title: report 

#THEATREUNI/

BILINGUE/

SERPA’s

STRUCTURE/

ARRABALDE

An essay by frederico serpa

  student number 

ahundredandten/twelve/thirtyfive  

Pre-Introduction

So right at the start I am unsure of if whether to use the English language to create this speech surrounding the making of a film that in itself, at least to me, represents so much more than a film. A film is said to comprise of a series of pictures and the history of all movies made has brought upon this apparently simple task a perfecting of techniques and ways to translate and transfigure these pictures and the ways they display themselves in such an army of forms that what eventually took over was the obsession with form, rather than narrative, or effect. 

This report is being assembled for a specific module entitled “Writing of a Report” inserted in the final year of a Theatre course of the Lisbon Conservatory, a course designed for actors and creators alike that rather than perfect an actors craft in technique based workshops or specific method schooling provides one with a slight tour of the many branches in theatre, be them practical or theoretical. The reason why I hesitate to write in Portuguese is due to the fact this film took a lot out of me, one could say I had all my chips riding on this gargantuan odysseic endeavour and whilst a life was lived in parallel to this 4 year, still to be completed project, it’s evolution is also undissociated from it. Both the film and the life. And perhaps the establishing of this piece, independent from it, in the English language, may eventually serve a certain purpose in and of itself. 

Writing helps me think and even though I try to remove my own personal private point of view from the devising of thought it is almost impossible and even dishonest to do so, merely for the sake of embellishing a piece with a feigned contour of humility, or even objectivity. To be objective is to clinically analyse something and set it in stone as a concrete piece of information or fact whereas the realm of subjectivity becomes more real due to it’s ever changing possibilities. I remain unsure of whether this should be in English or Portuguese. 

The film was written and is spoken in both languages. My upbringing and everyday life was and does happen in both languages. The show with which I ended this theatre course, written by José Maria Viera Mendes, an established scholar and playwright, directed by Pedro Penim, a tremendous thespian and artistic director to one of, if not the most prominent and relevant, theatre companies from Portugal was entitled Bilingue, which translates to Bilingual and was in no shape or form about an ability to speak many languages but instead the elevated awareness of being able to see a number of meanings available to any given concept, idea, or word -that there are many meanings available to one given thing. 

Sure if I were to write in Portuguese perhaps a better crafted or even more poetic piece could emerge from all these topics I will be addressing throughout the report but is that the intended objective? The answer to what seemed to be a rhetorical question is provided with an “I don’t know” and that is exciting for it fights the stale premise of an over organised document, narrow and closed, solely bent on informing, rather than simultaneously entertaining. The film’s about life in the city, about the constraints of life in the city, about the limitations and for lack of a better term, shackles of living in modern day western civilised society, it was, as was my ambitious personal goal, about replacing survival, with life.

Introduction

How does one progress the instinct? How do you evolve in a discipline of performance if you are so allergic to technique and the proficiency of agility piggy backed on a place of no name, originated in an ethereal space without concrete fact? It’s a fickle mind/body tool I do possess. A complicated instrument. It derives from a knowledge that is so far removed from my immediate access that the awareness with which I create seems to stem from another entity. As if the man and the artist were two strange beings sharing a body where the man is lazy and careless, even mean and derivative, and the artist or the creator is a gentleman of extreme empathy and conscientiousness, hardworking, kind and unique. The artist is shy though, he doesn’t come out easily, he needs air and love, world and conflict, peace and pain. The man is vain. So what happens when the man and the artist go to school? To a drama school? The man worries too much on how he shall be perceived and his entwinement with others is scarce, while the artist wants to grow but seems only to wither in the network of able minded individuals. They call our school the yellow submarine, for many reasons. The first and most obvious is due to it being yellow, or at least it was when I went there in 2012. The second and less notoriously understood is the fact that it is sinking, it was built on some sort of water reservoir in the city of Amadora, on the Avenue Marquês de Pombal and in line with the very limited ounce of respect our county awards artists, in particular actors, cinema and theatre folk the level of our floors approach the planet’s core, more and more each year. The third and foremost, extended into a few, is the dream like state in which you are voluntarily inscribing yourself when deciding to join these factions, of attempting artistry as a bread winner in this land where we were born. You shall most likely sail beneath the sea, coming up for air every once in a while and the only way to stay afloat is not through a path of your own discovery but amongst rules and reveries inside the known establishment. And so, as thus, it all becomes an audition process, the whole education at the Lisbon Theatre and Film Conservatory. The community is so small that everyone know’s everyone else and the way you carry yourself about will most definitely determine your future outside it’s walls. Of course there are a lot more factors to be taken into account as you measure your own success and given the free lance nature of the art world there are up’s and down’s and whether you want to be a soap opera actor or a film director, a stage manager or a producer it all is losing it’s sense amidst this sentence. The Pre-Introduction was the abstract. This Introduction is abstract, and away, as I strangely sway, we shall continue to go. 

      

 Jim Carrey as Norma Bates in the set of Man on the Moon, a film about Andy Kaufman. 1

Post-Introduction

We have been able to esteem so far that the regular structure of how a report should be laid out and the precise themes it intends to veer around are also not as singular and focused as desired. As if rather than laying down a determination to speak about my final project, or my stint at the school, or the film, or my interaction as a man or an artist toward all these elements, a great big jambalaya of all the afore mentioned themes, with an ongoing commentary is what will take place. I feel that the action of devising a text is in itself also an activity, a verb. The construct of the text as a play. A dramaturgy forms amongst the report. I am anxious and even excited to take apart these four themes and have a will to inscribe in this Post-introduction, in a clear way, the itinerary for the paper. What shall integrate, throughout its chapters, the view and reminiscence of the movie, the school, the play and the man but find it very hard to do so for they are all intwined and their separation seems nonsensical and dishonest with how they happen. The references taken into account, such as Walter Benjamin’s bla bla and Ranciére’s la di da, or even The Killers first album yeah yeah yeah, and all the relationships and acquaintances that made an imprint that I have met so far, be they faculty, friends, family or foes, will hardly be specifically enunciated but inferred. It’s always hard to start. As soon as you get the ball rolling, it catches the snow and increases in size, volume and speed and if not careful may collapse at the end of its roll. Why would there be 3 introductions? What is being introduced? I am introducing myself to these ideas and memories as they fester and evolve in my mind so that I may trust the reader with the information. So that I may inform myself with its intervention. What has remained from all this time? From all this work? From creating, or acting, or studying? Observing, producing or inflating? I will try to have these 4 themes be chapters. Separate their bodies. As if I’m laying out the mess at the start, presenting it in an organised fashion in its development, and bring them all together as one at the conclusion. That’s it. No more introductions.

 A  collection of audience members trying to impose on to a shot where Charlize Theron is interviewed about her  recent portrayal of Megan Kelly in the film Bombshell about the inception of the MeToo movement. 2

Chapter A 

or the gaping abyss between the ManChild and the Creature Creator

This is where I’m still trying to figure out what I haven’t yet at all been able to figure out. Namely a structure, be it of this paper or the planes of existence where it all seems to digress and not impress or build or sort itself out, instead breaking in. Always saying the same old things because just as I was in school, I’m not listening, trying to only take in what I deem fit, It’s all very interesting but how can I fit it into my very limited brain, pretending on a purposeful absence of awareness so as not to contaminate the artist’s purity and the natural pouring out of his art but at this point, who am I kidding? Sure as hell not kidding myself, and that would be the most fundamental person to keep fooled otherwise how can one fool the others? How can one fake to make and not break? What if it’s all already broken and splattered and disconnected through long hours of taking in garbage, years of very limited human contact and a swelling deterioration of what was already hard to grasp and comprehend, mere communication. I will run around the same topics and it seems as if this chapter could be about the distance between the individual and the creature who dared once to create but rather has become only a creature with no distinguishable fate. The movement persists inwardly. The moment maintains itself stationary and the game is that of blame and obsession with fame, not of oneself but all those personas, all those characters people create to make themselves a brand and therefore recognisable and in turn marketable. This makes not an ounce of sense. It’s nonsense. It’s delusional. Not even cathartic. Instead manic. Erratic. Stylised and deprived of form. 

