Cast: Cacá Amaral, Roberto Leite, André Luis Lima, Bruno Feldman, Uryas de Garcia, Fernão Lacerda, Reinaldo Taunay, Ari Cegatto, Fausto Filho, Igor Constantinov, José Jesus, Rodrigo Juan, Rodney Monteiro, Will Prado, Wilson Rebello, Yoram Blaschkauer, Roberto Fernandes, Alex Del Claro, Alexsandro Santos, Fritz Gianvito, Gildo Fontolan, João Carlos Luz, Jorge Campos, Pedro Canovas, Reginaldo Costa,Wagner Menegare, William Costa Lima, Thiago Tomasi

This production began in June 2003, with a group of 30 students from many courses offered by Brazilian renown theater company Grupo Tapa. Now, it is restaged professionally, and is part of a drama study project called “Homens ao Mar” (Sea Men). This project looks forward breaking the walls between the public and the actors, and the “italian stage” conventions and artificialities. The project also intends to discuss issues like death, desire, loneliness and hope, themes which are investigated by O’Neill in his primary works, the sea plays: Bound East for Cardiff, In the Zone, The Moon of the Caribbees, and The Long Voyage Home.

To begin our journey, we started with Cardiff. The translation was our first problem and overcome by Fernando Paz, who made a long research both of the seamen’s jargon and everyday life, which O’Neill, who used to be a sailor, knew very well.

The performance is made of three parts. In the first one, the public stays at the pit (seaport) and watches a torment through a door. In the second one, the public is invited by the shipmasters to get on the stage (the ship) and have a close look at the sailors routine, where an accident occurs with one of the sailors, Yank, who is carried by his partners to the basement of the theater (the crew lodging), where the play will commence.

The first and second parts, a “sensorial” dramaturgy is explored: the plot is shown by body language, sounds, music, rhythm, smells and colours, leaving the word dialogues to the third part. These first parts are a kind of ritual, where the spectators get prepared, not rationally but sensorially, to the dramatized words of the third part.

In the audiovisual versions of Companhia Triptal’s plays Bound East for Cardiff and In the Zone, we did not want simply to film the acting performance. Specially in Cardiff, we tried to “walk” the camera into the stage, integrated into the scenery and take part of the action, a language dialogue between theater and video . There was no change in the actors interpretation or its original play format.