LISBON — A shark. That’s how it all began seven years ago when Brazilian actor, director and playwright Marcelo Andrade came across an image on Instagram of a shark in the Mediterranean.
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The migration crisis was very much in the news at the time, and Andrade couldn’t keep quiet about the drama that was (and still is) being played out on the high seas.
He started writing a play. But he couldn’t finish it. He felt he lacked the personal experience to put himself in the shoes of a migrant arriving from afar in a new place.
But in seven years, a lot has changed: Andrade has also become a migrant. He lives in Lisbon, Portugal. And he too, in his own way, has come to know what it means to be a foreigner in a country other than his own.
Being migrants
Finally, he managed to finish Na boca do tubarão, or “In the Mouth of the Shark”, a drama about the migratory crisis in the Mediterranean, which was performed for the first time in May.
The play led to the birth of Teatro do Imigrante, or Theater of Immigrants, a company recently formed by Brazilian immigrants: in addition to Andrade, Lorena Garrido, Alexandra Marinho de Oliveira, Tiago Braz, Gabriela Hedegaard and Geraldo Monteiro, but also an internal migrant, Gonçalo da Costa Ramalho, who is from Santiago de Riba-Ui, in the Aveiro District in the north of Portugal.
They met in community theater groups, in the colleges where they studied, in training sessions. They all ended up sharing their experiences as migrants in a new country (or city).
Even when I don’t want to, people remind me that I’m an immigrant.
“Even when I don’t want to, people remind me that I’m an immigrant,” Monteiro says. He and his fellow actors talk about another condition that goes beyond being an immigrant: being Brazilian. “We’re not exactly foreigners here, we’re Brazilians, it’s a specific migrant condition,” they say.
Braz and Monteiro had to work in restaurants, call centers… and their lives were made more difficult when it came to renting a house. “When they realized I was Brazilian, they said the house was already rented,” Braz says. “Once, they asked me for four months worth of deposit.”
Not all migration stories are the same
But their experiences are not the same, and there are nuances.
Garrido talks about the “subtlety” of the discrimination against her as a Brazilian woman: “There’s a big question about the sexualization of my body, it’s a delicate issue.”
Marinho de Oliveira says she feels in a privileged position, because she is from Rio de Janeiro but also has German ancestry. “My situation is never exactly that of an immigrant because I’m also German,” she explains. What’s more, she came to Lisbon for her post-doctorate studies. “The fact that I’m at university means that I don’t feel outside of society.”
Hedegaard, whose father is Danish and mother Brazilian, also feels in between nationalities. “I’m never entirely at home, there’s always a piece of me on the other side of the world,” she says, adding “In bureaucratic contexts, I avoid saying I’m Brazilian. If I’m sending documentation for a lease, I send it in English and say I’m Danish.”
But discrimination isn’t just felt from country to country. They say they have already felt discriminated against in different Brazilian cities, depending on their place of origin. This is what Costa Ramalho sometimes feels, coming from the north of Portugal to the capital: it’s the accent, a certain contempt for coming from a small town.
Political theater
By sharing their experiences in theatrical spaces, they realized how the theater is, in fact, a welcoming space. Hence the idea of forming a company together to tackle immigration issues.
“The name of the group came to me because of a movement that took place in Brazil in the 1940s and 1960s: the Teatro Experimental do Negro,” Andrade explains. A political theater, with the aim of valuing the cultural heritage and identity of Afro-Brazilians. “I looked for a name that was linked to this desire to talk about immigration.”
For their first show, they decided to perform “In the Mouth of the Shark”, the text Andrade had already written about the Mediterranean crisis.
The political issue linked to immigration involves personal issues but also a macro issue.
The play opens with a scene of a father and daughter fishing one afternoon. He’s a candidate for a nationalist political party, she’s rebelling against her father’s ideals until a shark steals her father’s arm. All this while, from afar, rescue boats arrive with immigrants looking for a new life.
The show does not, therefore, explore the personal experiences of each of its actors.
“The political issue linked to immigration involves personal issues but also a macro issue. The show portrays macro issues,” Marinho de Oliveira says. “We’re not interested in representing a nation, but in discussing the concept of nation. That’s why we don’t want to talk about Brazil, we don’t have Brazil in our play.”
Pushing the conversation further
“In the Mouth of the Shark” ran for six days, and the reception was surprising, the actors say. But they don’t want the journey to stop there. The team wants to welcome more people, of other nationalities, so that they can contribute to the discussion on immigration.
For now, these seven new Lisboans finally feel welcomed by their city, thanks to the space they’ve found to express themselves in their theater company.
“Theater is also a place of welcoming, Teatro do Imigrante is a bit like that. And we make this group a place of resistance,” Monteiro says with a smile.
