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The Bar do Mineiro in Santa Teresa. A “gathering place for artists and intellectuals,” according to the photocopy of Lonely Planet pasted on the wall. The owner is a mad collector, of model streetcars, large cast iron pots, that kind of thing. Former gardener.

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A visit to the Museum of Art Brut, with its focus on “naive”, self-taught painters, at the base of the iconic Corvacado statue. A large international group is there, with badges, from all over the world. “What's the conference?” I ask. “International Association of Semi-Conductor Engineers.” Oh. I guess they like to go see naive art, too, in their spare time.

*
An exchange between Cesar and me about something our companies share: an interest in putting the process on stage, making the art-maker a character — both of us have these plays that are both rehearsal and play, the seams show. “This way,” Cesar says, “it's more honest.” Exacty, I nod.

Day 4 in Rio de Janeiro…

Today as we walked down from Santa Teresa to Compania dos Atores for the workshop, we were intercepted by Selarón. The eccentric and mustachio'ed artist was sitting on the steps (his steps, the “colorful stairs” those tourists were looking for) that lead down to Lapa. He saw we weren't Brazilian and beckoned us over.

He opened a portfolio of dog-eared, laminated press clippings. U2 on the steps. Snoop Dog on the steps (Or “Snoopy dog dog”). Anthony Anderson. He waves us off the street into his small studio. Shows us a studio full of paintings, mostly on ceramic tile. Mostly black lined caricatures - often there are self-portraits of Selarón, and pregnant women from the favelas (slums) are also celebrated.

We are admiring but not interested to buy, so he bustles us back out onto the street gruffly. He hands us some literature, which I later found on the web here.

We begin the day watching videos from Compania dos Atores' history. They have a couple of video reels (one is on VHS) to show. We meet Enrique Diaz, who is very sharp and energetic; we talk about viewpoints. About five years ago, Enrique started studying with Anne Bogart and SITI Company and found that the viewpoints techniques brought his existing vocabulary into focus. I give him my point of view: that I love the idea of viewpoints, but that every time I've tried to work with them in rehearsal I end up with pretentious and self-congratulatory material that has to be cut. I've liked the SITI company work I've seen, but something, I say, has to be missing from the viewpoints training since it generates so many bad ideas from the younger companies I've seen. We spar a little on this point, and I concede that the TEAM, a company we met at the Orchard Project, does use viewpoints and is a killer ensemble of writers and performers.

Compania's video reel was pretty great stuff, though heavily edited. You can tell the work is robust and physical, and it looks busy to me, full of events and very unashamed to use symbols. We were really taken with this one early work, A Bau a Qu, based on a story by Borges, which was full of puppeting other people and had a very dense physical score. One of their most popular pieces, Melodrama, which they still tour, featured hilarious costumes (by Marcelo Olinto), and hilarious “American” melodramatic characters. Beautiful. A more recent one features a crazy mariachi band fronted by Cesar (a master of the silly dance, it appears - something we talked about yesterday, about Joe Chaikin's work with us on Shuteye and his interest in “silly dances”). This was a piece about money-lending (this banner of money is from that show - their set reminds me of the Mexican/Argentine artist Maximo Gonsales who makes dioramas out of money).

We talked about their methods, and, like Pig Iron, they change radically depending on the piece. Sometimes their sources are literary, other times it is stylistic investigation. Sometimes they commission work from a writer and sometimes there is a dramaturgical team. The focus, as with Pig Iron, is on the actor-creator.

And something which really sticks: They talk about Ensaio.Hamlet, the Hamlet-deconstruction they are currently touring. The questions they ask are very familiar, and they put the questions into the work itself. Take Ophelia. Bel Garcia, the actress, begins Ensaio.Hamlet explaining the audience that Ophelia is a teenager and she doesn't know anything about teenagers; she has a teenage son, and she doesn't want to think about teenagers, and this, they said, was the “way in” to understanding Hamlet - through Ophelia.

Cesar talks about the ghost, Hamlet's father's ghost. And the question they ask: “What is a ghost? What is immaterial?” “What would Shakespeare think of a ghost if we were alive today?” Dito and I nod vigorously, vigorously — these are the kinds of questions we ask, too. Never about how to respect the classic material, but how to make it alive today, now; how to cut out everything that isn't going to hit, as theater, today.

