Well, it finally happened: at long (long, long, long, long…) last, I’ve completed Mandingueira’s one-year retrospect magazine!

And yes, I do realize that I’d promised to release this by about three months ago.  I apologize once again for having dropped completely off the radar for the past while. And I particularly apologize to all those who have been leaving comments that I haven’t replied to. (Heck, I get annoyed when someone just doesn’t reply on MSN, so I’m sorry for being horrible!!)

This will sound super lame, but pretty much my only excuse here is…Montreal is just way too much fun. That, plus a 1.5-hour commute to/from work (each way), and the rest of the time I’ve been taking  a prep course/studying to take the MCAT in a couple months (the entrance exam for applying to medical schools in North America…please don’t ask, it’s a long story).

I’ve barely even been training, to be honest. I haven’t really been “feministing”, either, if not actually doing the opposite. So I suppose it kind of makes sense that someone taking a semi-hiatus from both capoeira and feminism wouldn’t be posting very much on a feminist capoeira blog!  (Provided I ever find time to post again, this paragraph will be elaborated upon hopefully in the near future.)

At any rate, lest we forget, today is International Women’s Day. And oh god, do we have a long way to go.

So, I figured, what better timing for the release of a commemorative magazine about a feminist capoeira blog?

Just so you know, I haven’t actually been working on this for the past three months straight. In fact, I’d completed all but the table of contents & editor’s note right before leaving for Montreal, and just didn’t manage to return to it until the other day!

Now, there are a couple ways you can view the publication. First, I HIGHLY recommend clicking on the main image link provided below. It leads to an absolutely beautiful set-up by issuu.com, where you can virtually flip through the magazine as if it were on a table in front of you.

Next, I’ve provided two pdf files you may download for (1) easier reading or (2) printing! The first file has the magazine’s spread layouts retained (from which you could print out the centerfold as a poster), and the second splits it up into all single pages.

Finally, you may have noticed a new widget on the sidebar featuring the magazine. This is so it’ll always be available for anyone new or returning to Mandingueira to check it out!  Also, please do make sure to check out the final two pages.

I loved, loved, LOVED putting this magazine together, and think it’s one of the best projects I’ve ever done. I hope you enjoy it!

Um abraço,

Joaninha

Celebrating one year of Mandingueira! (click on image to open)

Downloads:

Mais Uma Volta PDF (spreads)

Mais Uma Volta PDF (single pages)

For today’s post, I’m linking to a piece that was written by one of Mandingueira’s readers, Mree, who was kind enough to share her work with me!  She asked me if I would mind passing it on to all of you, and I’m more than happy to do so. =)

WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS AT WORK.

At least, don’t if you work in a cubicle, surrounded by other cubicles, in a relatively quiet work environment.  I made that mistake earlier today upon opening the email (note: it was a slow day), and almost burst out into uncontrollable laughter partway through, which really wouldn’t have done anything for my reputation as a thus far non-crazy person.

Having said that, this was a really great read, and I think much of what Mree touches on in this one post would resonate with a lot of training capoeiristas (or at least, it did with me).

Enjoy!

“Are you sure you don’t want any?”, by Mree (click here)

Back to apologies mode…sorry, guys.  My new schedule thanks to work is insane, and I barely have time to cook and clean, let alone read or write anything of substance!  I may be going on another hiatus soon, but not before I release the Mandingueira Retrospect Magazine (only table of contents left!!!).  For now, here is my long-promised review of Capoeira Beyond Brazil!

Capoeira Beyond Brazil is written by Aniefre Essien and published by Blue Snake Books. I was really looking forward to reading this book because of the “international aspect” it seemed to have, and was really interested in seeing how capoeira would be treated in an international context.  Having said that, the book had both its ups and downs.

When I was in high school (please excuse the temporary non-sequitar; this is related, I swear!), our social studies teacher gave us a tour of the school library’s references section. There was Encyclopedia Britannica, World, Canadiana, etc., and there were racks of Time Magazine, as well.  Upon showing us the latter, our teacher told us, “Here we have Time World, which is about the United States, and here we have Time Canada, which is about the world.” (That’s still one of my all-time favourite quotes, by the way.)

