2023-07-06 17:47:04
Davi Kopenawa greets José Celso Martinez Corrêa at the launch of the book “A Queda do Céu”, in 2015, in São Paulo|Claudio Tavares/ISA
The Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) regrets the death this Thursday (07/06) of the actor and playwright José Celso Martinez Corrêa, a huge beacon in Brazilian art and culture and an ally in the defense of the rights of indigenous and traditional peoples.
Born in Araraquara (SP) in 1937, Zé Celso, as he was known, was one of the founders of Teatro Oficina, in the 1960s – a revolutionary experience that subverted the conventions in force at the time and inaugurated a new path for Brazilian theatrical art.
According to the playwright, it was in 1967, at the premiere of “O Rei da Vela”, with a text by the modernist Oswald de Andrade, that Oficina realized its anthropophagic theater and became one of the pillars of the tropicalist movement.
“I was colonized. But then ‘O Rei da Vela’ arrived and Oswald de Andrade became my great master, my shaman. I was interpreting everything through him: Shakespeare, Chekhov. My whole generation did that, the Tropicália generation. We didn’t swallow canned food anymore. People ate colonized culture and returned with something modified. All of us, deep down, are Indians”, he said in an interview with Veja magazine in 2017.
In 2015, Zé Celso attended the launch of “A Queda do Céu”, by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, at Teatro Eva Herz, in São Paulo. Eight years later, the director was preparing the play that adapted the book for the stage, when unfortunately he died.
Second actor and friend Pascoal da Conceição, the show will take place and should mark the inauguration of the theater in Parque do Rio Bixiga, an old dream of Zé Celso.
Evoé, Ze!
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