PAUSE

Não tenho nada para dizer. Não tenho nada para dizer. Merda. Não tenho nada para dizer. As únicas coisas que tenho a acrescentar a este mundo são narrativas interiores de insuficiência. Na escola ia tomar o mundo. Estimava-me um dos mais interessantes. Fui incapaz de encarar com humildade um trajecto que estava ainda no seu início. A verdade é que cheguei à faculdade já com 22 anos e a impaciência era um factor, ainda é, agora, aos 31. Ou terá sido já substituída por uma desistência? Via-me como um gigante, hoje vejo-me como uma irrelevante amostra de pó, um palerma, um parvo, um pulha, uma paria, um proveta de uma ideia sem potencial, apenas banal. Tudo tem de ser um confissão. Todos as interações um lugar para despejar.  Inclusivamente um relatório onde em múltiplas introduções onde se faz uma proposição do rumo a tomar e no lugar de seguir essa linha imaginada, recta e firme a avançar, se continua drasticamente a circular, e a arredondar e a dar uma volta que insere no movimento do compasso um desenho tosco e carregado de incerteza onde se adivinharia uma pureza no centro, protegida do arame, mas atravessado no seu centro pela single serving sabotage.   

END OF PAUSE

As if the introduction is still happening, for the fear of actually commencing, I lay out a bibliography, in a will to clarify what belongs to what, already knowing they belong all to the whole and to none at once:

Why the World does not Exist by Markus Gabriel. A philosophy book on how one perceives the world and the daunting conclusion that such a concept does not exist in isolation. Read before the Rehearsals of Bilingue.

BILINGUE by José Maria Viera Mendes. A literary play written after the author’s doctorate  Uma coisa não é outra coisa and premiered with our group  in our final project.

A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke. A Novel on the turmoils of a consecrated film actor who’s just cheated on his wife and is about to start rehearsing a Shakespeare play on Broadway. Read during the writing of this report.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Sallinger. A bible on the going’s on of a young man who is just now realising he does not identify or even appreciate the world around him. Read over and over again.

The Foreigner by Albert Camus. A curse that narrates the slow descent of a man’s existence to how such a thing barely matters. Read twice, before school and with a friend as my time at school ended.

The Actor’s trade in the Work of John Cassavettes by Filipa Rosário. An analyzation of a certain film maker’s methodology known as a seeker of truth within the characters in his films, the ultimate actor/director. Parused over time.

Society of Spectacle by Guy Debord. A constitution that lays out how present life has receded into an accumulation of falsities that bend the truth into demonstrations of said concept to continuously carry on the show that in turn fuels spectators and society, as resumed as this Magna Carta can be. Picked up every once in a while.

INSIDE by Bo Burnham. A Netflix Comedy Special that mimes the isolation of the quarantine where one man commits himself to a limited space for a stretch of time and reflects with humour about the state of modern society and the state of his internal scrambled self. Seen during the writing of this report.

Everything Now by Arcade Fire.  An album by a band that like the aforementioned Bo is very observant and critical of the current society and its pressures and pains.

A Catalogue of Specific Movies and Television Series that helped mould and deter from a film language that has been formed and that I hesitate to refer by name, whether for shame, whether for size, sometimes for presumption, often for awkwardness. My whole life.

An unquantifiable amount of YouTube interviews or bits with established personalities such as actors, directors, thinkers, politicians, musicians and any one who’s “made it”. Extensively witnessed since 2010 and increasingly so as content began to be hysterically developed to keep the masses entertained and numb.

And to begin a sentence with a supposedly forbidden word with which to begin, it seems the drawing out of this list aims already to conclude as I rush through the body, from the ankles to the top of the skull or otherwise because it frightens me to climb, cross, travel, concentrate, focus, investigate, work the stream as far as I can perceive the entire volume of it’s flow. 

 To simplify what I have just said as I permanently comment on any past thought that is had or written down, I am trying to inform the reader my attention span is divided and that the ability to quote these works specifically over the course of the paper is an almost impossibility because such discipline or skill to construct as a common person is not within such malformed brain barges. 

Simplifying yet again, the way in which the creature creates is detached from how the manchild lives and as such it is immensely difficult to exist in party with the common world. This distinction is not imbued with a self-admiration but instead a handicapped notion. The creature and the manchild would actually love to combine their efforts or knowledge to exist within the common world (where the use of the word common is not a derivative judgement but an explanatory term), but unfortunately grow further and further apart as the years go by. 

*

 

He who films himself and then films him watching himself of what he just filmed and so on and so forth. This drawing was done before watching Bo’s Inside that uses a similar idea in a different way. 4

As what has passed and shall pass on, 

in this scene or a different song, 

one can’t help but wonder

or express some concern, 

for the fine line between a biography, and a report to end the term.  The boredom has become criminal and it’s ulterior apathy tragic as paraphrased from Bo’s “Welcome to the internet”, and the result of these conjoined statements is a play on form, a constant diversion where repetition or even the constant, some might say, coherent usage of a singular technique or type of execution is being thrown around like a shiny pinball on some lame Star Wars Memorabilia Machine. Even in the elaboration of a text where he pretentiously shifts as if a textual flare were synonymous with a stage effect or a film transition; this happens due to the constant presence of performance as well as the unabashed infinite craving of attention as well as, here comes another quote, this time from Guy, in this example verbatim, in the thirtieth law of his constitution - The ALIENATION of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity, works like this: The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own de­sires. The spectacle's estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual's gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere. 

A different stroke is consequently added to this separation we are observing in this chapter for beyond the chasm between manchild and creature creator there is also a rapid water pond that drowns both the performer and the spectator- the one who does and the one who watches. 

Tons, liquid and solid, has been written on this subject and it is uncalled for to add too much but this whole specific detour happens as the only concern became not treading into the dangerous realm of biography. For as the narcissus catches its fluttering petals on the reflection of that serpentatious pond he may forget to guard his core and go straight to its head where vanity abounds and logic fails to linger, disappearing even. I don’t want this to become a biography. It’s not supposed to be a story. The inter spacial time worm warped from when I was at school and where I am now has been slowly surrounding itself as much as animal/nature metaphors are losing control in this chapter. 

(Am I just creating excuses? Is this piece, like most, the unwanted child of a lack of focus? An inability to concentrate?) 

Announcing insecurity, withdrawing the whining,

 painting a picture, running off track and escaping the fixture .

I wish I could knowingly speak of the Left and Right brain but my neurological science savour faire is rien ici  and so here goes a link to a video explanation/summary demonstration of the matéria dada so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNptspmS4Xk  

 

Chapter B 

or the description of a duration in a Drama School

So here comes the hard part. Recollections. Aptly demonstrating with as much a pragmatic tongue as a fake nihilist could, ever entertained on the endeavour of the comprehension of the self the first chapters and introductions were peanuts. The also problem that ensues is in regards to the wearing out of novelty, the enthusiasm in passion that has to be replaced with endearing hardworking love for what is done -be it a relationship, a mere activity, a project of any kind or in this case a report. The proposed title as we currently push through is title: report #THEATREUNI/BILINGUE/SERPA’sSTRUCTURE/ARRABALDE in a pitiful scarcely imaginative pun with social media and a messy disorganisation mired with intent but the document is called Reporting a feeling. Which is more honest? 

Which is more real? 

Which is fake and which is not?

What is known and what is taught?

The collective reading and experienced perception has taught any given Joe or Joanna that such is a false concept and that belief is bended and moulded all the time in the name of appearances, and even more so, desires -a desire for something, a will to keep standing before tides and gravel on this game of a constant revolving board that pulls you farther and farther away from what you want, to the point you can’t even remember why you wanted it in the first place and you even start to doubt if that was a choice or a commodity…

“Yeah, I’ll take this road, it seems good enough, it resembles the image of my will but I’m not going to think too long, or even hard on it, I’ll just go. And when I get to an intersection I’ll also hastily take a turn cause the dial keeps ticking and all these alternatives of time keep passing and If I take too long, I’ll skip a beat, lay flat with my feet, pointed towards the sun and get burnt and fall off the wagon.” How dramatic, how extraordinarily imbued with excess, how boring. 

This is where the destitute practitioner has arrived almost ten years after entering that school, that pool, and played so frequently a fool. Everything was going at 4000 parsecs a nanosecond in his mind and body, soul and instrument and he was so thirsty, desperate to be contaminated and even more to be heard; wanting to be seen and prove one’s worth but simultaneously convinced that the worth was there, simply just, for all the minions to admire and be in awe of. As is commonly present a duality, a man who feigns himself a giant may often do so to cover up an insecurity or a bucket full. He hasn’t been heard for most his life except when screaming for attention, demanding a hearing, breaking through liminal after limited space. 