Well, reading Capoeira Beyond Brazil, unfortunately, brings that quote to mind. I suppose you could say it goes beyond Brazil—but only as far as the United States (skipping over Mexico and Central America along the way). Maybe it was just me, but for some reason I’d been expecting a slightly more academic, ambitious piece with a larger scope than it had. I was expecting to read about capoeira in Asia, Australia, and (present-day!) Africa, about globalization or international relations (and capoeira’s influence from or on them, of course) and sociological theory more so than personal anecdotes and basic/typical introductory capoeira lore.

However, the book does have it good points, as well.  Essien touches interestingly on some topics that I don’t think I’ve seen quite touched on the same way before, such as the horridly ironic phenomenon of some capoeira teachers using capoeira as a “tool of oppression” on their students. The book is healthily “progressive” from a feminist point of view, and I enjoyed reading the capoeirista interviews at the end (though again, the interviews, similarly to the rest of the book, only feature “A Few U.S. Capoeiristas”).

One interview which especially resonated with me was the first one, by a former capoeirista who left the game because he felt that people were beginning to bring too much ugliness into the art and violating the spirit of the game. He said a lot of things that I found insightful and agreed with, especially in regards to fighting in the roda/in capoeira, mentioning how “students have been trained to fight in the name of the instructor, not necessarily because that student feels that s/he has to fight”. The capoeirista being interviewed concludes, “I have to separate the concept of capoeira from how it’s actually practiced by individuals who tend to bring in the element of machismo.”

Overall, Capoeira Beyond Brazil was an okay read. It just didn’t turn out to be what I’d expected it to be, which is the only reason I was disappointed. I think it would be an ideal gift to give to a beginner capoeira student, and even more so for an American beginner capoeira student. The writing itself is fine, Essien’s experience as a capoeirista and capoeira teacher shows through with no question, and I’m always up for a good capoeira anecdote, so in that respect the book is great.  For what I mentioned earlier, I guess I’ll just have to wait till some international affairs post-doc gets hooked on capoeira!

This post is nearly verbatim from a personal Montreal blog I started for my friends back home. Capoeira doesn’t come up until about two-thirds of the way through, but it was kind of a revelation, and an important one for me about capoeira, so I thought I’d share it with you guys and see if it resonated with any of you at all.  Montreal, by the way, is awesome!  Work hasn’t started yet, but I’ve already started training with a new group, I love my place, my roommates are great, and I love being in this city.

SATURDAY JANUARY 10 | 3:28 am | Musings

So, I moved back into the living room because I’d thought everyone was done but somehow my two roommates had ended up in the living room drinking more wine and chatting, so thought it probably wasn’t a very good idea to miss out on roommate bonding right from the start.

Ended up having a really interesting talk with Annick, that was both slightly inspiring and slightly depressing.

I was telling them how I’ve been coming to realize that a lot of big things I’ve decided to do (living in France, moving to Montreal, going to Brazil) have been fueled by me looking for that life-changing metamorphosis that I feel people are supposed to get from going away to university and that I never got (due to never moving out and my university just being a bigger version of my high school). Not only that, but my life has always been pretty…stable. I’ve never needed an adjustment period for anything—starting university, moving to France, moving back to Canada, moving to Montreal—and these are supposed to be defining events, during formative years. If someone were to chart my emotional/life-living state on a graph, I feel like it would consist of shallow peaks and troughs all the way through, whereas with most other people it seems like there are at least intermittent spikes in both directions.

Take exchange, for instance. Most people I know LOVED LOVED LOVED exchange, and then were genuinely depressed upon returning home. I had fun and enjoyed myself, but I don’t yearn for or dream of France each night (…or at all), and as I said, I slipped back into my life at home within a day—it was, in fact, almost disconcertingly as if I’d never left at all. I was absolutely dismayed when the first thing someone said to me was, “Wow, you’re exactly the same as you were in high school. You haven’t changed at all.” So what was the point? I’m still looking for something big to happen to me, something exciting and if not life-changing, something-changing. So if Montreal doesn’t do it, there’s still Brazil.

