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Paschoal Carlos Magno

Producer

Paschoal Carlos Magno (Rio de Janeiro RJ 1906 - idem 1980). Animator, producer, critic, author and director. A fundamental personality in the dynamization and renewal of the Brazilian scene, Paschoal Carlos Magno founded the Teatro do Estudante do Brasil and the Teatro Duse. In 1926, he made an experience as a heartthrob in Abat-Jour, by Renato Viana. In 1928, it has a fleeting participation, like actor, in the Theater of Toy, of Alvaro Moreyra; and writes criticism for The Journal. In 1929, he leads a large fundraising campaign to found the Student House in Brazil. In 1930, he received a prize from the Brazilian Academy of Letters - ABL, for his play Pierrot, set up in Rio de Janeiro by the company of Jaime Costa, of which Paschoal assumed artistic direction. In 1937, he founded the Theater of the Student of Brazil - TEB, inspired by the European university theaters, with a pedagogical, theatrical and artistic function, to introduce in our theater the function of the theater director, position for which the actress Italy Fausta, who signed the first spectacle of the group, Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare in 1938. In 1946, Paschoal has represented in London, with good critics, his play Tomorow Will Be Different, mounted in several other European countries, as well as in Brazil. In the same year, he assumes the criticism column of the newspaper Democracia and, in the following year, that of Correio da Manhã, which he signed until 1961, through which he exerts a strong influence on the theatrical panorama. In 1948, under his general guidance and under the direction of the German Hoffmann Harnisch, TEB plays William Shakespeare's Hamlet, which achieves enormous success and prestige, especially for revealing the singular talent of the young Sergio Cardoso in the title role. at the age of 22, whom Paschoal defines in his column as being the greatest actor in Brazil. Under the repercussion of this success, and of the trips of Paschoal through Brazil, the theaters of students begin to be created in several cities. In 1949, Paschoal presides over the launch by TEB of a Shakespeare Festival in Rio de Janeiro with Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream; and creates, together with the singer Alda Pereira Pinto, the Opera Experimental Theater. In 1952, Paschoal took the TEB for an extensive tour of the north, with pieces by Sophocles, Euripides, William Shakespeare, Gil Vicente, Henrik Ibsen, Martins Pena. In the same year, another important initiative began: the Duse Theater, a room of approximately 100 seats and a minimal stage set up in the Paschoal mansion in Santa Tereza. Inaugurated in 1952, with João Sem Terra, by Hermilo Borba Filho, the Duse operates, with free admission, until 1956, revealing, among others, Aristoteles Soares, Francisco Pereira da Silva, Leo Vitor, Antônio Callado, Rachel de Queiroz, Paulo Moreira of Fonseca, Maria Inez Barros de Almeida, and conquering a place of prestige in the cultural panorama of Rio de Janeiro. Juscelino Kubitschek, who is responsible for the cultural and university sector of the Presidency of the Republic, travels permanently throughout the country, collecting young talents and striving to create or stimulate spaces where they can give vent to their eagerness to learn and to create. In 1958, he organized in Recife the first National Festival of Student Theaters, gathering more than 800 young people and beginning a tradition that will continue until the sixth festival. He was nominated in 1962 as Secretary General of the National Council of Culture and held the Caravan of Culture, bringing together 256 young artists from Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Sergipe and Alagoas, performing theater, dance and music performances. performing exhibitions of plastic arts and distribution of books and records. A similar initiative, the Barca de Cultura, which descends on the São Francisco River from Pirapora to Juazeiro, was promoted by Paschoal as early as the 1970s. The coup of 1964 pushes him away from the centers of power and undermines his diplomatic career. His last great achievement began in 1965, when he inaugurated the Arcozelo Village, in the interior of the State of Rio de Janeiro, from which he intends to make a place of rest for artists and intellectuals and a training center for the different areas of Art. But the massive work consumes the rest of his fortune and forces him to sell his house in Santa Tereza to pay the debts. Still, the money turns out to be insufficient, and Paschoal publicly threatens to fire the farm. Some aid, official or private, is even released; but until today the Village of Arcozelo is closed under the dominion of the National Foundation of Scenic Arts. The critic Yan Michalski evaluates his contribution to the Brazilian theater: "Paschoal Charlemagne, a natural person, was in fact an institution: alone, although always helped by legions of young people who knew how to infect the mystique of his utopias, he almost came to exercise sometimes a function that would fit into an informal Ministry of Culture. A controversial personality, he was greatly questioned for having endlessly repeated a ritual that consisted in inventing and launching a seemingly utopian dream project, and then moving heaven and earth to charge the public resources necessary for its realization, and also to assign triumphantly - especially in its column Correio da Manhã - glimpses of genius to promises, especially regional, that were still taking their first steps.Many of the innovations that brought the Brazilian theatrical life were genuinely revolutionary, but there was a clearly conservative paternalistic touch in their performance. there is doubt, however, that his apostolate almost always defended good causes; that his enthusiasm revealed talents which, without his support, could hardly have been unleashed; and that even today there are few valid initiatives of the Brazilian theater to which no one is bound who has not at some point received a decisive push from the patriarch of Santa Tereza. "1 Notes: 1. MICHALSKI, Yan. Paschoal Charlemagne. In: _________. SMALL Encyclopedia of Contemporary Brazilian Theater. Unpublished material, elaborated in a project for CNPq. Rio de Janeiro, 1989.

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