On Café Teatro Rolidei, a mix of party, bar and theater, actors mingle with the public to celebrate the sanity and craziness. More than a night club, the project was conceived by an NGO that promotes social inclusion of the mentally ill trough the arts
Text by Laís Clemente
The party, according to the sign by the door, begins “punctually at 22h something”. “And don’t you rush me, because 59 minutes after 22h is still something!”, jokes Mariana Esteves, 21 years, while collecting the entrance money. Every Friday and Saturday night she is a grumpy hostess that greets the clients on the entrance of the Café Teatro Rolidei.
Tonight, waiting doesn’t take as long as 22h59, the doors of this little space on the Municipal Theater are opened by 22h30, when we are received by the actors. Each night they play a different character, which varies according with the theme. On the 18th, under the theme Aqui Não se Usa Black Tie**, the characters Têzinha e Vêzinha try to gather collaborators for the strike they are planning at their school. Differently from the play of Gianfrancesco Guarnieri – which inspired the movie Eles Não Usam Black Tie*** –, at the Rolidei the fight is not syndicalist, but against freedom of choice: the snack served in the cantina doesn’t come with cheese and the intermission time is just too short. For the characters played by Juliana Mancini, 16, and Iraci Barbosa, 20, that is more than viable cause for a revolution.
The two girls belong to the theather company Orgone Grupo de Arte and work voluntarily at the Rolidei performing any type of task: they are receptionists, cashiers, waiters, dancers, cleaning staff… Meanwhile they interact with the audience with improvisations filled with a naïf type of humor. Without the stage limitation, their art can go anywhere inside the Rolidei doors, even to the bathroom: “Here we learn how to be more flexible, to improvise”, says Iraci. “And we need to have a good judgment, because our humor mustn’t be offensive”. Besides developing their abilities, their performance maintains financially the social work done by the NGO Tam Tam: half of the money received each night is destined to the organization – the other going to the bands that play on the house.
The Tam Tam NGO has 20 years of existence and was created amongst the genesis of the deinstitutionalization movement in Santos (SP). The city was the first in Brazil to eradicate its long-stay psychiatric hospitals. It was only a few months after the closing of the Anchieta psychiatric hospital that the work of Tam Tam, that still wasn’t an NGO, began. Renato di Renzo, founder and honoree president of the foundation lived on the surroundings of the hospital known as “horror house”. To this day, he can remember the screams of pain he heard as a child. The private facility received many reports of maltreatment – such as confinement and punishment electric shocks that often lead to the death of patients.
In 1989, under the government of Telma de Souza, a public intervention was held on the hospital. After almost 30 years of existence, the place began to be deactivated and its patients were either reintegrated with their families or sent to Lares Abrigados, shelters created to receive the ones that had lost contact with their families. Cláudia Alonso, the current president of Tam Tam, tells the story of the first time she sat foot on the venue, a year after its deactivation. “I thought I would find a gray place, with people drooling”. By then, the reality of the place was already changed by the work di Renzo had done with the ex-patients: she found painted walls and no doors, so that anyone could come and go as they pleased. “I couldn’t tell professors from patients”.
When election time came and the government changed, di Renzo feared that his work would come to an end. It was them decided that they would create the NGO, so that the image of the project wouldn’t be attached to the municipality. At that time the patients had their own radio station and a brand of t-shirts, ties and jewelry, all of which generated income for them.
In 2003, after rehearsing plays on abandoned sheds and teaching the former patients on schools, they obtained the headquarters on the Municipal Theater, in which they are still based. In this space they created the night club – that received the name Rolidei in homage to the movie Bye Bye Brasil, by Cacá Diegues. There they offer acting classes to the community: crazy and non crazy.
Although Thays Gonçalves, 28 years, is graduated in psychology, she doesn’t feel the need to use what she learned in the university when teaching in Tam Tam: “We don’t define, don’t label anybody. We don’t bother them by asking what is their syndrome, its symptoms… here there’s no medical records. We just let them present themselves. And give them freedom to create a new story.”
You can ask any of the volunteers what they think of the term art therapy and the answer will probably be accompanied with a frown. For them, theater is first of all a form of artistic expression. An art that is therapeutic for anyone. The idea is reinforced by Renato di Renzo, that is firm in affirming that he doesn’t want pity from anyone: “We don’t want it to be the work of the downs, the crazy people, the pitiful ones”. It’s a work of art done by Tam Tam, a work developed by people, each and everyone of them with its potential.
The diversity of students is reflected on the Rolidei nights. Children, adolescents, adults and even seniors frequent the place. Margareth Ramos, 39 years, went there for the first time with her nephew and sister in law, and says that is now “addicted”. “If you go to a bar you can only seat. Here you get up, dance or just drink and chat.”
The Rolidei is divided in two rooms: one with a bar and small tables and a dancing floor with a stage, where the musicians play and where they present two sketches per night. “There are people that come here thinking that it’s just a night club”, Thays says. “To some people, it’s just going to be a night club, if that’s all they want to see. But it’s a night club from which you are not leaving drunk and where you will not be bothered. That’s because we don’t let it happen, but also because people really respect each other here”.
The entrance fee and the sells at the bar of Rolidei are the sole source of income of the NGO. Even though the house, that has a capacity for 120 people, is always full, the foundation feels the need to expand. Because there are no other acting courses in the region that accepts students with special needs, the demand for the opening of new classes is high. Tam Tam doesn’t have the income to pay its professors, so the number of them, that once was 25, today is only six. Besides that there is the urgency of moving the headquarters outside public space, so as to ensure the stability of the project despite political changes.
The much needed funding also encounters a barrier on the fact that the members don’t have the knowledge on the formalities of fundraising. “Between using my time to talk to a student that is going through something hard and talking to a business man, I’m going to talk with the student”, Cláudia argues.
Rolidei is not only a financial source for the NGO, but is also a window for new volunteers. Many of the people who help in the actions learned about the organization through its parties: some of them decided to become students on the acting classes, others offer to sweep the floor when the party is over. Others give something to décor the headquarters. “This place is a big dump, a favela****, a house with no owner”, Cláudia jokes. On the walls one can find the life story of many. A few examples: the books by the door were from a deceased collaborator; the china was from the Cowboy, a party goer known for being lonesome; the old hats belonged to high society ladies. Besides donations, there you can find trash such as bicycle wheels and market carts. Following the ideas of Marcel Duchamp, an inspirer for the members of Tam Tam, all of the objects are deprived from their original purpose to assemble something new.
In the year that the NGO completes 20 years, the Orgone actors planned a remake of the play Rédi Meidi Bluiz*****. Written by Renato di Renzo, it was the first play staged on Rolidei. The text was assembled by the gathering of other plays, united have another sense. Cláudia believes that the work not only synthetizes the concepts that Tam Tam is based on – like the one of the ready made – but also brings a contemporary message. The story happens on a cabaret and discusses subjects such as the contemporary man with his conventions and social masks. Instead of questioning the lunatic, the analysis here is of the people our society considers normal. Talking about the play, Cláudia mentions the political scandals and how our society is passive to all that happens. “After all, who is the sick one? The crazies or us?”
*Reference to a song by the group Mutantes, called Balada do Louco (A madman’s ballad). Balada, from the Brazilian Portuguese, is a regional slang for a party.
**From the Portuguese: here no one uses black tie.
***A Brazilian movie from 1981. The English title is They Don’t Wear Black Tie.
**** A favela is a crowded Brazilian slum, where people have very low living standards. Here it is mentioned for its disorganized landscape.
***** Rédi Meidi Bluiz is the phonetic writing from the English words ready made blues.