At least, that’s what I told Annick. But she said this, something she’s learned now that she’s left her 20’s and gone well into her 30’s, and after working at a job that was going great and leaving it to travel around the world for a year: There is no major change. There is no one big thing that happens to you and then changes the person you are. At the very core, everyone is the same person at 30 as they are at 20, 5, and 90. It’s only gradual little changes that happen to us, day by day, until one day we look up and realize, “Wow, I’ve changed.” But even then, it’s not so much your personality that has changed, as your values and what you want and expect out of life.

But then, what about all those people you knew in high school and then barely recognize five years later? “Well, yes, teenagers they are still changing.”

EXACTLY. So now I’m just afraid that the “same at 90 same at 20″ rule only starts applying at twenty. What if your formative years don’t stretch into your 20’s, but include only your teens? It’s as a teenager, after all, that most people start “practicing” for all of life’s major mechanisms: moving away from home (independence), getting their first job (self-sufficiency), dating people (mating? life companionship? perpetuating the species? throwback to Megan: negotiation and compromise?), etc. Does that mean the “window” for truly major change has closed, and that anything I do from now on will have but little effect on who I am, because I’ll always stay who I am anyway? I found the idea of gradual/minute but perpetual change inspiring/encouraging, but this last thought is kind of discouraging.

Plus, I still don’t know if I buy it. I think people can and do change.

Actually, I should take back what I said earlier. I think capoeira has come the closest to doing what I’ve been looking for. During dinner, Annick asked me what I get out of capoeira. I told her all the usual reasons—a good work-out, music, the endless variety, the atmosphere/people, etc. It wasn’t until later that I realized what’s probably been THE reason for my devotion to capoeira, the one thing I get out of it that I couldn’t get anywhere else. I know I’m not the same now as I was as a new beginner. In terms of experience/outlook and character, let alone physical changes, sticking to capoeira has probably contributed more to my development than France and Montreal will combined. If any changes occurred within me while in France, I can name them and they all came from my experiences doing French capoeira, not living in France alone.

One of my friends said that you don’t grow if you’re “comfortable” (a.k.a. “stable”) all the time. And I’ve had an almost shamefully comfortable childhood, in all senses of the word, and been comfortable with pretty much every major transition in life, including both inter- and transnational moves. But I’m pretty sure I have never, in my life, been more uncomfortable than during that first class at the community centre—followed by first roda-viewing at the academy—and probably every capoeira class following over the subsequent year.* So, if discomfort equals growing, then within the context of capoeira, I’ve grown a lot.

(*Actually, a berimbau-stringing incident my friend refers to as “getting banished to the storage room” in France might eke out a win in that one, but it was still capoeira.)

So, I think this is how I’ve finally put my finger on what it is about capoeira that completely sucks me in and holds me fast. But not even just clear, overt and internal personal growth/change, but also constant acknowledgement and affirmation of it, from your friends, your capoeira teachers, other capoeira students, and perhaps most importantly, yourself, empirically (i.e. by actually doing something you wouldn’t've been able or even dared to do at an earlier point in your life). What do you get out of capoeira? Why do you do it, really?

First off, thank you to everyone who participated in this contest!  It was genuinely nice to hear from all of you, and whether or not you participated this time, I hope all of you are further encouraged to comment for whatever reasons in the future. Now, without further ado…

The winner of the Mandingueira on Facebook exclusive draw is Isabella Chan.  Congratulations, Isabella! Please send me your mailing address ASAP so I may send you your copy of Capoeira Beyond Brazil.

As for the general draw…okay, well, so here’s the deal.  I thought I’d do something REALLY COOL, and actually filmed the draw (I used my cabaça as the receptacle) so you guys could watch and all be in on the process.  Unfortunately, everything but my camera refused to cooperate (i.e. WordPress, QuickTime, Youtube, and this other file management site I used to rely on), so I wasn’t able to upload the video. And believe me, I tried!  There was background capoeira music and a little “Congratulations!” sign at the end and everything!  So in (sad) lieu, please imagine the berimbau equivalent of a drum roll as you read the following:

UPDATE: IF ALL ELSE FAILS, TURN TO FACEBOOK!

