Jerry Brotton and David Schalkwyk (Assistant Director and Director, respectively, of Global Shakespeare) each spent an exhilarating week as Global Shakespeare's representatives in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte at the Shakespeare Forum, an educational and artistic exchange between Brazil and the UK co-produced by People’s Palace Projects.

The Forum held four weeks of free educational and artistic workshops for emerging actors, directors, teachers and students led by leading academics, practitioners from the Royal Shakespeare Company, key figures in Brazil's arts sector and theatre practitioners from India and Malaysia in four Brazilian cities: Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, and Sao Paulo from mid-April to mid-May.

 

Jerry ran several workshops on Shakespeare for students from Universidade das Quebradas (an institution designed for students with little formal academic training) and the Federal University of Rio. He also gave a well attended public lecture at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil on transculturation and syncretic cultures in Shakespeare, taking the figure of St George as a global icon shared between the east, west, and as it transpired, the New World. He also travelled with RSC assistant directors including Vik Sivalingam to attend workshops at 'Nós do Morro' ('Us from the Hillside') a community based theatre company and school based in the Vidigal, one of Rio's favelas. The workshops were a fusion of theatre practice and academic criticism that were a revelation to all those involved, and which have already led to plans for future collaborations .

 

David gave undergraduate and postgraduate seminars to students from a variety of tertiary institutions in Belo Horizonte, a public lecture on the Robben Island Shakespeare, and participated in a panel discussion with theatre practitioners from the UK and Malaysia about the role of Shakespeare in theatre, the academy, schools and global culture as a whole.

Belo Horizonte lies at the centre of Brazil’s mining industry (entirely appropriate, as David worked on a South African diamond mine when he was a student). What Belo Horizonte lacks in beaches and international pazzaz it makes up in its dedication to culture. The square formerly surrounded by nineteenth-century building has been transformed into a cultural hub of museums, educational centres, and small theatres, with extraordinarily imaginative interactive exhibitions, public activities in the park, and restaurants and cafes in public courtyards.

 

The Forum was brilliantly run by Professor Paul Heritage, Artistic Director of PPP, and his wonderful team, and was widely publicised in the Brazilian press. It was the beginning of what we hope will be a long and exciting collaboration between Global Shakespeare and People's Palace Projects!