PAUSA

Especifiquei a vontade de uma abordagem pragmática e estou a fazer justamente o contrário, ás voltas e às voltas como ilustra a tatuagem, e estou convencido de que está a correr muita mal. Como o performer que sempre vê o que vê, o que os outros vêem, e como ele se vê enquanto os outros o vêem. É lunático. Esta pausa é curta, era desnecessária, como muitas canastras interrupções de discurso de certos declamadores, incapazes de resistir a usar efeitos.

FIM DA PAUSA

The fact is I’m hesitant to initiate this chapter because as many people who were content in the twilight of their life, their time in college, such is the case of those victim to an arrested development, I have looked back so may times. Too many times. But here goes. There was a first year. Then there was a second year. Then there was a semester abroad. A semester doing a play we will approach later. And then a repeated semester with a different class after having flunked the semester abroad. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 

1

There once was a guru from Detroit who danced for most his young and adult life. He attempted to pry open our rib cage and let our heart pour out. Center our selves into a stripping of the self. Destroying pre-conceptions and social habits to become warriors of art and creators of clarity. That was what it felt like. It was as much liberating as it was lustful. It palpitated the chi but also provoked the cha cha cha. Touch transcended in many times the physical body and that was in fact I believe much discussed throughout the entire module of Movement, in Portuguese referred to as Body - the internal movement. How do we apply pressure without force? How do we practice restraint without resistance? How do we communicate without words? And so on, and so on. 

It was often essential to practice silence and dare say frequently I did not. I wasn’t the only one who in his youthful exuberance stepped out of line but boy did I talk. I loved those classes and in the moments there was dedication, a bit more discipline, extraordinary experiences came out of it, no particular moment has stayed with me. We did walk blindfolded in the park and frolic naked in the beach. We also saw people break out in tears time and time again, they thought they were reaching Nirvana, instead they were just growing up, some of them at least. 

In that distant time and foreign land taught also a sorceress, seemingly hailing from Hogwarts itself who made similar shenanigans but focused more on the voice and balanced a technical teaching with a spiritual healing. We would learn exercises to protect and also engage with our vocal instrument. We would sing songs and read texts to enable the preparation of a theatrical actor. A tool for others to use that must have control and be aware of his capacities. Again, I believe I was disruptive for I believed rather naively that these classes were superfluous and even detrimental to who pursued a naturalistic style of acting whereupon there is a notion that too much technicality can come in the way of reality. Again with that disingenuous and in fact lazy judgemental look that too much baggage is heavy to carry and better travel light if you want to keep on flying and soaring, levitating and towering over the peasants of plain purpose - forgive them for they are down right idiotic. This was the way I often carried myself, with a smile on my face, an arrogance on my chest, and a humility often verbalised as buried beneath a hundred story building, for those who are great need not be humble and such a sin in Emperors will collapse there empire. An empty empire of talent. what an endless presence of demagogic metaphors and running commentary of the sentence past.

An array of theoretical classes from Art History, to Theatre History where all the lecturers create a blur within my memory for they were significant, some more than others but difficult to reminisce which were in what year. There was however no doubt in this first an enormous revered female dinosaur of academia and culture, publishings and newspapers, critique and caos that introduced us the Odyssey and had us read it the whole way through during class. Which was fun. She as well was a performer.

And then there was Interpretation. The most similar module to what cannot be particularly described as acting classes but let’s say they are. No wait, let’s say they’re not. They definitely weren’t. At least in these particular instances not at all. They were the staging of a play, one for each semester, each with a different director. There was no talk of method, or technique (however contradictory this most definitely seems to what has been said), or a development of skill, or any sort of note on how the metier is actually elaborated and mind you, I am fully aware there are hundreds, if not thousands of studied solutions and even more, millions of employed systems for each and every person who even decides to perform but a formal passing down of the trade was not the case. 

 We would have exercises and talk about ourselves and practice scenes and then listen to the directors for hours upon end about their views of how their work, their personal work, was done. Notes were given after scenes. Time was given to rehearse. Books on certain Stanislavskian methods or heirs and colleagues to said reference were suggested but never quite employed. Public showings were held to demonstrate… I probably sound resentful. It’s cause I am. Perhaps my memories phased. Antigone in the first semester and Tchekov’s Three Sisters in the second. 

What more can I add on this year? Rumours? Gossip? Groups being formed, people being picked on, people being picked up, petty alliances and phoney tantrums,  parties, smoke-ables, nights out to the same old corner of Bairro Alto where everyone would meet after school. I don’t know. What stuck the most, disregarding my havoc of a love life, was this specific moment where a teacher told me he’d call me straight away to do a show, but only if it were a monologue. I think he cursed me.

2

All this is rather petty and infantile and is risen out of a sense of worth that at school was exacerbated and that presently is emaciated, empty, bleak. In a constant comparison with the lives of others, just like I did in school with my classmates and aspiring artists of senior years and even black bearing clothes wearers from the film department, I seldom concentrated and focused on the task at hand feeling set aside or marginalised, soaring over or astonishingly under. A fierce competitive nature is not one I have nurtured for rather than strive for being the best I live in a dazed illusion that I was the best and it was often tiring to witness or listen to this regurgitation of an obsession with the self, like a wimpy Hitler or a harmless Gaddafi though, just like them, it all stems from specific situations I will not now bore you with. 

The second year at university. Is it a University really in the strictest sense of the word? Does one really have to try that hard to earn their place in the yellow submarine? Is the high school, primary and pre-school in Portugal as exigent a system these days that upon arrival at what is entitled a Superior School you are in fact worthy of that notion? I’ve been reading a Roald Dahl auto-biography where he describes his times at prep and public schools in the UK as far back as the 1930´s and it all just seems pretty lax in comparison. One must conform to when one is, or even where, though I find it hard having been paraded from England to Israel to an International School to Portuguese State Schools to a synthetic private course on Audiovisuals to an Acting Course resembling clowning headed by a Brazilian for a year to an independent cinema workshop with a half Portuguese half American intelectual to a method 6 month crash course by a New Yorker from which I was kicked out before I actually arrived at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. Rather than describe in detail an episode or two all I do is list. Such is the curse I got at the end of the first year. It is important to refer that the precise memories happening in the periphery of the actual classes that I have so unashamedly passed through are as significant if not more so, than the classes themselves. 

This time there was once a brutally holistic, orally abstract and master of the metaphysical from Italy that would impart us with knowledge that somehow made sense as it formally made no sense at all, as if teaching us what nonsense was and how important it is. And bones crushing on to the floor, muscles stretching within themselves around others and in a connection with the ether. Commonly comparing our bodies to the most far away analogies you could think of, that when looked at weren’t as far away as that (household appliances, horses neighing, bell’s booming). 

He gesticulated and spoke at times with enthusiasm and others on auto-pilot but the gist of his giveaway was research, we were in a laboratory, and he was a scientist. And we were his rats. In this instance I had soothed slightly my behaviour and was well into respecting the process but as the year came to an end disenchantment also came to pass and the management of personal life with a time I should have been more careful with was already starting to fall. 

PAUSA

Estou severamente farto de me ouvir enquanto escrevo, de me ler enquanto leio, de saborear este vómito amargo de uma pessoa em constante palestra sobre ela própria em vez de sobre coisas. Sim, coisas. É a palavra que uso por não saber o nome delas, por não conseguir referi-las, por ter ficado tão completamente preso no eu pelo falhanço com o outro que me imbuo de mim com um escárnio falso pela atenção que não me é dada pelos filmes e livres e contos e peças que permanecem numa gaveta e a constante realização de que sou insuficiente. Que a confiança enorme que na escola tinha era cega, surda mas de todo muda. 

PAUSA PERSISTE

In this year rather than a sorceress we had a witch, she was mean and authoritarian, severe and snotty - a true disciplinarian. But as any runt of a rebel, met with power, they will reply with play. I don’t much remember her classes other than what I’ve just said. We did go see her perform in a warehouse in her high pitched operatic voice with impressive modulation and a sharing of whatever was going on in her mind, or life, or who knows. 