Please click here to view the giveaway draw

The winners are…

• earthsoulmind[at]hotmail[dot]com
• 
  
• skymandr
• 
  
• ebcpirulito[at]gmail[dot]com
• 
  
• Inglijh

Congratulations to all the winners!  Please send me your mailing address BEFORE MONDAY so I can post your copies of Capoeira Beyond Brazil out to you before I leave for Montreal (again, my flight is on Wednesday and I would seriously appreciate not having to include 5 copies of the same book within my 23kg baggage limit!). If for whatever reason you don’t want or can’t have the book, also let me know ASAP, please, so I can draw a new winner. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy Capoeira Beyond Brazil, and to reiterate, I will be writing a review of it within the upcoming weeks.

Thank you so much again to everyone for participating. If you didn’t win this time, look on the bright side: the universe now owes you some other form of good karma.   Finally, thank you to Blue Snake Books for sponsoring this contest.

I look forward to hearing more from and meeting more of you in 2009!

The contest for Mandingueira’s reader giveaway has now closed. I will select and notify winners before the end of this week, and hope to have the books sent out before the end of next week. Thank you very much to all who participated, and I look forward to seeing you again once Mandingueira’s “regular programming” has resumed!

p.s. And lest I forget: FELIZ ANO NOVO, CAMARA!

Update/Clarification: Those who are already subscribed to Mandingueira will automatically be entered into the giveaway draw.  So again, e-mail users I already have a back-end list, but RSS users, let me know so I can put you in. And of course, you can increase your chances of winning a book by (1) introducing yourself or (2) joining Mandingueira on Facebook (deadline closed, though of course you may join anyway!) or (3) commenting on any post!

p.s. Do any of you out there happen to train with Grupo Capoeira Brasileira in Montreal?  If you do, I’d love for you to shoot me an email. I may be paying a visit soon… =)

Yes, you read that right—happy holidays, everyone!  With much thanks to the sponsorship of Blue Snake Books, Mandingueira is offering YOU, my loyal, lovely, and lethally cool readers, a chance to win 1 of 5 free copies of the latest capoeira book on the market: Capoeira Beyond Brazil: From a Slave Tradition to an International Way of Life, by Aniefre Essien.

I’ve actually had my eye on this book for a while, since I discovered its planned October release way back in February, so I’m extremely excited about this!  I feel like it speaks to an area nearly every capoeirista outside of Brazil would be deeply interested in: the globalization of capoeira. Of course, this is me still judging by the cover, but it won’t be for much longer!  In addition to the five copies for you guys, Blue Snake sent me a review copy for myself, so I will be reading and posting a review of Capoeira Beyond Brazil in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, click here for the book’s official synopsis.

This giveaway was originally to be in honour of Mandingueira’s one-year anniversary (it was the second surprise I mentioned!), but I didn’t want to announce it until I had the books in my hand, and due to a warehouse backlog they arrived only yesterday—just in time for Christmas!  Either way though, the purpose of this remains the same: to show my appreciation for all of you, and give something back for everything you’ve added to this blog. Since I am still(!) working on the Mandingueira One-Year Retrospect magazine, these are further tokens of my thanks and appreciation for you, and I hope you will enjoy the books!

Now, I’m sure I’ve held you long enough in suspense…let’s get down to the important details.

—

MANDINGUEIRA’S HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY:
OFFICIAL CONTEST RULES

1. Winners will be picked by random draw.

2. The FIRST way to enter the draw is to post a comment of substance on any post on Mandingueira. This means adding to the discussion, raising new ideas, contributing information, constructive criticism, constructive praise, etc. You can also simply introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your capoeirista/Mandingueira reader/feminist/activist/etc. background, whichever are applicable, if any. (Calling all lurkers, this is for you! ) Trite/easy comments such as “Great post!” or “Cool contest!” will be appreciated but not counted, and trolls (NOT to be confused with respectful, reasoned disagreement) will be disqualified. If you post more than one comment (including replies to other people’s comments), I will enter your name once for each comment, up to a maximum of three (3) comments.

