Kalliope: the Greek muse of the transformed word: from the playwright writing to the actor's living performance on stage: inter-minded dialogues

• Grant number: 07/00492-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2007
• Effective date (End): November 30, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Art Fundamentals and Criticism
• Principal Investigator: Sara Pereira Lopes
• Grantee: Marlene Fortuna
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The great helm of our thesis will be theorize about what occurs in the passage of a written text, in imperishable support, through the person of the playwriter, to a body, in perishable support, through the person of the actor. Intermediating the alchemy, we have the regency, sometimes more, sometimes less dictatorialist, of the theater director. Three poets of the scene. In order to support the argumentations, we run, at first, to some theories about the Greek mythology, in the emblematic and fantastic figure of Kallíope, in addition to many other reflexions, scientific and artistic, about the announced path. We will adopt, in general, theorists of the written word, of the spoken word, of the intertextuality, of the performance, of the voice, of the body, of the psychology, of the theater, including: author, actor, director and screenplay analyst. The choice of Kallíope is due to the fact of being the muse of orality, of eloquence, of poem recitation, of voice and speech empathy, of the magic sound of words, in addition to the fact of being the mother of the mermaids who, with their disturbing songs, enchanted onomatopoeias and inebriating sounds seduced the heroes travelers of the seas and, afterwards, slaughtered them. Well, analogically, Kallíope is the inspirer of the actor, because he/she is the one who has to present manifestations, situations, postures, new semantics, meanings, syntaxes, decodifications, interrelations of new aesthetic codes, built by the time of the passage of the dead writing of the author, shaped in inactive support (rested, quiet and silent), to the lively orality of the interpreter. This orality, anchored in pulsations in movement, emotions in act, actions in fact, pure presentity. The engines of these vibrations are: the body, the voice, the gestures, the movements, the glances, the feelings, in short, all of them activated simultaneously, arranged, studied, prepared and aesthetized in order to lead the word to tell, to smile, to cry, to silence and to bewitch the audience. When we talk about the preparation of the actor to lead the plot of the author, we are referring, among other elements, to the entirely learnt and understood technique. There are several aspects of the body to be developed in order to carry out the emotional life of the text: proper relaxation, breathing, articulation, adequate projection, repertoire of styles specific speech to popular texts is different of speech for classical texts, which is different for poetic, satirical, comical, dramatic and tragic texts, among other canons of the beautiful voice We will present a new communicational syntax, resulting from transmutations among languages, the trilogy that cannot be lacking in the theatrical idiom: author, actor, director. All of this, without mentioning a possible quadrilateral, which emerges when the author doesn’t write, specifically, for theater, but for literature (romances, short stories, chronicles etc.), a language to be read and not to be theatricalized. That’s why it is necessary to set in motion the figure of the screenplay analyst, one more person to interact between slaps and kisses, harmonies and conflicts, agreements and disagreements. Thus, the envolved live together in the Scene. There are many problematizations from this issue. We started by punctuating one of the most important: the time. To the playwriter, the time can be slower, because the text is eternal. It lasts. It stays and can move between comings and goings in the process of creation, until its end. For the actor, however, time is brief. Present. Evanescent. Fleeting. Impermanent. There is no reprise. Either he/she does it right de prima, or he/she has to wait for the next presentation, but then the ingratitude of life impose itself: hopelessly, the actor already missed the previous audience; or a cataclysm obstructs the season flow; or, still, being a little bit more tragic. (AU)