From the right: Bel Garcia and Enrique Diaz in the studio

Then Dito and I led a workshop for about 2 hours; we went back and forth last night on how to get anything at all accomplished in such a short time. This can be so hard to pitch correctly - you don't want to do stuff which is too “beginner,” but at the same time it's so hard to dive into the later vocabulary without all the other concepts present as a base.

We thought about working with these concepts of “ordinary and extraordinary,” vocabulary which formed the basis of Shut Eye and then came back in other ways for Pay Up and Love Unpunished. But in the end we discarded that idea - having just arrived in Brazil 3 days ago, we felt that our sense of the “ordinary” here was going to be distorted. This stuff is pretty culturally specific - how close you can stand to a stranger, where you look when you pay for something. A recent trip to Japan double-underlined this for me (I kept trying to hand money over when the salesperson keeps trying to catch the money in a small tray… a comic dance).

So we decided to attack the “Three Brains” work we explored to dive into Chekhov Lizardbrain. We explained that this vocabulary is still very much an inquiry and a provocation - we tried to put all 3 “brainstates” into Chekhov Lizardbrain but ended up following a side-story about a character inspired by Temple Grandin (and Solyony from Three Sisters). But I still am in love with the acting research into these simple states.

We only were able to get through a couple of exercises - taking the actors through “lizardbrain” and “dogbrain.” This work is all about failure, trying many things that don't work in the search for something which does.

Enrique and I have a small back-and-forth about “emotion”; the dogbrain, I'm explaining, has one emotion at a time, and I take these actors through a gamut of emotions as part of the exercise. Enrique distrusts this word, “emotion”; with so much fake emotion, don't we need to wait for something real to arrive? For the purposes of the exercise, I say, “real emotion” doesn't interest me. It's ok if there are “signals” and “fakes” - right now the focus is on rhythm, this rhythm of switching which comes from the dogbrain. Going completely from one to the other.

This is such a fascinating exchange, I wish we had more time to explore it. It's something that every theatrical style has to grapple with: what's an emotion? What's a real emotion? Does it matter if I really “feel it”?

Enrique tells me that he focuses on “tasks” much more than emotions, because this word seems like such a trap to him. Which makes sense to me; but I've become suspicious of tasks, myself, as a basis for acting training, because I want people to be able to create in stillness, in quiet, with the minimum. But it's funny, looking at the videos of Compania's work, I now see how many tasks were in there, and they were beautiful, musical things.

In the end, there was provocation, confusion, and some success at the first workshop. The best you can hope for in 2 hours I would say.

I leave the Compania's studio thinking hard about “the artistic project” versus “taste.” I've had a couple of opportunities this summer to query people about what their artistic project is - I recently spent a couple of confounding and delightful weeks in Japan with Toshiki Okada, a playwright-choreographer who pairs a very specific kind of text with a very unusual, “unconscious” and awkward style of movement.

There were so many things in his work that seemed cohesive to me, but when I asked him about certain details, he insisted “That's not important.” That is, the artistic project, what he's trying to do, that's one thing - the other stuff is just to his taste. It's not necessary to the work.

But it's funny - in thinking about Enrique speaking about his work, about Dito and me talking about Pig Iron - for the first time I'm starting to see how we both know and don't know how our work hits the world. Or how the stuff we think of as ornament may in fact be what is most salient to our audience. (I suppose an obvious example is how baffled I would be talking to people who admired the “writing” in Pig Iron's early work, when the writing, the words people said, was the last thing on our minds when we made those pieces).

More on this another time.

Day 3 in Rio (JULY 29, 2008):

We walk down the steep cobblestone streets of Santa Teresa into Lapa to meet up with Compania dos Atores.

It's strange to be in the southern hemisphere in July. I guess Rio is far enough North that it's quite warm in the Brazilian “winter,” but Dito points out that both of us are always wrong when we try to guess the time. The temperature makes us think it's summer, but then the sun feels low at 9:30 am and then we're surprised when the warm days end suddenly at 6.

They've put out quite a spread at Compania. Juice, coffee, bread, cheese, ham, fruits. We meet a number of actors from Compania dos Atores, as well as some younger actors (their students and performers who have worked with them in other shows, or worked with the director, Enrique Diaz). Enrique (or Kike, they call him) probably won't be joining us today.

