By amilton de azevedo*

On the dirt-covered stage, small wooden blocks seem to suggest an abandoned cemetery. Little by little, four young artists – Mexicans, Argentinians, and Ecuadorians – gather and pile these objects. They try to balance themselves on the blocks, but, as the piles get taller, they fall down more frequently.

While the initial metaphors of Funeral para la idea de un hombre, by Colectivo Funeral para una idea, are presented clearly, what happens next in this work is an atmosphere of great poetic delicacy – which does not mean it is light.

Based on the possibility of planning one’s own funeral as a way to deconstruct deep-rooted actions and thoughts of sociocultural origin, the performance reflects on the burial of traditional concepts of what it means to be a man.

Standing on the piled blocks, the artists face the instability in building themselves based on a supposed concreteness that is not really in ourselves. In a sort of goodbye, they state what they want to leave behind.

The cruel values embedded in the concept of masculinity are presented in a subtle, sometimes nearly distant, way. It seems like the self-examination necessary to bury part of the men they are was carried out during the creation process. What emerges onstage – even at moments of a certain discourse aggressiveness – is, thus, the rebirth of a new man.

The work with wooden blocks allows different interpretations. If they look like tombstones at first, later they suggest imposed ideas and values; in an interesting resource that could be used in a deeper way, they become little people, in a sort of puppetry.

In addition to the signification of objects, the artists’ insistence when dealing with construction and deconstruction is also noteworthy, with the blocks sometimes helping and many other times acting against them. Thus, we can understand the idea of needing a daily exercise of reflection proposed by Funeral para la idea de un hombre: becoming a subject, which is fundamental to establish this man that aims to get rid of the damaging structural sexism in our society, is an endless battle.

This way, becoming aware of our own finitude is complemented by becoming aware of our incompleteness. In Pedagogia da Autonomia, Paulo Freire reflects on this idea. “Where there is life, there is incompleteness”, states the pedagogue. Also according to Freire, after the advent of language and consequential establishment of communication of what is intelligible by the human being, there is no longer the possibility of “existing unless susceptible to the radical and profound tension between good and evil, between dignity and indignity, between decency and impudence, between the beauty and the ugliness in the world”.

Human incompleteness allows us, when we recognize we are also conditioned by sociocultural forces, to radically question inherited values and possible new values. Regarding historical inheritance, the colonialism present in our intersubjective relations is also present in this performance.

In its most frantic moment, an assertive line by Zully Guamán is aimed at the violent rape culture. While it continues in an endless, exhaustive score, Juan Lautaro Veneziale dances to electronic music and, in an acid and aggressive manner, critiques the praise of everything involving European countries, something that is still present in our continent.

Dance is a constant language throughout the performance. The choreographies are related to narrative texts, creating images of great plasticity. The artists make good use of their potential not only in the field of dance, but also of circus. Even if in a few moments technical skills overshadow expression, in general the stage composition and movements are very well built using these resources.

The association of theater, dance, and circus is interestingly shown in the relation between actions and words. Sometimes simultaneous scenes take place, and a certain lack of sync between them adds layers to what is being narrated – or danced.

Guamán, the only woman onstage, is the one who opens the ways for her male partners’ individual deconstructions. The female is the one who shows the hardship of her own existence – and the male, admiring this strength, mirrors his partner’s struggle in order to face his own challenges.

The play authored by the collective – in addition to Guamán and Lautaro, Javier Pérez Caicedo, and Luis Miguel Cajiao complete the group – has a fragmented structure, with individual accounts and relational scenes. The choice for the lightness of poetry, despite the dense theme, is wise – and favored by a very precise soundtrack that marks the different atmospheres visited by Funeral para la idea de un hombre.

Posing a political discussion that is quite valuable in our times, the young collective reaches the audience’s sensibility. More than achieving the death of who we no longer want to be, the work shows the delicacy of rebirth. A funeral of the constructed to birth the possible.

*Amilton de Azevedo is an artist, researcher, critic, and teacher. He writes for Folha de S. Paulo and for his own website, ruína acesa. He teaches the course “Studies on education in theater” for the undergraduate program at Célia Helena Centro de Artes e Educação.