Playing, acting, enjoying myself
Three women, one of whom is Laís, are sitting cross-legged on a carpeted floor, deep in conversation. They are surround by piles of paper, folders, and laptops, all signs of a busy development for Josh and Sophia Don’t Play Together Anymore.
Written by Laís Rosa
It has been more than a month since I left Adelaide, Kaurna Country on my way back to Brazil after 3 months traveling through different unceded lands of Australia. As a part of an artistic residency supported by Fondation Opale and ÉDHEA (Switzerland), I traveled so far away from home to learn a bit about Aboriginal Australian cultures and art expressions, and to spend a month with ActNow Theatre.
I have been passionate about learning other languages since I was a child, but English is not a language where I feel at home. I was born in São Paulo and lived in Paulínia, my whole family is from a town called Piracicaba, which in Tupi-Guarani language means ‘place where the fish stops’. My mother tongue is Brazilian Portuguese and I like how I feel and sound while I speak the Latin languages I learned in my early teenage years. But, I love the fact that, in English, ‘to play’ can mean both ‘to act’ or ‘to perform’ and ‘to enjoy oneself’. In my language we have different words for these two actions — ‘atuar’ e ‘brincar’ — which makes me wonder, when I hear it in English, how much the actor’s work is infused with the playful attitude that we associate more with children.
When I first arrived in Adelaide, Yasmin Gurreeboo, who hosted me at her home, invited me to her birthday party to gather with some friends and play board games. I like to imagine that this gave me the playful tone of my time there. But something I think I haven’t told Yasmin, is how welcoming that afternoon was. How at home I felt after a year away from Brazil.
During my time in Kaurna Country, I had the chance to participate in the devising process of the new work of ActNow Theatre, Josh and Sophia don’t play together anymore, whose core objective is to share emotional regulation tools with school children aged 7-11 as a way to prevent gendered violence in the future. Addressing emotional dysregulation in order to face social justice is a very potent way to link micro and macro politics, reminding us that our minimal, daily, most invisible gestures pave also the way for the dreaming of new worlds. In every discussion we had, we added new context to my understanding of the Brazilian tradition of educating through art.
My admiration from afar towards ActNow Theatre became bigger and bigger witnessing the thorough work of Yasmin and Monique guiding us all through this journey, where different artistic experiences, life stories and voices were more than equally welcomed — they were celebrated in their singularities. I had the good luck of working side by side with artists like Ashton Malcolm, Caleena Sansbury, James Smith, Kyron Weetra, Margot Mansfield, Matt Crook, Nasrulla Mehman, and Sam Wannan; and, with them, I had the time to explore feelings and thoughts of the child I was and how they still frame who I am. And mostly in a playful way which, with my amateur theatrical knowledge, I like to think of as being the essence of theatre itself.
By experimenting with playing in the devising process, I remembered that I was allowed to play in other contexts, that I could not take myself so seriously. That, in my way of moving through the world, I could not only pay respect to my ancestors, but to the child I was. To the child I am. I’ve heard both from art educators and Brazilian Indigenous leaders, how playing is a serious matter, and how children are amazing teachers, statements that invite us to question our ways of doing and our sources of knowledge. And this understanding is essential not only to address children with our creations, but to educate our audiences. After all, it is not only about which stories we choose to tell, but how we bring them to the stage.
Now I am home again. Let’s see which new games I got to play.
Laís Rosa (she/her) is a Brazilian art-educator and performance artist with a background in dance, linguistics and art in the public sphere. She is the granddaughter of Therezinha and the daughter of Geni and Vlademir. Her interests lie in the intersection between body awareness, storytelling, and the construction of learning environments as a way to decolonize art and education.
Laís graduated as a dancer and educator from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP, Brazil) in 2018, with research scholarships; and obtained an MA in Visual Arts with distinction from the Valais School of Art (EDHEA, Switzerland) in 2022. On this occasion, she was awarded with a prize from Fondation Bea pour Jeunes Artistes and a research grant from Fondation Opale. The latter, together with EDHEA, is supporting her artistic residency in Australia between March and June 2024.