Marina has been studying specialized terminology for the workshops. “Wings.” “Cues.” “Stage Business” (it's a 5-minute lecture-dem to explain what it is, “stage business”). But to our surprise, most of the people here speak a lot of English. It seems like three-quarters of the actors spent 2 or 3 years in New York City at one point in time. Susana Ribeiro lived in the States for 4 years, working first as a babysitter, then singing Brazilian music in bars, then working for a contemporary composer.

A tall, warm-eyed man enters; he embraces each person tightly, kissing them heartily. His name is Fernando. Apparently he has just been nominated for Best Actor in the first (?) Portuguese production of “The Sound of Music.” He's playing Uncle Max. He pooh-poohs his work in the production to us, but does admit he loves the music. Marina's eyes light up - she's one of those musical theater fanatics. She finagles some tickets out of Fernando.

After about an hour of meet-and-greet, we head downstairs to Compania's studio to look at some videos.

Dito and I end up taking the entire morning talking about Pig Iron. We begin with video of CAFETERIA, explaining the company's early work with physical character, how we focused on silhouette and complete physical transformation. Then we show some of HELL MEETS HENRY HALFWAY, to give them a sense of a piece with much more text but that still has this physical approach to character at its core.

Almost everything we say is greeted with a nod - they understand where we are coming from. We relax and go into more detail about the things that matter, the small jokes, the larger issues that are hidden beneath the surface.

We show some of the Lucia Joyce Cabaret, about our interest in the rhythms of madness, how we researched the characters as rhythm rather than trying to learn about the diagnoses and work from that. I talk about this musicality as a fundamental part of our project - Cesar interjects that this term, musicality, is something that critics always single out about Compania's work as well. We talk about the inspirations for Lucia, about how much we all loved Hedwig and the Angry Inch when it came out on film that year. Susana jumps in: “That's crazy - we talk about Hedwig, the feeling of Hedwig, in our company a lot too, as a source of inspiration, too.”

We show some of Isabella and Pay Up; now both parties are hungry for “coincidences,” and we find enough to get us all repeatedly startled and fired up. Compania made a piece which focused on “puppeting” other bodies, just as Pig Iron did with Isabella. Compania made a piece about money, just as we did in Pay Up. They made a piece which tore apart Shakespeare (too). They did an inquiry into melodrama, as we did with Gentlemen Volunteers. They made a piece in a madhouse, as we did with Lucia. Strange, strange, strange…..

But happy-strange. It's pretty rare to meet artists who are really diving in the same waters as you. Five years ago, we went to Minneapolis to meet up with Theatre de la Jeune Lune, who we assumed would be instantly simpatico with our company. But it was an oddly strained encounter, and I came away feeling that both sides were frustrated to discover how we had evolved different kinds of shorthand, and seemingly quite different goals, despite the similarities in where we had begun. Pig Iron's collaborations since then have most often been with people who do something very different: David Brick of Headlong, for instance, or Daniel Rudholm of Teater Sláva.

But this video showing, which I had kind of dreaded (I almost never, ever watch the videos of the shows again; first of all, the videos usually get shot before I am happy with the piece, and, second, the very thing we train so hard to do, this complicity and breathing with the audience, this is totally lost in a video) - this video showing and all the subsequent probing of each other's vocabulary leaves Dito and me kind of dazzled. How weird and, well, wonderful that two groups of people in opposite hemispheres, with absolutely no knowledge of one another, would end up treading these similar paths, for years…

One thing we agree on today: for each of us, there is no one “style,” and hence no one “method.” It's a process of inquiry, and each piece means that, in some way, we start over. We admire groups like Wooster Group and Richard Maxwell terrifically, but for us, the search for what we want to do and how we want to voice it, it's a process of tacking one way and then another. The discoveries become part of the vocabulary of the ensemble, and part of the training we've undergone together, but we aim not to repeat ourselves.

Part of the task I've set for myself this year is to boil down the Pig Iron project some more: maybe it's a virtue that I can't say it, in two sentences, what it is that we do; but this year, I am going to try to simplify and see what can be articulated in a short, clear way.

To close: A photo of a man, crushing cans.