It’s funny how one is quick to judge and loathes being judged. It’s not primal, it’s civilisation, which is oh so civilised. Which brings me to a very important trueism or aspect, point or Fallacy. I’ve never known the meaning of a Fallacy even though I employ the term every once in a while, it’s called pretend, it is vital to survival which is in itself something I wasn’t aware of much beyond and more regularly in fact outside of the obvious spectacle in Theatre and Movies and Fiction and Fantasy, it is all around us, at every turn, in every person, performing so they belong, performing so they may belong, performing so none notice they don’t and even more so performing so they may keep belonging. It’s a nasty business it is. Depending on how you go about it. Depending on how comfortable you are to play, because if you’re weary, hungry, angry or sad playing is harder and then you turn mad. When you drop that mask, and you show your cross, they crucify you and don’t cry your loss. 

I got sidetracked. I was gonna say, rather repeat what I stated in the Introduction that your every move is always being monitored, that lisping tongues are seductively swaying from mouth to mouth and head to head so that the powers that be may understand who they may trust and who will only give them a headache. As was thusly driven in the goings on outside of school as I made the ranks in three different plays, with three different powers, and three different forms of performance. Do I digress? I probably do. It’s cause I ate and had a beer. I always work better starved. I will finish this second year though, here we go: Classical Theatre with one of the Greatest Stage Directors and Actors in the History of Portugal (LMC) in the since deceased Teatro da Cornucópia; Contemporary Post-Modern, even if both terms clash, Theatre with a Frenchman at the Alkantara Festival; and performance art with a couple from the Algarve who tour their pieces across Europe all the time and splendidly suck on the teet of state funding like the majority of working artists in Europe today. Would the privatisation of art be preferable? I faintly argue it would, because in that case we wouldn’t be perpetually following dated or forced modernistic views of social servants and innovation could actually take place. Does one want innovation really? Detouring once again. What was this report actually about? What am I reporting on? I’m constantly thinking about the sole reader, a delightful sweet teacher, who I would playfully jest with in class, as with most Theoretical teachers, the constant need to impress or defy the father, to look for him in others who have knowledge to impart, it’s really quite pathetic. Impress the fathers and seduce the mothers. Aedipus, Aedipus, Aedipus, damn bugger.

And again there was Interpretation. A repetitive director where a sample of Shakespeare was executed, repetitive but strong mind you. With actual things to say.  Some Beckett took place as well along the way, I got naked to the textures of Endgame. Although I can’t recall any more specifics.

They would also say, a lot of them, that in that school you’re the one who does it, on whom depends your route. It may be true, it may not. I don’t know, I’m still trying to figure it out. 

 

And another director, although more of an actor, a consecrated one as such, with a million projects constantly happening outside the school and a delightful sense of humour, an overwhelming current culture and a training under an also revered practitioner that I myself have never been able to understand his worth, having gone to a workshop of his, for but a day, and found him a fart. With this director, we were made to create our own material. Supporting it on existent pieces nonetheless. My group cleaned the room and then proceeded to have a one by one confessional. It was cheesy and juvenile but still worthwhile. This teacher also said something that stuck when I asked him why my grade had been so low - that I was theatrically immature.  

3

So this one’s gonna be easy and will fly by in an instant -  my stint abroad. It’s worth mentioning that in the previous year, apart from all the schooling and all the plays a short film was also produced, one where apart from that I wrote and directed and acted alongside two major promise actors who have gone on to enjoy an actual career both in film and theatre. It was spoken in French, Portuguese and English and Tunnel of Babel is the direct translation of its title and indeed its environment. 3 lads who therein meet and comprehend each other although they’re speaking different tongues and have no recollection of knowing other than their own. An absurdist prong hailing from Beckett and the Bible, a will to make and a film to fake. A first leap into what wasn’t strictly a narrative story. They meet and talk and then walk and walk and share and sway their realities away until they question just that, how long will we stay here? How long have we been here? Will it ever end?  

After showing this film at a Cultural Center called Culturgest and having a work of mine be witnessed for the first time in an auditorium packed with people, not a week later I was flying to England to go to Warwick University and demystify the land where I had spent the first 5 years of my life. And to remove myself from what seemed at a time a comfortable position with which one may attain stagnation. We find all these justifications. We attribute meaning to our losses as well as our gains as if they all belong to some higher purpose, a calling, a mission. But really we’re just falling and failing and trying better in the words of the Irishman I need not refer by name for the third time. 

I got to class and it was dreadful. The cultural shock was abismal. Never mind the fact it was strictly theoretical, everyone was so darn professional. As if already in the workplace. Extremely conditioned and prepared from an early age to be the cream of the crop, the elite of their privilege in what is practically an Ivy League school equated with however the UK call their top tier and that just depressed the hell out of me. I went to a couple of classes and spent the rest of the semester drinking with a couple of friends and adapting the Tunnel of Babel into an international feature length film called Barca to be set in Naples, the Azores and Scotland. 

4’s in the next chapter. I’ll only say that a sort of audition was being held and I was to be seen over video conference. I wouldn’t have it. Academically speaking my grades were terrible and certain teachers weren’t too keen on my participating in a project that would only select 2 actors from our year in an international cooperation between three schools and aware that I was of such, I wouldn’t have it. I wouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to work with the freshest most exciting company I had seen in Lisbon over the course of our course. So I flew back earlier without warning and got the part. Council’s still tried to convince the director against it, he also wouldn’t have it.

5

A whole new context. A whole other group. My class all graduated and too many events to condense in a few paragraphs, but let’s try. 

Voice with neither a sorceress or a witch, rather a sweet older lady in charge of the department for ions upon centuries. Habituated with the dealing of rows upon rows of aspiring actors, students with different histories but all filed through the first two years of the course. More exercises, more songs and even a concert, a sort of farewell to the school grounds where we would sing as an entire group and individually and in some cases in duets or trios. I may have partaken of two of these events. I can’t remember. I sang Les Miserables in a jazzy pretentious jive, it was glorious. Was it with this new class or the last? It’s hard to say. It’s all kind of hazy especially taking into consideration a 6 that would be the current return to finish this business. There really isn’t much of an excuse to what I’m about to say but I’m getting lazy. I don’t want to talk about this. It’s not just that certain situations come pouring through and taking over like scars and special times, or an exacerbated hurt of when things were more active and playful, constantly surrounded with people and actively existing without interval, I’m also riddled with how pointless it feels to drudge up the past and continuously talk about myself. The point is a paper, and the past is its plot, but the importance seems to falter, because arriving at a place I did not. This should be pragmatic. Formal. Tidy and sorted. Instead its confessional, dreary distorted…  AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!

Movement with yet another Italian eminence, a conveyer of falsities, forever twisting from reality to fiction, he also taught a module called Performance. In movement we would collapse and… wait a minute, did I ever take movement with him or was it just performance? He gave me the highest Interpretation grade throughout my course, in this area of removed concrete floor boards I was king. This non place, this bending of rules, this hallowed ground of no thing’s holy and all thoughts anything. A sphere of provocation and a cube of defiance. We would do all sorts of things, but they shall remain private, for even without sacred seeds we did privilege a secrecy - except for this one time where a foreign exchange student took it upon herself to acuse me of assault. An exercise where half the class was lined up against the wall and the other would go over to them and fidget, fondle, and even flirt with their still bodies as she herself did completely when she wasn’t against the wall. I put my hands on her neck, without applying force and when we came back from a break she had told the teachers a twisted tale, forced them to move it up the hierarchical ladder and even informed her university over seas. The teachers in the school knew she was exaggerating, and even told me in private but had to go through the motions none the less and trade me from one class to the other. It was spectacular. I loved it. A terrific feeling. I hesitated to include this in the report but the fact is it thoroughly branded my time at the school. 

A film module that I completely took control of, where we had 4 films to make, mostly centred on dialogues between actors, that I suggested we intertwine with each other, because we all had to play in two of them, and so it would be fun if we were always the same person, or character, or whatever, so that all the films connected amongst themselves. I sort of coordinated the whole business with the teacher, the only own crossing departments at the submarine who also taught film and looking back perhaps it wasn’t as fair or humble a route to take. Although the results were delightful and we all had fun and the ultimate piece from all the other three was entitled Mete-a-cena, in a pun between Meta and putting the scene, which Mete means. In this scene a dialogue in an ill lit place ensues as gradually the actors become aware of their being filmed and become people, privy to the fact the camera crew are the characters from the other scenes with which they had had contact in a jambalaya of he screwed him who screwed her but is married to him and, you know, that sort of groundbreaking twist…

It seems unfair to detail an account of the practical classes and run through the others but I only recall certain moments like one particular teacher standing before us in the auditorium on the first class, still and dominant of his surroundings for a whole hour before he sat at his desk and what respect he commanded. It was the most theatrical moment during that time but still, I have no idea what he spoke about. Aesthetics and Contemporary Art with the playwright of Bilingue in a tutored class was also remarkable. For the life of me I’ll always feel unable to match his power, to put it in the term I can think of the quickest. 

