Artykuły

Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

City lights

For more than 10 years, the Royal Court theatre has worked with playwrights around the world to create new pieces for the stage. Here, five Royal Court writers talk about the cities that have touched their hearts and minds, and inspired their latest work
Sao Paulo
By Roy Williams
Marlene Dietrich once said, "Rio is a beauty. But São Paulo - São Paulo is a city." And what a city: huge buildings, skyscrapers, pavements as congested as the roads.
We hung out in a bar frequented by theatre people. One night I was told by a playwright to take care as I returned to my hotel. Some streets are used by muggers, prostitutes. On my short walk back, I saw a few guys hanging by a street corner. They shouted something to me in Portuguese. I smiled and carried on. They looked as if they were about to follow me. Maybe I'd taken a wrong turn. A police car passed by and they backed off. As I walked on, I noticed a couple more police cars in the middle of the road, surrounding a civilian car, which the officers were searching.
A Brazilian writer later explained that, for weeks, after a wave of gang violence against them, the police had been exercising their right to stop anyone they didn't like the look of. In Brazil, they call them "blitzes". I was told I was lucky not to get searched myself.
At night, Praca da Se square becomes a campsite for homeless children who make their living by shining shoes, selling sweets and begging. They have an arrangement with the police: as long as they don't cause trouble, they'll be left alone. Later I wrote a short play about a young boy who tries to escape his life by moving from one slum to another. As I looked at the face of yet another child trying to sell gum, I realised her skin colour was the same as mine. As was that of her friends, and the gang who had stalked me that night. The people buying the gum, getting their shoes shined - their faces were a lot lighter. For a country that has welcomed immigrants for over 100 years, I was expecting something different, not more of the same.
One night, the Brazilian playwrights took us out to a club. I got the beer. Over at the dance floor, it was a little old-fashioned, but kind of cute, to see the guys approaching women they didn't know, asking them to dance, taking them by the hand. It took me ages to pluck up the courage. I felt 16 again. But it was easy: I only had to look at my partner, gesture to the floor, and that was it. I must have danced with a dozen women that night. Talk about working a room.
Moscow
By Mark Ravenhill
Neon everywhere. Huge, vulgar, flashing signs in lurid greens and blues. Play. Win. Money. Today. Every building, every corner, flickers in their glow. Animated signs of dice, cards, the fickle finger of fate calling you in to try your hand at the machines from which a steady stream of small change ching ching chings.
Moscow is Vegas. From the solid, steady life of the capital of communism to the frontier town of cowboy capitalism, in one easy bound. Or so it seems at first sight. And then you realise that, in fact, the clock - frozen for so long under the Brezhnev years of stagnation - has moved forward at a different pace on different streets, in different people's lives.
The Hotel Russia, the former Moscow home for visiting party dignitaries, has changed not at all. It looks out over the stern beauty of the Kremlin and is patrolled by a stern, besuited staff it is hard to believe are not still members of the KGB. When I discover I haven't been put on the list for breakfast, I am sent from one forbidding bleached matron to the next, until finally I manage to get a piece of paper stamped to prove I am worthy of black bread and herrings.
The family I visit live a life not so different from any family in Moscow in the past 50 years - a couple of rooms that double as living space and bedrooms, where furniture of the 1960s and 70s is cleaned and cared for, but is inevitably shabby; a traditional meal of salmon and cucumber and vodka.
The huge covered market is packed with pirated CDs and DVDs, US movies and music. Like everyone else in the world, Muscovites want their Michael Jackson and Brad Pitt, but they won't pay any intellectual copyright for the privilege. Maybe this is the way to undermine the old enemy: steal their songs and narratives. Or maybe it's just a way of having your imagination colonised on the cheap. In my new play about Moscow, a teenager talks about Robbie Williams, cigarettes, her ambiguous love for a girl called Masha.
The shops of Moscow are full of high fashion to match Milan or Paris. There is sushi and Thai food and haute cuisine, with prices almost exactly the same as in London. Musicals are enormously popular.
The Meyerhold Centre, host to the festival I visit, is like any arts centre in a western city: young arts professionals man a smart if rather bland modern building. And at Theatre.Doc, the Moscow theatre created in response to a Royal Court initiative, something new is happening: young writers, directors and actors are coming together to make new work. A battered office building has been turned into a primitive playing space, a programme has been put together. As they show me round their little space, I am overwhelmed by the sense of love, dedication, joy. Somewhere in the cracks between communism and cowboy capitalism, humanity is at work.
Havana
By April de Angelis
It's hard to be in Havana and not hit the Malecon, the sea wall that embraces the city, wrapped around by a glittering snake of ocean. Here, every night, lovers meet, friends gather, drunks collapse, songs are sung, lonely people look out to sea. (In the play I wrote as a result of my trip, an older British woman and a younger Cuban man meet at a cheap hotel beside a lake: can they connect?) Every Cuban knows someone, maybe someone very close, who has left behind the struggle to survive and headed out to sea to try the American dream. If they make it alive, they can never return: that is the price. To leave is to grieve. An actress friend told us that Cuba is "the place that is hard to live in, but the people are good, they love the music, the life". And they do.
If you are a tourist, Cuba's surface is sweet. Sipping mojitos, listening to soul-speaking, African-Spanish rhythms in every bar, soaking in the blissful heat, the glorious faces and bodies, the ornate architecture and sheer damned colour of the place. Behind this, of course, there is another story. Why is Havana, its priceless historic buildings, its very fabric, slipping into the sea? Because there is a trade embargo on cement. There is an embargo on everything: medicines, cooking oil, toilet paper. Visiting a Cuban friend's parents, I caught sight of a toothbrush with barely a bristle . Somehow, this brought the sanctions home like nothing else.
I met writers Norge and Cheddy at the National Theatre of Havana, overlooking Revolution Square. Cheddy has bleached white hair, green eyes, an African face. Norge has heavy glasses and an intense, pale look. We sat in a circle, fuelled with rum-and-Coke and Cuban coffee at 10 in the morning. There were apologies for the lack of air-conditioning; power cuts are a regular occurrence. Only later did I realise that we had met the director of the theatre, Nisia Agüero. People told us their names, not their job titles.
On our last day, we go with friends to Chinatown and buy a meal for a few dollars. We pay - this is not something Cubans can easily afford. Cheddy, something of a wizard, his god the African/Catholic Yemaya, reads our cards. Soon we will be on a plane, heading out over the ocean. But Cuba's spirit, generosity and passion will stay with me - and, by some miracle, Havana will not be allowed to slip into the sea.

ambiguous – dwuznaczny
battered – sponiewierany
besuited – ubrany w garnitur
bland – mdły, nijaki
bleached – tleniony
Blissful – błogi
Bristle – włosie
bound – skok
Campsite - kemping
Congested – zatłoczony
Generosity – wielkoduszność
glittering – błyszczący
to grieve – martwić się, smucić
haute cousine – jedzenie wysokiej jakości, np. kuchnia francuska
herrings – sledź
fickle – kapryśny, zmienny
lurid – krzykliwy
Mugger – bandyta uliczny
overwhelmed – przytłoczony
Pace – krok, rytm
Playwright – dramatopisarz
To pluck up courage – zbierać sięna odwagę
shabby – zużyty, obdrapany
Sheer – czysty
to Sip – popijać
stern – surowy
to undermine – podkopywać


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