A sample of my notes: the theater group

In the cultural center in the city of Feliz, the theater group played in front of about 335 people (there were only 330 seats in the ampitheater) for the second night in a row. The first night more of the audience was elderly, so that the players could speak more German if they wanted. The second night the audience was much more responsive, willing to laugh and shriek, which Nathana attributed to their being adolescentes and estudantes. Their age also meant that wouldn’t understand much German, so Beto limited the number of lines he spoke in German. They laughed at the “German accent”, a laughter which Beto attributed to the discomfort people have with their own difficulties in speaking Portuguese. If not their own discomfort, then the familiar story of their parents or grandparents’ discomfort.
I asked Beto whether he thought people were laughing at the German accent, making fun of it, and thereby devaluing its worth as a language. He doesn’t think so. He thinks this process is part of recognizing their shame and then dealing with it so as to move forward with again placing value on their ancestry.
He created the tiny theater in Dois Irmãos and has been giving acting lessons for years. The profits he and his theater group make from their shows are enough to keep it going. In total about 10 people work there acting, creating tickets and marketing, etc. Most of his plays deal with German and a revitalization effort toward the culture and language.
The city of Feliz, according to Nathana, is about the same size as Dois Irmaos. It’s bem alemã, her mother said. But a little richer than Dois Irmãos, according to Daiana. The city hall and, across the street, the cultural center are large buildings made of enxaimel, a light brown wood. The inside of the cultural center amphitheater looked new or well taken care of. Still, it wasn’t ideal for the theater group because the stage doesn’t have pernas (‘wings’). But they created their own wings from cloth panels.
The play was about Thil Tapes, a well-known character here and in Germany. No one has ever actually seen him, but he is frequently used as a scapegoat when someone needs to be blamed. The play is set in 1970 in a potato patch. Beto and his daughter, ‘Teresa’ (Nathana) are dressed plainly, as farmers. He in boots, pants tucked into his boots, a button-down shirt and a straw hat, smoking a cigarette. She in a short-sleeved, knee-length yellow dress and havianas. Potatoes are scattered about the stage and a large scarecrow stands behind them. Their movements and speech are exaggerated, slapstick.
People laugh as soon as he starts speaking—a Germanized Portuguese, and maybe even the first lines in German—I couldn’t tell. Features included leninized stops—b/d/g sounding almost like p/t/k; aspirated /t/s; intervocalic z à s; and the intonation was very different from other Portugueses. Sounded to me the way an American cartoon would portray a dumb character—Eyore? Few elongated vowels. Possessive pronoun-noun disagreement: meu unha.
Then come in two characters: tall skinny guy and short (trim) guy with shorts pulled up high on his waist, button down shirt tucked in. Very slapstick and base jokes, mostly just around their stupidity and also a few sexual jokes. Tall guy eats the dad’s dinner. He later says, I ate your dad’s sausage. There may have been some wordplay around the potato sacks, não enche meu saco—but I wasn’t sure. Also, (I think) Teresa tells her dad that she has gotten her period. She says, Fiquei moçinha. He suggests discussing it with her mother. She asks, Did that happen to her, too? And he says, OH yes, it did. [audience laughs]. Repititions of all the tasks she has to do at home: wash and dry the clothes, cook the pork…? and about five other things. This comes up when she is questioning how she will have time to also go to school.
Her potential lover, the tall guy, Murio? (Christian) who is always coming up very close to her and saying, Oi Teresa! he wonders to his friend, the short guy in shorts, son and brother to the other two characters, why he has to go to school everyday if he’s just going to end up here as a farmer anyway. He tells Teresa that she can marry him, but just if she wants to, playing it very casual. But she will have to do all these tasks—lists off the usual number of domestic tasks. They indicate the start of a romance because he takes her hand and kisses it when she shows him her newly painted nails. Then she kisses him on the cheek and they both run away.
At intervals, the sound girl (Daiana) plays German music—hochdaitsch—songs I could understand: “Heimatlos”, “Ein ganzes Lebelang”. Like sappy poppy Bavarian music. There are also some lines in German: muss dich schaeme was one. Nathana speaks almost no German; Odair just some. Beto spoke German growing up and still speaks with his sister. But after his mother died, he really doesn’t speak it much with anyone else, even though he really likes to speak German.
Christian and Daiana speak German at home. They are actually unga and sobrinha, he 20 years old, she 17. There are seven people living in their house: Daiana, her parents, her dad’s parents, their youngest son (Christian) and also Daiana’s sister. So the grandparents had 6-7 kids—either 4 or 5 boys and 2 girls. Both girls died and one son died in a motorcycle accident. They found him by himself, so people don’t know exactly what happened, if a car hit him or what. So the eldest son is 36, and his child is just three years younger than his youngest brother, Christian.
After the show, Beto says a few words about reconnecting with their German heritage. It’s very difficult, though, because kids in the audience keep talking and laughing. Eventually he says what he wanted, but the audience was clearly more interested in continuing the laughing atmosphere.