Let’s get off track once again, just for the hell of it, as we always had. Two steps forward an entire mile backward with ordinary terms and not as much an enlightenment as one would have enjoyed having. I became an emo obsessed with emotions I was supposed to portray, forgetting to learn neglecting to burn the infantile/juvenile/facile forms of rebellion not even that                                                       have been pretending to pose a threat to the establishment but its just that I ain’t established                                                                               and won’t ever be cause self sabotage creeps over everything I do I’m sorry for this over share teach                           excuse the tricks               pardon the attempt at giving content to a consummate fact nothing has remained                             I made a mistake went over the e-mails from when I was at school                   its no wonder I haven’t been taken seriously                         its really no mystery. I’m miserable. A joke of a jolly jester. I let the world not only knock me down but become more and less and less preoccupied with the all around and instead the reflection, mine own                             I’m lonely. Get over it, pick yourself up. Perform a lift off.                                                                                                                                 Ain’t no more gas left.

ALSO MET MARTIM G. WITH WHOM I BEGAN AN ODYSSEY OF MAKING A MOVIE, the lad featured   below. 6&7

 Chapter C 

or playing on the idea of Bilingue with Pedro Penim and José Maria Viera Mendes

You can see my investment decrease. So much so that I won’t even write something fresh on this topic and rather translate a document I had to write about the play to the movement teacher at the time, as close to it as I can. Although the act of translation is coherent with what people believed to be the topic, theme and tone of the show. It was not. Welcome:   

Before we started the project we were given a list of materials to read so that we didn’t arrive at the table without reference. Yes, because the table was a very important part of the work, before we could move on to the stage it was necessary to understand very well what we were about to say. The reason for such concepts crossing each other and the purpose of showing them in a play that would serve not only as an element of entertainment but with which the spectator could confront himself and hopefully take something home.

Bilingue thinks, it has people thinking, and wants to put its observers thinking too. It’s a certain kind of speech that may at times sound repetitive or armed with an excessive variety but is truthfully something that already knows from the get go that it won’t be easily accessible. It wasn’t that if we said we were cynical or sincere that you would immediately understand we wanted to spread a doctrine of sincerity and give the world the power of truth. It was the confrontation with a problem, that of categorising the meanings for what the generality of people thought a certain thing is, in line with the first association you make when you hear or read a word. A word can’t just be one thing and we can’t just attribute an idea putting aside all the rest it entails, just like the word ends up being simply that word. A blind man can’t only be perceived as a blind man, and can’t also be seen as every other blind man. That’s not what defines him.

As I referred above, a great part of the work was discussion. Upon reading Zé Maria’s text we had to know exactly what every little thing meant. In the first two weeks in Porto, he accompanied us and we read along and interrupted so we could reach what was written. The whole team, the actors, the wardrobe designer, the stage director, the director’s assistant, the light designer and Pedro. We also frequently utilised internet research to support an idea that wanted to be demonstrated. Truth is, the execution of a show was also being taken into account from early on and we encouraged to participate in the creative process.

Later on, in the interest of the need to distribute different parts to the actors we tried to understand what the different voices were that spread throughout the text. If there were similarities between certain lines and others. Because the text wasn’t initially divided into characters, the actual concept of characters didn’t even enter into the logic of a dramatic literature piece that was nothing but philosophical speech thrown from one side to the other through a dialogue of varying opinions. Instead of characters there were opinions, but one needed to personify them. We arrived at the conclusion that there was a person who needed to tell their story and couldn’t, and not even identify themselves. A magician/ess that was tired of pre-enlightened behaviours in contemporary society. A passionate romantic that would simply listen to the musicality of words and wanted people to understand her gift of sincerity. A contemporary that’s super of her time and wants to manifest herself. A psycho bitch that simply contests everything and mocks everyone. A chimera whose presence was at the margin of a narrative per se and just wanted to enunciate what others couldn’t, summarising and at times musically supporting the action.

When these people were found it was asked of us, in a first moment, to research who these people that were assigned to us could be. In a second moment we researched that of another. We brought to the table many things we had found found and each one of us was able to draw for themselves what would make sense in the building of their work. It is therefore clear the fact that intellectuality had a strong degree of importance in this work, in the sense we found things through logical reasoning and even artificial choices. We are in the power to decide to do something and if has to be just because, so be it. When we get to a pattern, a definition of what Bilingue will be, then we will have to be coherent with our choices but until then, if we think up the idea of getting a bunny with shiny disco ball pellets just cause it’s awesome, let’s do it.

In this way, we went on making, little by little, so the words we were going to say weren’t simply sung or enunciated, but were ours. I believe this is in itself a methodology that doesn’t want the actors to be mere puppets that recite the words of others but thinking beings appropriating an idea and merely showing it because it becomes their’s as well. Something that contributed to the flow of this appropriation was an overall relaxed environment. Rather than a restricted authoritarian place where each contribution had to be weighed, it was a table where people gathered, all in the same level, to talk about topics that interested them without there being an issue with straying from them once in a while.

After two or three weeks we started using a different method to reach this same relaxation inside the show because what we intended was that these people could be talking with one another as if they did it all the time. It wasn’t a political debate or an intelectual gathering but an ordinary discussion between people that shared their ideas. We did something called Quizoola done by the company Forced Entertainment which is a game between two people where apparently one asks questions and the other answers, just that. But the truth is there’s a set of rules that the participants know before hand so that the fluidity of the exercise maintains itself and doesn’t become boring. One of the rules is precisely speaking to the audience. He who asks has the task of helping the one who shall reply say as much as possible and if there’s something with a interest, they must explore it. She who answers can’t simply reply yes or no, they have to give something rich or at least with a degree of effort, even if what’s being said isn’t real. They must keep the audience engaged and it’s important that there are different rhythms and tonalities throughout the conversation. This game was important not only to find the shape of interaction within ourselves but to unlock the fact we were all a group of strangers and needed to know each other a bit better. 

Its through a game that we perfect a machine that when required to work stops being an instrument but an experience. I believe something I acquired, even if I knew it beforehand, was the knowledge that for a group of people to function as a group, it has also to be a unit and that if they’re all on a plank of wood in the middle of the ocean in different points of equilibrium they shall stay afloat and that if someone moves from these points, this understanding, that plank will sink, just like everyone on top of it.

When we finally took these words to the stage they weren’t sentences anymore, and when we found ourselves there we weren’t just reading. We were talking, in mediation with each other. Here there started to gradually form a separation between group and director. We would do the scenes and were interrupted when something wasn’t in agreement with what we had agreed upon. We were constantly reminded, not as a correction but a support, by Pedro, of what we were really doing. Above all it was impervious that the meaning of things transpired, they couldn’t merely by listings of facts or thoughts.  A comprehension was adamant, especially in bigger chunks of text where it would be easy to lose the attention of who witnessed.

Other than these methodologies, that don’t differ greatly from those of other directors, although in some cases the meaning and will that this understanding comes across, becomes at times secondary in Pedro’s case it was primal, there was another very important component that probably made us grow the most as performers and stretched us in a way that made Bilingue interesting and fun to watch. Rhythm. From start to finish the carriage is moving and can’t stop for a second, not even decrease in speed. We’d finish a scene and “it’s too slow,” at the end of rehearsal we’d hear “you’re making too many pauses,” a monologue was said and what remained was “connect the ideas more, you don’t need to separate them.” The fact we did things so quickly made us have a faster reaction time turning us more astute and able to face a setback that may arise.

