Brazilian Drama Opens Theater Season

October 9, 2007

New Wave staff
newwave@tulane.edu

The Wedding Dress, called the “best Brazilian play of the 20th century,” opens on the Lupin Theatre stage on Wednesday (Oct. 10), produced by a creative team of Tulane University faculty members.

“The uniqueness of The Wedding Dress is that the plot develops on three planes: Reality, memory and hallucination,” says director Lorenzo Gonzalez, professor of practice, who calls the Nelson Rodrigues play “a milestone in Brazilian modern theater and world drama.”

Performances of the opening work for the campus theater season are scheduled at 8 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday (Oct. 10-13), as well as Oct. 17-20. Matinees will be held on Sunday (Oct. 14) and Oct. 21 at 2 p.m. Ticket prices are $7.50 for students and seniors, $9 for Tulane employees and $12 for general admission. The play is performed in English.

The Department of Theatre and Dance is inviting Tulane faculty and staff members to a complimentary reception after the Thursday (Oct. 11) performance, which will include a panel discussion led by the director and guest faculty from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

The “talkback panel” will be brought into the theater schedule this fall, says Elsa Dimitriadis, program coordinator, to stimulate discussion in areas such as sociology, history or other fields that relate to the plays.

For The Wedding Dress, Gonzalez and his actors met several times with Christopher Dunn, associate professor and chair, and Idelber Avelar, professor, of the Spanish and Portuguese department, for background dramaturgical information. Graduate student Alexandre Silva, who specializes in Brazilian literature, developed dramaturgical notes about the play and playwright.

“You are about to watch what is arguably the best Brazilian play of the 20th century, written by its arguably best playwright,” Silva writes. “Most of all, The Wedding Dress is his (Rodrigues’) most avant-garde play: Its revolutionary, complex structure is certainly not what most viewers would expect from Latin American drama of the 1940s.”

The play roams the subconscious hallucinations of a middle-class young wife who has just been mortally injured in an auto accident. As she hovers at the brink of life, her delusional faculties snatch at memories both real and imagined.

Martin Sachs, chair of the theatre and dance department, serves as lighting designer for the production and Paule Lemasson, visiting assistant professor, is costume designer, with graduate student Emily Ross as set designer and Diogo DeLima, professor of practice, as choreographer.

The cast includes Allison Blackwell as Madame Clessi, Leeann St. John as the memory of Alaíde and Elizabeth McCarthy as the hallucination of Alaíde.

For ticket information, call the Lupin Theatre Box Office, 504-865-5106.