“O Beijo da Mulher Aranha”: play premieres in Lisbon and reinforces “need to accept difference” – Showbiz
Nowadays, “talking about someone for being homosexual or having political values different from ours is still not accepted”, so the topic remains current and should be the subject of reflection, said the actor and director to the Lusa agency.
“We have to accept others as, Argentines think differently from me, from my ideas”, added the author, emphasizing that, in the text Manuel Puig, the need to “settle down and listen to the other, to understand that, maybe we are not as different as we think”.
“The Kiss of the Spider Woman” is the title of a work by the author born near Buenos Aires in 1932, who in 1973 went into exile in Mexico for political reasons.
Written and edited in 1976, the book was immediately banned in Argentina. In March of that year, a military coup placed the government under the regime of María Estela Peron and placed General Jorge Videla in power.
“The well-known film of the Spider Woman”, with the film known all over the world, including on Broadway, and famous after the film Babenco made in 1985, by Heitor Babenco.
The central is Arregui Molina, roles, by Raul Molina, respectively, recently deceased between Hurt, with which Valentín, one and the Oscar for Best Actor and those of Cannes and da. British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA).
The action takes place in a cell, in a country under a dictatorial regime, where Molina, a homosexual – “a woman trapped in a man’s body, like so many that still exist and that society discriminates against”, in the director’s words – is incarcerated. , and Valentín Arregui, a revolutionary and strike organizer.
From different ideals and social origins, “these two men, when they finally talk, when they look into each other’s eyes, they realize that, after all, they are not so different”, he stressed.
In the stage adaptation Gambo, an adaptation of the text to nine scenes corresponding to a day of captivity and a side of the characters. The scenario has a cell based on a rotating plate.
With differences in relation to the film by the director born in Argentina and naturalized Brazilian, who “did not see, nor wanted to see”, as he does “whenever he puts on stage a text that has already been shown in cinema”, Hélder Gamboa opted for the death of one of the protagonists at the end of the play, open to the audience or fate of another character.
“Those two men were just arrested for having different values from the current society, one for being homosexual, the other for political values, and that’s why they scared”, Gamboa told Lusa.
Being different “is beautiful when we put it on Instagram and Facebook”, but then “in reality, we are still afraid of what is different”, we added today.
“And a lot has changed in democratic regimes, especially “in today’s spectacle society that augurs” what he represented as “stager” social networks.
The show is the result of a personal invitation by the artistic director of Trindade, Diogo Infante, to the head of Tenda Produções, and the opening day coincides with the company’s 18th anniversary.
Four years later, also at the invitation of Diogo Infante, having taken a play with two women to the same room – “Good night mother”, by Marsha Norman -, Hélder Gamboa congratulates himself on his return to Trindade, when “the Tent reaches the theater majority” – because “it is still not easy” to do in Portugal and, because it is the Teatro da Trindade, and because the show will result from the invitation of the “professional and human being of excellence” that is Diogo Infante.
Produced jointly by Trindade and Tenda, “O Beijo da Mulher Aranha” is performed by DioValentín) and João Jesus (Molina). and, at the end of the show on May 1, there will be a conversation with the audience.
The play, in which André Ramos participates, has lighting design by Paulo Graça, scenography and costumes by Rui Filipe Lopes, music by Luís Pinto Lucena and video participation by José Raposo.
With english version and dramaturgy by Ângela Pinto, who assists in the staging, and Hélder Gamboa, “O Beijo da Mulher Aranha” will have a solidarity rehearsal, on the eve of the premiere.
The proceeds will revert in full to the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), whose mission is to “accompany, serve and defend” the forcibly displaced and all migrants in a particularly vulnerable situation.