3. The SECOND way to enter the draw is to subscribe to Mandingueira, by RSS feed or by email. If you subscribe by email, I will see your email address and be able to count you. If you subscribe by RSS feed, you will have to notify me after you do, through email or dropping a line under this post. (Telling me that you subscribed does not alone count as a comment, unless it is part of a comment that is eligible otherwise.) Obviously, this is honours system-based. Please respect that and refrain from scamming the contest.

4. You may subscribe AND leave comments, for a maximum of 4 entries in the draw (up to 3 comments + 1 subscription).

5. One book will be reserved for an exclusive draw for fans of Mandingueira on Facebook. To be eligible for the exclusive draw, you must be already a fan of the page or join by the end of December 26, 2008 (my time). Note: Those eligible for the exclusive draw may also enter in the general draw, in the ways described above.

6. This contest ends at 11:59pm on January 1, 2009 (my time).

7. At that point I will collect names from all comments and subscriptions from now until then, for both the general draw and exclusive draw. (All comments are recorded in one place on my WordPress Dashboard, which is how I can still keep track if they’re on different posts all over the blog.) Random names will be drawn and the winners notified. There will be two draws overall: one general draw for four books, and the exclusive Facebook page draw for one book. Each winner will receive 1 book, even if your name is drawn more than once.

7. On entering the draw, you must give a legitimate email address so I can contact you if you win, as well as be willing to give me a legitimate mailing address upon winning so that I can send the book to you. I must send out all the prizes by January 7th (because I have a flight that day for a new job in another city), so if a winner does not respond with their address before then, they either forfeit the prize or may not receive it for another 4-8 months.

8. Your entering the contest signifies that you understand and accept the Mandingueira Holiday Giveaway Official Contest Rules.

9. Help spread the word! Your capoeira friends thank you, and so do I.

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I hope all of that was clear!  Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the giveaway.  Happy Holidays!

“..instead of taking notes, you are drawing little figures doing aus and meia lua de compassos.”
-from “You Know You’re Capoeira-Crazy When…”

EVOLUTION

*

MARGINAL FIGURES

p.s. Please know I am fully aware of my artistic capabilities, or lack thereof.  There’s a reason I usually stick to writing!

(Or: What You Get When You Combine Capoeira and Pretentious Theatre Theory)
(with apologies to my completely UNpretentious friend who lives for and subsists on critical theory)

This semester, I took an English lit seminar on pain and suffering in the theatre. Each week, we were given a play to read, as well as one or two readings on theatre theory to do with things like the body on stage, the inexpressibility of pain, the didactic power of theatre, and stage-audience dynamics.

Now, let me try describing what, for me, reading critical theory about literature is like. Imagine doing capoeira.  Now, imagine reading a book analyzing how capoeira is or should be done. Now, imagine someone has read several books like that, and writes a book analyzing how people write or should write about analyzing how capoeira is or should be done.  Now imagine someone reading several of those books and writing a book about that and how it all supposedly works. By this point, all actual references to capoeira have in fact been removed altogether.

So, reading a novel or play is doing capoeira. Studying theory is reading chapters of various books from that last level. I have to write a paper pulling together half the theory we’ve studied this semester, for Monday.

The point of all of that being: the writer of Surprised by Soy (a great and fun new cooking blog) inspired me with her application of Aristotle to a cupcake disaster in the kitchen. Not only was it easy and entertaining to read, we now both more or less understand the Aristotelian theory we learned in class. So, as a way of prepping myself to write this paper, I’m going to take you through a tour of classical and contemporary theatre theory, using experiences from capoeira to illustrate, starting with…

Aristotle: “The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood…through imitation he learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.”