DAY 2 in RIO, continued…

Hey, here’s a pic of that aquaduct that the cable carcrosses over… you can see the mosaics of Selarón at the base of theaquaduct. Turns out the “colorful stairs” those Australians were looking for – the ones from the U2 video – yes,these are the same ones we mounted to get to Compania dos Atores.

To continue: We’re in the office at Compania. We meet Cesar Agusto, the garrulous actor and impresario whohas been our main contact thus far; the sly Marcelo Olinto, who pretends to keep working on his laptop but never fails to roll his eyes at some of Cesar’s exaggerations or add in side comments with hand gestures; and the calm BelGarcia (Bel is short for “Isabel”), whom we saw as Hamlet yelling at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the video of Hamlet.Rehearsal we watched lastnight.

We talk about the dates; looks like we got it wrong on our end (the 29^th is a Tuesday, it’s incontrovertible). We’ll start tomorrow with a group ofabout 20, actors from Compania, actors they’ve had in workshops or who have collaborated with them in the past, plus Dito and myself.

Compania dos Atores has been around for 20 years. It began as a company of 8 actors. In recent years, Enrique Diaz has emerged as the center of the group, and he directs most of the company's work. They have a repertory, like Pig Iron, and they're still performing some works from ten years' back.

Cesar and Bel have seen some the videos we sent ahead. Bel says she dug Love Unpunished a lot, “In the first five minutes, I thought, Oh no, I’m going to hate this,” but then found herself sitting to watch the whole thing. I say: I get that comment a lot, and not just about that piece.

Cesar’s got a story. He picked up a cellphone in a cab in Sao Paolo (the Compania is collaborating with a famous “boulevard” kind of actor, Marco Nanini, on acomedy in Sao Paolo this month; as far as I can tell, it’s the equivalent of“the Odd Couple” in Brazil. They say “O Bem Amado” is one of those comedies that was huge in the 60s, became a movie, then a TV show. It takes me a while to understand where it “sits” in the culture: but I guess it’s as though Elevator Repair Service did “the Odd Couple” with Ricky Gervais. Which, now that I think about it, I really hope happens. The play only runs Friday through Sunday, so the actors commute 3 days a week to Sao Paolo, an hour’s flight away.

(Wikipedia tells me that Nanini was made famous with his production of Charles Ludlum’s Irma Vep, which ran for 11 consecutive years in Brazil. Nice.)

But the cellphone. Cesar left an identical cellphone in a taxi last year. He grabbed this one bcause he trusts himself more than the cab driver to send it back. He searches the address book for clues. Famous Brazilian actors and actresses pepper the list. Could this be…the cellphone of DADO DOLABELLA, the sexy telenovela star? No, it couldn’t be!

But in the cellphone is none other than Pepita Rodriguez: movie star of the 60s and 70s (Marcelo, at his desk, indicates “from waaaaaayback” with his hands, continuing to type).

Marcello at his desk (note the wine bottle…):

Cesar tries a few numbers. No answer. Does he dare to call Pepita Rodriguez? (Again, I’m trying to find a counterpart from the US: Jane Fonda? Diane Keaton? I have no idea, really.)

He does. He did. Pepita is thrilled that he has indeed found the cellphone of her son,matinee idol Dado Dolabella. Thephone is dropped off, and a bottle of wine is sent in thanks. The card proves the story: “With kisses, from Pepita.”

Pepita as Cesar knew her in his childhood:

Cesar also receives some text messages of an erotic nature from a well-known actress, several years Dado’s senior, while he’s in possession of the phone. The office staff confirm their contents. But this blog has never been in the business of exposing the private lives of Brazilian stars; and we won’t start now. Let’s say only that Dado has been urged … to take things a little bit slower.

(Now it’s really a blog, right? Food, television, gossip. Back to food.)

After drinking Pepita’s wine, we adjourn to a nearby restaurant, Nova Capela, for some cabrito (goat), brocoli rice, fried bananas, and codfishballs.

Here we are with Cesar and Marina the translator, enjoying the enormous dishes.

This gentlemen was voted the “Best Waiter in Rio.” Cesar spends the meal making deals on his cellphone (he’s involved in a varitety of programming and producing projects in Rio) and embracing the waiter.

When we get back to the hotel, bats as big as cats circle the fruit tree out front. We head upstairs to review our videos for our presentation tomorrow.