There was one situation in which Pedro wanted to unlock a difficulty that manifested in one of the actresses putting on a song and asking us to dance, to have fun. It was a scene with me where we needed a certain mood between us, as if we were in a bar in that moment and we had to raise our voice to be heard. We were doing the scene for some while now and it wouldn’t happen, that connection. He put the music playing pretty loud and we tried to make the scene regardless of this complication but the result in the actress was somewhat tense and she even started to cry. I told her not to worry and just do it, without thinking of the mistake or what could come out of it. I believe it was the hardest day of work but that in the long run reaped it’s benefits, maybe on that day she didn’t understand but it later enabled her to find what she needed. It also helped me insofar as it made me privy to the hardships that would follow in the process.

There was a physicality component that accompanied us that was fundamental, we didn’t want dead bodies, or bodies lost in a nonsensical hyper-activity but the room had to move. We had to always be doing so that the space was demonstrated and ours, that we inhabited it. If we could be present, the audience would be with us. It’s not as if we spoke intensely on this subject but this necessity was understood through time. We understood, each in their own time, that at the end of the day, it was just speech and that if there wasn’t a life beyond that, it wouldn’t work. It’s a feeling that remains or doesn’t appear, that of actually doing.

Apart from this there was something else, what is this of telling a story? In what moment does a story stop being mine and starts to belong to others? In what ways does this affect me? This wasn’t perhaps a concern of the playwright and the director but from the moment the story actually belonged to the playwright there’s a possibility that got me thinking. That of turning public what we preserve so intimately, and if that can help us reach another place in regards to this story. I think it’s important that the processes through which we pass give us some sensorial experience or search for a certain completion. We are constantly trying to find a definition for ourselves and if we do not confront other realities with different speeds than ours or other ways to see the world we won’t evolve. The body also evolves through the mind, our tool is a control panel and if we aren’t behind its console we won’t even be able to give a step sideways let alone a backflip.

The concept of the body is a very ample kingdom but it doesn’t necessarily need a contemplation to attain an understanding. There wasn’t much warm up done or exercises in the sense of an awakening of the body but the fact was that if we arrived at the end of the show and weren’t exhausted something had gone wrong. The experience in Porto was very complicated for the fact we were residing in a lodging 50 mins from the city where the rehearsals took place. They happened from 10 am to 6 pm and the tiredness was present. We had a constant rhythm and it wasn’t easy to maintain a fresh participation in the face of these facts but the idea of 2 months and a half dedicated to a project was very rewarding. It was possible to feel what it’s like to be whole heartedly in a process. To give what you could cause there was still a long way to go or even more because it was about to end.

It really is hard to speak of the body in relation to Bilingue but I know movement and presence were fundamental. What went on inside of us, the fact we were implicated, the will to break that barrier with the audience without that being the reason that moved us created a light. It’s uncertain what grabs or impels us to follow something that’s happening before our eyes but there’s a magnetism or strength that pulls us or simply isn’t there. There’s an activity that generates interest or in the opposite pole a demonstration of innocuous actions that shall be comparable to a circus. It becomes merely an event, an occurrence without causality. 

It all comes down to a present body. To a being that connects to others. To a justification. In which moment do we start to live beyond our own mundane life? Or when does that which we live in a demonstration start to be more than a mere demonstration? When what we do has a soul. When what we intend to create has won a life of its own and has ceased to be Individual A+Individual B+Individual C+stage+text and has become something worthy of itself, with an identity in and of itself. We attain this through generosity, from what we give so that the embryo may go through all the steps toward existence.

I don’t know how I activate my body and I don’t know what I do so it is more present than when I was eating my toast and drinking my glass of milk at breakfast but its in the attempt that I surprise myself. It’s in wanting to be bigger that I transfigure and in wanting to be strong that I break through that wall.

In Bilingue a faulty perception of humanity is drawn on humanity, (amongst other things), and too speak of such subjects one has to be there. It seems like I am no longer saying anything but I believe these tools of self-preservation were acquired in a confrontation with the challenge of being an hour and forty minutes connected without being able to disappear. Of course there were days when that happened, those days weren’t good.

At the heart of it all, what I’m trying to say is that focus in work, for the work, is fundamental, or else the work doesn’t exist. It seems obvious but I consider it important to refer anyhow.

In Lisbon we started to have people watch the rehearsals more and more and that was important so that the process may open up before opening night.

I’m starting to have a hard time going on without it seeming like fodder, I think I haven’t got anything else to say. This was it.

Except it wasn’t because a whole lotta shenanigans ensued but what of it? I relish these as the best days of my life with some of the most petty and annoying moments in it as well. I read it again 6 years gone by and find most of it naif and enchanted for the fact was it had been my first actual serious experience that didn’t come from an already written text and the amount of attention for the central role I was playing was obviously a blast. All that I learned I attempted to employ for a while and went on to mostly disregard and lose. Tis because I use the word I too much. Oh so much.

It would have been dramatic to end the chapter on that note, as if grandiose and fake the awareness and repentant single serving existence but I would like to add a quote before we move on from Truman Capote’s unfinished novel, Answered Prayers described as obscene and brilliant by The  Times some odd 35 years ago or so “(…) as truth is nonexistent, it can never be anything but illusion - but illusion, the by-product of revealing artifice, can reach the summits nearer the unobtainable peak of Perfect Truth. For example, female impersonators. The impersonator is in fact a man (truth), until he recreates himself as a woman (illusion) — and of the two, the illusion is the truer.”

A rehearsal or maybe even a show picture from Bilingue at the National Theatre, I could have chosen one that featured more actors of the play, but I didn’t. 8

Chapter D 

or creating a separate universe as an actor and film maker in the poem ARRABALDE by Frederico Serpa 

A great deal has been written on and around the subject and topic of this gargantuas task that at the start was but propositioned by a then recent friend as an entertaining endeavour, to merely shoot an actual ride of the motorbike, a less than vintage still refined looking Vespa if we were to take out of our account how broken down and torn it had at that time already been through the ages. We were both dealing with a few irrelevantly enhanced relationship and academic quarrels and the pressures of meeting with such expectations, our own and the ones others had for us and even more so the answer we would want to give to what we perceived was the quest of otherness. So we went on a bike ride. And we found something. No restrictions, no timetables, not a destination, or a mission. Perhaps we found love, a bromance as some would say. And bickered on occasion while habitually in a daze of delight. There is love in friendship and I don’t think I had known such a strong tie until then. This isn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to talk about the process, the different titles and stages, the different teams and people involved but I’m quite sick of doing that in grants for financial aid I never wanted to ask for in the first place. The reader isn’t aware of these elements and if I fail to give you context whatever will it matter the narration of a bond? I’m not admitting to anything or coming out of anywhere or even actually satisfied with such a brutal outright simplistic reveal, but it all comes together in a way. Not that I am Gay. But that I don’t really yet know what or who I am and maybe that’s why I keep pushing and pushing instead of sitting and terminating. Maybe I’m just not enough. I wanted the film to be a demonstration of life, both realistic and fantastic, hedonistic and profound, never pedagogic and if obedient to formula, only if ironically. But perhaps it was just a cover up, like many authors will alter the identities of their portraits, deviate from actual fact to create fiction, its all a game of concealment. What do we know in private and announce in public? How do we feel within and avoid without, again a few glasses and the national team eliminated by Belgium from the European tournament. Mobs of gold, values of silver, drudged deals of bronze and three colors in the film I’ve translated to OUTSKIRTS but never really wanted to translate for it has weight in its word and insecurity in its adaptation to a different language. YELLOW, RED AND BLUE. YRB. RED, BLUE AND YELLOW. RBY. BLUE, YELLOW AND RED. BYR. In the official spectrums they speak of RGB which would be red green and blue. But that’s official. That’s professional and the absolute opposite of the main concept in my movie and my thoughts my ideas and ultimately my excuses, that when something become excessively understood it can no longer be artistic because its prepared and agile, concocted and devised which can somehow be otherwise estranged from an authenticity, whatever does that mean? I wanted to make a movie that was so far away from what professional movies look like. Amateur is filled with valour. What we don’t know is more real than what we have been able to turn and somehow the scorn I feel from what I yearn that one day they will fold… what I’m trying to say, in a way, is I’ve regressed. Everyone telling me to strictly be a writer nowadays, an area I do most definitely feel unworthy of for it requires discipline and being one owns boss and setting timetables and a whole lot of reading, a practice I most definitely falter in, I once read Vincent Gallo in an open letter admit he’d never read a word of fiction in his life, an actor/director I’m quite fond of and that speaks more truth in a current world of denser cloaks of falsity, and he didn’t write it with disdain or shame, technical books he’s apparently read a bunch of, being an expert sound man apart from a career in film with names such as Coppola and others I can’t think of, manipulating his very eerie looking vampiric physique. His Brown bunny is a work of art but was shot down by Roger Ebert at Cannes(a festival I once drove 17 hours straight as a madman in my grandmother’s car to try and perceive what the industry really is and perceive I did not) and his golden lined popcorn view of how films should be made. There is no specific formula for film making, it should be an art form in permanent expansion, rather than the recycling of formulaic trends to appease the consumer that will in the present century at times consume more than even live. Perhaps I’m preying on my own experience but according to Kant, and post-modernism and Constructivism there is no other way for the world view one carries, and the world one imagines shall always derive from the particular personal point of view of every single individual. When the film set out, it was supposed to be about hardship in city life, how one will refuse to grow up if impeded to fit in, to find one’s rhythm and progression. So I tried to witness or shape scenes from an observer’s point of view, and then make those same observers make an option in the face of violence, and in a third stage, a more profound and intimate look at several, in this case seven, situations in scenery’s with varying characters, persons. It was 2016 when it started out, a lifetime of an infant has taken place since then and the melting of my ambitions and smiles have reached a peak where seldom I visit the outside world for it scares me as well as frustratingly kicks me to a curb of no belonging. Friends and colleagues have moved on in this free lance profession where one has to constantly be moving on to never halt. A 360º control of the process has shifted to a point where it seems not even a right angle of dominion is left in my eyes and tongue and thoughts and ideas. Positivity is key in this planet and sharing ones feelings and affections has without a doubt a tipping point, the circumstance in which it would be healthy to create and dictate, collaborate and thrive, remains scathed and torn, shattered and scorned and instead of a pursuit for deepening one’s knowledge and know how, creativity and content, an erosion to a dark place of insecurity and giving up, just willing to disappear from an earth where there was no place for him. Where days of sunshine are irrelevant, clean breathable oxygen is spent in closed quarters because what’s the point if you can’t reach your potential? If you’re in the wrong place, physically and mentally? Daniel Johnston says in his lyric for the Story of an artist, the song with which hopefully I could open my movie as such: 