Basically, all theatre theory starts with Aristotle, who pinpointed the central idea of mimesis, which means imitation, which is what all theatre—and arguably, art—is based on. This emphasis on imitation actually lines right up with what I read in Greg Downey’s Learning Capoeira, where he discusses how central imitation is to how we learn capoeira. Every single movement we learn in capoeira, we learn by copying what we see somebody else do.  This becomes especially important if your capoeira teacher can’t or won’t describe outright what it is you’re supposed to do (like in learning how to use mandinga, for instance; how can you spell that out?). And personally, although I know it’s not the best thing to do, I find that I train best in class when I have someone else to keep an eye on; I use them to help pace (or challenge) myself, and I end up doing movements better and faster if I try matching the timing of an advanced capoeirista doing the same sequence in front of me.

Scarry: “The story of expressing physical pain eventually opens into the wider frame of invention.”

Scarry’s beat is that physical pain is completely inexpressible, that it in fact destroys language because there are no exact words to describe one’s pain. When you’re in pain, you know you’re in pain; at the same time, if your friend tells you they’re in pain, you can never know, for sure, because it’s invisible and indescribable.  You can only describe pain by comparing it to things it is not (“as if I stepped on needles”, “as though a hammer hit my head”), and this type of “storytelling” is what Scarry means by “invention”. Pain destroys language, but it also, in a way, forcibly expands its powers.

I think Scarry’s theory nicely explains a couple things about capoeira. First, it explains capoeira teachers’ seeming unsympathy to students’ pain during that extra set of “just 10 more!” <insert excruciating exercise here>. If to be in pain is to be certain (of the pain), and to hear of pain is to doubt (the pain, due to its un-share-ability), then theoretically, on some level, to our capoeira teachers we are not in pain at all, no matter how much we attempt to express the fact.

Second, I don’t know about you, but my capoeira teachers come up with THE. BEST. ANALOGIES. EVER. They are hilarious and brilliant. So using Scarry, I would say that our mistakes as their capoeira students give them so much pain, that they are forced to come up with new ways to tell us how to do things right.  Hence the unprecedented degree of originality among capoeira teachers’ analogies.

Brecht: “If one wants to keep the scene free from wild excitement on the stage—excitement that spells destruction in whatever is remarkable in the scene—one must carry out certain ‘alientations’ especially carefully.”

Brecht was another major influence on playwrights and directors after his work was published. He said that audiences shouldn’t be so drawn into the play, with subtlety-drowning spectacle, that they stop thinking about it; they should be engaged, but “alienated” in a way that they remain critical observers of what is actually going on. This is so they can learn what the play is trying to teach (and Brecht says all plays should try to teach), and be inspired to go out and change the world, or themselves, or something, as soon as the play ends.

I suppose this relates to what our capoeira teachers mean when they tell us to always pay attention to what’s going on in the roda even if you aren’t actually the one playing capoeira at the moment. You should be engaged, but not so entranced that you get mesmerized and stop actively thinking about what’s going on in the game (and don’t realize, for instance, when the song’s changed, when they’ve moved around in the roda and someone’s about to land on you, etc.). Instead, you should be “distanced” enough that you’re able to observe when someone could’ve done something and didn’t, when a sly, subtle trick was played, or when an unwritten rule was somehow broken—then be inspired to buy in and change your own game for the better.

Graver: “To understand the ontological complexity of the actor’s body on stage we need to look not for two forms of existence there but (at least) seven. Actors are…characters, performers, commentators, personnages, members of socio-historical groups, physical flesh, and loci of private sensations.”

Simple enough: so are capoeiristas. Capoeiristas are characters invoked by their apelidos, and performers in the roda as well as a different type in public shows. They are commentators on capoeira through the ways they practice and teach capoeira, and they are personnages through the individual reputations they gain or cultivate in the capoeira world. Capoeiristas are “members of socio-historical groups”—to say the least, on several levels; and the last two are pretty self-explanatory.  Actually, I will expand a little and say that it was capoeira that made me realize my body (“flesh”) can do things. Before—and I know I’m stealing this from some source I can’t remember—my body basically was just a mobile vehicle for the rest of me.  But through capoeira, I’ve started to come to an appreciation of it for itself, like the physical muscles and joints and so forth, and what it can actually do (if I make it!).

Garner: “Phenomenology is the study…of the world as it is lived rather than the world as it is objectified, abstracted, and conceptualized. [...] If theater is always…the house of false images, it is also the site of a radical actuality that surrounds and arrests the flight into otherness.”

