Praça Roosevelt
Last night, Mário Bortolotto, dramaturge and playwright active in the theatre movement of Roosevelt Square in São Paulo, was shot during a robbery in the Espaço Parlapatões.
I am deeply sad for what happened. I had never had the chance to meet Bortolotto or the Parlapatões (in fact I was eager to participate of a contest to win a spot in a comedy workshop that would happen next week at the theatre) and now he is fighting for his life in the hospital and Espaço Parlapatões is closed.
I found out about the sad news this afternoon, when I tried to get tickets for the play "O papa e a bruxa". When I typed Parlapatões on Google, there came the bad surprise: the play had been cancelled due to the event and, instead, there will be a manifestation in support of peace.
Those of you who know me are aware that one of the reasons I moved to Montreal is that I felt safer there. I love to be able to go out for a night at the theatre and come back home in one piece - even when I am alone.
For the last 10 days that I have been here in São Paulo, my hopes about the city got high. I have gone out at night by myself a few times, I have left the car parked on the street (and found it on the same place when I came back), and most of all, I have been getting in touch with the rich cultural life around here. All of that made me feel the human side of São Paulo again. Montreal has awesome culture too, but it is SO GOOD to have a little taste of it in my own Portuguese language...
Last night's events at Praça Roosevelt were a reality check for me - there is still a lot to be done for our São Paulo to be ours again. What good is it if people are not speaking Portuguese around here anymore? Instead, they are talking the language of fences, of alarms, of gunshots...
I feel outraged with the violence, people feel it's their own fault. I could not believe when I heard someone say that it was Mario Bortolotto's own fault that he got shot, since he reacted. I simply cannot agree with that statement. I mean, the guy is having a beer with friends after work. There comes a bunch of drugged armed man asking for everybody's money and hitting a friend. He reacts. He gets shot! Three times.
An artist's life, a human being's life is now in risk because of 200 reais and a couple cell phones. That is not fair.
I wish I could do something about it, I wish we could take our city back in our hands again. Espaço Parlapatões and the whole theatre movement at Praça Roosevelt were doing something about it, but they got hit hard. Right now, we can only show support for Bortolotto and hope that we will still be able to go to the theatre downtown. The city needs it. The people in the city needs it. We need theatre, not gunshots.
I am deeply sad for what happened. I had never had the chance to meet Bortolotto or the Parlapatões (in fact I was eager to participate of a contest to win a spot in a comedy workshop that would happen next week at the theatre) and now he is fighting for his life in the hospital and Espaço Parlapatões is closed.
I found out about the sad news this afternoon, when I tried to get tickets for the play "O papa e a bruxa". When I typed Parlapatões on Google, there came the bad surprise: the play had been cancelled due to the event and, instead, there will be a manifestation in support of peace.
Those of you who know me are aware that one of the reasons I moved to Montreal is that I felt safer there. I love to be able to go out for a night at the theatre and come back home in one piece - even when I am alone.
For the last 10 days that I have been here in São Paulo, my hopes about the city got high. I have gone out at night by myself a few times, I have left the car parked on the street (and found it on the same place when I came back), and most of all, I have been getting in touch with the rich cultural life around here. All of that made me feel the human side of São Paulo again. Montreal has awesome culture too, but it is SO GOOD to have a little taste of it in my own Portuguese language...
Last night's events at Praça Roosevelt were a reality check for me - there is still a lot to be done for our São Paulo to be ours again. What good is it if people are not speaking Portuguese around here anymore? Instead, they are talking the language of fences, of alarms, of gunshots...
I feel outraged with the violence, people feel it's their own fault. I could not believe when I heard someone say that it was Mario Bortolotto's own fault that he got shot, since he reacted. I simply cannot agree with that statement. I mean, the guy is having a beer with friends after work. There comes a bunch of drugged armed man asking for everybody's money and hitting a friend. He reacts. He gets shot! Three times.
An artist's life, a human being's life is now in risk because of 200 reais and a couple cell phones. That is not fair.
I wish I could do something about it, I wish we could take our city back in our hands again. Espaço Parlapatões and the whole theatre movement at Praça Roosevelt were doing something about it, but they got hit hard. Right now, we can only show support for Bortolotto and hope that we will still be able to go to the theatre downtown. The city needs it. The people in the city needs it. We need theatre, not gunshots.
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