I don't know

It's like when you go to read your own poetry

You get all choked up

Listen up and I'll tell a story

About an artist growing old

Some would try for fame and glory

Others aren't so bold

Everyone and friends and family

Saying, "hey, get a job

Why do you only do that only?

Why are you so odd?"

"We don't really like what you do

We don't think anyone ever will

It's a problem that you have

And this problem's made you ill"

Listen up and I'll tell a story

About an artist growing old

Some would try for fame and glory

Others aren't so bold

The artist walks alone

Someone says behind his back

"He's got his gall to call himself that

He doesn't even know where he's at"

The artist walks among the flowers

Appreciating the sun

He does this all his waking hours

But is it really so wrong

They sit in front of their TVs

Saying, "hey, this is fun"

And they laugh at the artist

Saying, "he doesn't know how to have fun"

The best things in life are truly free

Singing birds and laughing bees

You got me wrong says he

The sun don't shine in your TV

Listen up and I'll tell a story

About an artist growing old

Some would try for fame and glory

Others aren't so bold

Everyone and friends and family

Saying, "hey, get a job

Why do you only do that only?

Why are you so odd?"

"We don't really like what you do

We don't think anyone ever will

It's a problem that you have

And this problem's made you ill"

Listen up and I'll tell a story

About an artist growin' old

Some would try for fame and glory

Others just like to watch the world

And so the direction of this report takes flight in the complaining qualms of contemporary craps of chaotic shit. It’s all very boring. At the end of the day I just make movies cause I don’t wanna be alone and I can’t make friends cause this same notion is so overwhelmingly picked up by anyone that it’s off-putting. This lack of confidence. And ADD, or Bipolarity or Manic Depression, or lack of focus, or a declining mental heath that really perhaps wasn’t that healthy in the first place… a few weeks ago, before I started writing this report I put something down, it went like this (…) I gave it a once over. Decided it should be SIDE A of the Conclusion, it has to have a SIDE B given it was written before everything dotted down over here. I should have written this Chapter D before all the rest, before getting tired. 

So I think I’m gonna quote from Ethan, Hawke. From a pal who in his fictional version comes to visit him outside Broadway where he’s playing Hotspur in a complete staging of the Henry IV Shakespeare plays. The further context is that this guy, a movie star, they both are, but our protagonist has just cheated on his rockstar wife and got caught in the papers, so things aren’t grand. I share this because It can be at once so far removed and in a different time or parallel string of occurrences very much applicable: “ Let me ask you this,” he proposed. “What is the point of your life? Why do you wake up, why do you go to the bathroom, ride the subway, smoke cigarettes, go put on your costume, recite some lines, bow, call a friend, go home, eat dinner, watch a movie and jerk off and go to bed? Why do you do that? You’ve already done it all before? See, what I mean is, some people have never reached their goals — so they still secretly think when and if they try, their goals will have meaning. But those few of us who have achieved our goals, or those people who are racked with the disappointment of failing to meet their goals after a lifetime of real  effort, both know that the fuckin’ goal was pointless - like the winner of a 1919 minor league baseball game. It’s a shared fantasy that any of this crap ever mattered in the first place. People love to apply themselves to games, jobs, relationships, politics, to create the illusion of meaning…If I can just heal my shoulder, then I could be a quarterback! If only I could finish this documentary and tell the story of my great-uncle to the world; then I would matter. If I was a movie star, then I would exist. People will light a crack pipe or steal a television just to try and feel that they exist - to ramp up the idea that something is in fact happening - or others just turn on a video game and go to sleep - they don’t want to look square in the eyes that there is nothing to do. Maybe people think that if they confront the meaninglessness, the utter worthlessness of life they will buckle under the weight of the emptiness, and they are afraid. Maybe…” and he goes on to further his point, that there is none. It will impress upon a particular type of person this kinds of notions of meaning but will also be completely overshadowed by most who will just keep their head down and do what they must, just out of duty, just cause some things have to be done. I think it has become quite apparent that I don’t want to talk about the film. I’d rather it speak for itself. 

Conclusion

SIDEA  

Letter to Lisbon, and it’s respective lisbonites.

Hello, my name is Fred Serpa and I am here to deliver a statement. No one asked me to do so but still, I feel inclined. I will try to keep it short and idealistically it will be a reunion of a humorist nature, a well spoken subtlety of language and a cut-throat pinch of measured honesty. This may be perceived as a strange form of clout, to those who are unaware of the term it is the action taken by people in the current virtual and social panorama whereupon they shall urge themselves upon some mightier figure of fame in order to reap a benefit of attention. Chill, I am not going to venture into a diagram of modern day society. 

In the first place, as hard as it would seem to believe, I am not a narcissist. Our personalities for the most part are formed from cause to effect. Origin episode to behavioural pattern. I will also not dig too deep into the tired realm of psychology, especially because I possess no formal training or understanding of those matters in an academic shape and have very little will to be fact-checked. Come to think of it, it bears me little mind.

Having felt rejected for the greater part of my life due to the travesty of being a bit off, defences have popped up all around, creating hysterical walls of absolutely fake confidence. Devoid of roots, having lived until I was 5 in England, in Israel until the age of 7, at an English Private School in Lisbon till I was eleven, and 2 Portuguese public schools for the remainder of my high-school education, one could argue that a unified defined identity could have a bit of a hard time bursting into fruition, securing itself as a specific individual. I’d like to just take a little moment to say this isn’t a sob story, and obviously when put against the tragedies and terrible situations in which millions in our world today live, it may seem insignificant, like a whining white privileged man child at the crossroads of his failures, where they did not pave a route to a success, whatever this concept means. Here’s where I must disagree with what in fairness I am assuming crossed your minds but the fact is, I too am a person and no one on the face of this earth should have the meanderings and details of their life, inner and outer, made lesser for the belief that some have a head start. And many do, there’s no doubt about it, but there are levels of privilege and they are not restricted to class, wealth, education among others but also always a result of how one takes that class, or that wealth, or that education. And so on, and so on. And so on.