Phenomenology = study of experiencing. Greg Downey describes his book as a phenomenological study of capoeira, because half his research was obtained by the actual experience of becoming a capoeira student and then a capoeira teacher, not just reading concepts and abstractions about capoeira. According to Garner, the “experience” of each moment in watching a play is what lets audiences appreciate theatre as a “house of false images” while fully realizing reality and thus not getting sucked into the “otherness” that is that world of the play.

In a way, the roda is the opposite of what Garner says theatre is: it’s a “house of true images”, so to speak. While theatre is set up to offer a form of experiential fiction, it is while experiencing a game in the roda, as it’s often said, that people become the most real.  Although the roda or game itself may arguably be a “contrived” situation (with the deliberate forming of the circle, etc.), it’s exactly our awareness of what the situation involves that makes what happens in it more real.

Sir Philip Sidney: “So that the right use of comedy will, I think, by nobody be blamed, and much less of the high and excellent tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds…that maketh kings fear to be tyrants…”

Sidney is most known for his piece “In Defence of Poesy”, poesy being comedy and tragedy as the two classical genres of theatre. He wrote it to defend literature and theatre from his age’s version of “video games will corrupt our kids!” (Only in earlier days it also went, “Actresses will turn our women into prostitutes!”). So his message is, basically, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater; poetry, if used correctly, can be used effectively to move and teach people, not corrupt them.

The idea of something that can go well or badly, depending on how it’s used, makes me think of the attitude of suspicion capoeiristas are told to have at all times. I realize the importance of that, but I also can’t help wondering: if we consistently approach capoeiristas from outside and from other groups with antagonistic views to begin with, assuming they mean us harm before even giving them a chance to be friendly, could the “expected” results just then be a self-fulfilling prophecy, none of which would have happened if we didn’t have Bush-like pre-emptive strike grupo-pride attitudes in the first place? (I also realize that may have been a slightly more than idealistic question, but I still think it’s a valid one, too.)

Artaud: “I do believe that the theatre, utilized in the highest and most difficult sense possible, has the power to influence the aspect and formation of things… That is why I propose a theatre of cruelty.”

If Brecht wants the audience to be distanced from plays, Artaud is the exact opposite: he wants you COMPLETELY IMMERSED. By “theatre of cruelty”, he means he wants you to be able to smell the blood, to have the fanfare of a hundred trumpets, cymbals, French horns, and drums blaring right next to your ear, to be in the midst of it all and completely assaulted by all the sights, sounds, and sensations that is the play. Artaud wants SPECTACLE. Imagine watching Gladiator on IMAX, with the latest in surround sound, but all in 3D and LIVE. Artaud wants us to be so affronted by our experience inside the theatre, that we will forever change for the better upon leaving it—such as having been so terrifyingly assaulted with deafening, clashing, surrounding, in-your-face scenes of war, that upon leaving the theatre we will be completely turned off of violence of any kind against our fellow people.

Now, have you ever noticed the amount of sadism that actually occurs in capoeira? Forcing self-conscious beginners to do stuff in the centre of a circle of strangers who can easily kick their butts. Physical borderline torture. Basing new identities on unflattering/embarrassing traits. Making people watch horrible videos of themselves. Withholding water. Merciless teasing. Forcing a tone-deaf person to sing in front of an audience. Randomly tripping people. Pushing someone into the middle of a fight. And yet…somehow…all that “cruelty” makes us better people when we leave our respective theatres. Score one for Artaud.

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Alright, I’m going to say we’ve reached the end of the line here. One, because the post is already quite long and I’ve only gone through half the theorists on my list, and two: I should probably consider starting the paper I was writing this post for in the first place!  I hope you got something out of it, and that I didn’t butcher any of the theory too badly if you are actually a theorist yourself. And since we’re on the topic of acting, I’ll leave you with a quote I remember one of my teachers saying to us when I was a beginner-beginner, which I really liked, and was a good mental tactic against being exhausted.  It’s easy; all you do is—“Act like you’re not tired.”