In an apartment that is also a stage, three actor friends play out the fine line between lucidity and delirium, artistic dreams and pressure for recognition. This is the setting for the show “A Palma,” which represents the culmination of the year-long Mundana Companhia residency project at the Capobianco Institute. This piece, a deeply linguistic metal work, addresses the artist’s mental illness, fame as a burden, and collectivism as an antidote.
The genesis of the project came from an argument between actor Mariano Matos Martins, who is making his first theatrical directorial debut. Based on its premise, the drama was created by Claudia Barral and Marcos Barbosa.
“This piece was born from an argument I created,” Mariano says. “I was in a meeting with a playwright when suddenly, a voice in the background started screaming at her: ‘You’re terrible! Horrible!” Then the same person said, “I love you” and left. It was an actress friend who “freaked out.” That’s what excited me. Why does the actress get scared? What makes us get to this place?”
This anxiety gives rise to the character of Fania Soto, an actress suffering from an existential and professional crisis, played by Gilda Nomachi. The choice couldn’t be more important. With her rigorous training at Antunes Filho’s CPT and a strong career that moves between research theater and auteur film, Gilda plays a character struggling with the lack of stardom.
The harmony between the actress and the character is intense. “Did he know me? Because everyone knows I’m obsessed with being famous,” says Gilda. “I decided not to hide it so as not to feel humiliated. People say: ‘Oh, you didn’t want to work in TV’. Then you have to say: ‘No, I didn’t want to’. But everyone sees it as a lie. I did it, yes, I do it! To deny it is humiliating.”
This definition deepened during this process. “We get deeper and deeper into this character and notice the coincidences and connections to her life,” says Mariano, who did not write the character of Gilda, but the connection proved inevitable. “She realizes it in a magical, prophetic way. It’s scary.”
This paradox does not go unnoticed by the actress. “I do both exercises, the critical exercise and the matching exercise,” she says. “Our shared pain with Vanya is the pain of fame. The good thing is doing this, for Vanya and me. The good thing is this scenic game. But the bad thing is being undervalued by the industry.”
The actress shares a recent episode that could have been straight from the play’s script: “I had a very famous week, and everyone was following me, and I thought: I have the opportunity not to die without being famous.” But the reality of the job soon set in: “It went viral and I started training nine hours a day. I didn’t really enjoy it.”
The play highlights precisely this clash – the modern tension between artistic integrity and the need for external validation, symbolized by the title “The Palm.” The term, a sarcastic reference to the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, has been deconstructed into a trigger for anxiety. “We live in a world today where everything is moving towards this validation,” says Veronica Valentino, who plays lawyer Marta, Vania’s friend. “At the same time as we celebrate, we also criticize and search to find out what this demand is.”
In this amazing journey, the group appears as a lifeline. Vania is supported by her friends Marta and Sergio, played by Donizetti Mazonas. For Veronica, the “tram” metaphor is fundamental not only to understanding the art piece, but also to artistic resistance. “When we’re on the tram, we breathe better,” she says. “Especially for me, as a transvestite. What doesn’t let us down is the fact that we’re together and building a tram, you know?”
Donizetti, who has been friends with Gilda for more than 30 years, sees the play as a reflection of these families that form in the theater. “The play is, above all, about emotions. When you live this life on stage, a family is formed, a family of artistic connections. Theater does that a lot.”
The structure of the play is a “theater within a theatre”, mixing memories, rehearsals and confessions. Mariano Martins defines this choice as a means of “a certain navigation” of the artistic universe. “To access its madness and ‘ground’ it, we need to speak its language. The power of theatrical madness is this harmony that allows communication,” says the director, quoting a phrase by Zee Celso Martinez Correa – “Madness speaks the language of madness.”
Despite delving into pain, “Ma” is not a pathos. It is, as Mariano defines it, “an ode to a dream.” “The idea of this work is also to dream here, on the ground, of what we have. Theatre-making, the play, the film, is what we have. It is an ode to theatre, this expensive space where madness is sacred.”