It really is a pity that I tried to avoid depicting the so called modern day society and just ended up doing so, I can’t help myself. The point was, that when one searches for love and empathy, transfixed with joy and delight from the world around at a young age but is met with pointing fingers, disdainful chuckles and a, shall we say, putting aside, the effort toward acceptance grows greater. The dosage of attention given to a will for that same attention, fires back, like a lover trucker. So yeah, that’s when I decided I wanted to be an actor, from the immense naivety of a kid stuck on movies, it just seemed that the people in them, were loved the world around. Universal love, what a doozy! When you combine that with a father film buff of an immense intellectuality and no doubt arrogant concession of his holy general knowledge that left you with 2 older sisters and a Mother to play both parenting roles at the tender age of 7, a canal of communication is construed by the self conscience. How will Daddy love me and pay attention? If I make movies worthy of his mention. Bear in mind, at the time, I thought I just loved film. Cause and effect see? Anyway, it would appear I am taking us on a sort of an extended scenic route of my past to arrive at a point, point being, my future. Oscar Wilde once said that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. One of the most celebrated actors in the world today, preached to the entire globe as he took home a recognition for his exquisite portrayal of a man riddled with mental illness that one of humanities best traits is it’s ability to offer other chances, and not just a second, if you bear into account the number of times you have spoken ill to your mother, or disapointed a friend, or maybe even repeatedly betrayed a loved one, the chances pile up, but it can happen that they disappear too, run out, there’s only so much they will take and what’s worst is that even you may feel less and less inclined to give yourself another chance. I really didn’t wanna preach, I promise, but I gotta back my own arguments with some sort of thought, not that I’m on trial, officially. 

Now, before I go any further, to those of you who are wondering why a letter to Lisbon is drawn out in English, apart from the obvious reason of a broader international reach, even if potentially it won’t reach too far, the fact is I’m sick of waiting. I’m seriously darkened by this hiatus in which my creativity and even normal life functioning seem to persist through a limbo where it even seems like my faculties and good nature toward others decrease as the years go by and youth becomes less young and a sense of social ineptitude broadens and the idealisation of ever taking the helm of whatever artistic project happens to spin, or spawn or surge inside my mind becomes thinner. I want to move on. And Lisbon is not the place, I believe, where that may ever take place.

Retracing backward a bit, with this whole portrait becoming a tryptic, there are two more things I would like to point out before I move on to an apology, or perhaps if chance will have it, an accusation. The fact I was less than agile at making friends (at the age of 8, at a kid’s birthday party I thanked him for the invitation, to which he replied, my mom made me invite you), and related on a more frequent level, with my mom and sisters and therefore felt more comfortable around there gender is what drew me to girls, plus an unreasonable sense of validation, plus they heard me, when at home my voice seemed frequently silenced by very big personalities, plus they were and still are considerably more interesting species than the male, purposefully although not disdainfully removing all other non-binary beings from the argument, cause remember, when I was a teenager, or even a boy, this whole immensely blown out of proportion rise of genders and ideologies, on both sides of the western political scale, in all the raucous emancipation of opinion over fact, in this tiresome permanent debate and phoney forum, did not exist. Or at least it hadn’t reached my still developing ears and to add to that, the generation before, naturally or unnaturally, instilled certain views and principles that went out of date quicker than a carton of milk and take notice, where once we looked upon others more experienced to guide us through the building of our character and beliefs, was now increasingly becoming a self taught generation, or so it seemed. It’s also important to mention that these past few sentences are not exclusive to these past decades, this has always been and so it shall always be, the great difference however, was the vertiginous rise of technology, the sudden permanent 24/7 reachability of every and any human being and the invasion of social media into our forever fragmenting selves. Where the whole world wants to be an individual and therefore plays an individual rather than is one because it is mimicking the word of the land, nodding at what needs be and grunting at what needs not and even being called out if in fact one fails to mention a certain subject. We have become a fascist surveillance society disguised as a fair and equal and free one. And Trump’s a tramp, and Bolsonaro a bolsar-raro (bolsar would be Portuguese for vomitttus, close enough) and Le Pen in France a well bent demon but what are a countries representatives if not the representation of that countries people? Pardon the generalisation, all are dangerous to be made, but so is mis-information, and fable news, and pulp being thrown down the throats of hypnotised consumers, that used to be citizens, but are increasingly becoming statistic, numbers, polls, pawns in the strict long held sovereignty of the world economy. Cause you’ve been so good and carried on with me until now, I’ll give ya another common place behind the scenes of this planet, the artists, are lying to you, just much as the politicians. A lie, is a lie - is a lie. Is a lie. Now wrap your noggin around that one!

And once again I strayed to the periphery of my point, but let’s bring it back shall we? 

I shed my guilt. I did naught but attempt to live, rather than survive. And if this meant some felt unappreciated along the way I apologise but I refuse to bear this cross any longer. And lord knows some have tried to send me there with an immature, heartless and cruel copycatting of the deluded modern day feminism, serving the political agenda of a left that has become so alt-right it has no idea. And it’s sad really, because they have lost awareness of how oppressing they have become where once oppression was felt. Look at Evergreen College as the most notorious example. Or don’t. And you can also be sure I am not camouflaging my shortcomings amidst some political point, I am aware of when I was wrong. 

To further make the point of my fake narcissism it is also important to refer that due to a fault in friend making, and to be honest, for a long time, a terror of networking, when it in fact gained a term, rather than the simple meeting people, my lower tier popularity resulted in the lack of roles, and therefore had to make em for myself, and direct them, and produce them and find, at the start of it all, someone to hold the camera, the boom, the bagels. (Never had a bagel in my life, true story. Is it? If it’s been said on the internet then it must be? Dang it, now the irony of that statement could tear the veracity of all that’s been said. Shoot!) Sooooo…this accumulation of roles will inflate the id (the impulsive and unconscious part of our psyche which responds to basic urges, needs and desires. According to Google) to a point where as it is matched with an unfaltering feeling of loneliness, one becomes increasingly ones own company and as depression, self-doubt and utter melancholy begin to settle in, ones own topic. That and the well known practice of driving from what you know, which we would like to know is ourselves. I also believe that in an increasingly egomaniacal, self-reflected, ever-inflated earth population it is more sincere to be self-centred as a mirror to where we’re at, as is said to be the responsibility of art, than to feign humility and grace, towering snobbishly over the less than perfect. Obviously a bit of humility and grace won’t hurt you but hark on this next call, they are a luxury bestowed on who can afford such a thing or on who cannot at all afford to not.

So yeah, perhaps I did waste a few opportunities, one could argue that I was irresponsible a time or twelve, at times lazy, frequently undisciplined, a maker of soft bourgeoisie mayhem, and someone who wasn’t quite sure what he wanted but the fact remains, films were made, words were written, drugs were had and a crescent self-marginalisation ensued as all around the doors kept on closing. 

I am going to conclude now, there really could be so much more to be said on this subject, I and the world around, or the scary trappings of city living, or stop whining cause you failed, the world owes you nothing! 

But what do I owe the world? 

As for Lisbon, and I’m quite upset to add over that cliffhanger but it had to be said, you are both dame and devil, all your little tribes and clicks, for all your beauty and promise, you have become a whore.

And to you Lisbonites, you treacherous deserving destination of a very passé, anti-establishment action of inverting the positive, into the negative, I couldn’t keep up with how little you wanted me to be kept.

And just as a definitive dedication or push to plug, I mean what was the purpose of this? I have a feature I’d like you to see, it’s called ARRABALDE which translates to OUTSKIRTS. And later on Catalunya or the Mecca of an Insane Football Comedian. And one day BARCA. And some time GRANT.  And should I really be laying out the entire intended film roster even before the commencent of a career, who knows, but I’d love to have it. Have a wonderful day and don’t bother subscribing, it’s not like I’m releasing the movie in a 13 episode instalments weekly due to an impending fear of never making it to a festival, or to a cinema or better yet and here the truth resides, giving the gesture I.e. the film, to the people, for free. Ba-Bye.

SIDE B

This has all been irrelevant.

Gallery

The digitalisation of what I wanted to show did not get ready on time.

Post Scriptum

The intended idea for this section would be a very neat and proper bibliography, but that would go against everything I’ve just written.

Credits

Mother, Father, Sisters, Friends, and lovers. God,  the Antichrist, Coca-Cola and Beckett. Daniel Johnston, Nina Simone, Carrie Fisher and Nanni Moretti. All my teachers, all my students, all that I have breathed and even more what I have seen. And a special thank you to whomever is reading for listening to these words.