A Floresta que Anda (The Moving Forest). Dir. Christiane Jatahy. Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II, Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

In Act 5 Scene 5 of Macbeth, a startled Messenger informs Macbeth: “As I did stand my watch upon the hill / I looked toward Birnam and anon methought / The wood began to move” (5.5.32-34). Hearing this, Macbeth realizes that his sense of infallibility is misplaced: “If this which he avouches does appear, / There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here” (5.5.46-47). In Christiane Jatahy’s adaptation, Birnam Wood morphed into a technological forest and the fear that Macbeth senses when it comes towards him created the basis for a collective challenge to the global disorders unleashed by very contemporary tyrants. When the audience entered the performance space, there were no comfortable seats from which to watch the tragedy of Macbeth unfold. Instead, the audience climbed onto the stage itself, where there were four viewing screens and a bar in the corner. The screens projected the stories of four individuals: Igor, a Brazilian political prisoner, Michele, a working-class Brazilian black woman who saw her uncle murdered by the police in a Rio de Janeiro slum, Aboud, a refugee from the Syrian civil war currently living in Germany, and Prosper, a war refugee from the Congo now living in São Paulo, Brazil. These stories of political persecution and exile were not filmed in conventional documentary style. While the characters narrated their experiences to camera, the visual images focused not on their faces but on fragments of arms, legs, eyes, tables, parakeets, flights of stairs. Their testimonies were interspersed with apparently random comments by mothers, friends and children who strayed into the film. Audience members chose how long they stayed with each of these stories and in which order. They could supplement the viewing with visits to the bar or engage in private conversations.