Irish Research Fellow's Theatre Consultancy in Sao Paulo: Brazilian link to 1916

Prof Shaun Richards, Professional Research Fellow at the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, has been involved with a theatre company in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to develop a new play about Irish patriot Sir Roger Casement for the stage this year on the centenary of his execution for treason. Diários de Roger Casement (The Diaries of Roger Casement) is a 2-act play by the Brazilian playwright and director Domingos Nunez of the Sao Paulo-based theatre company Cia Ludens. A rehearsed reading of the play was staged in Sao Paulo last October, a key stage leading to its full production in 2016. This is a process in which the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s has been involved since the play’s inception, through the collaboration with Cia Ludens, its producer Prof Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos, working with Domingos Nunez. Those familiar with Irish history will know that Casement is a complex figure. Born into the Anglo-Irish Ascendency and a member of the British Colonial Office he was knighted in 1911 for his humanitarian work on behalf of the indigenous people of the Amazon who were exploited by the Rubber Barons. However his time in Brazil effectively radicalised him, and while born to rule he became a revolutionary and a key member of the Easter Rising of 1916 which led, five years later, to the establishment of the Irish Free State. Casement was stripped of his knighthood and executed but controversy over the content of his diaries meant that his was not one of the names commemorated as a hero of the new Ireland in the 1920s and thereafter. For while Casement had kept a diary of the cruelty and exploitation he found in the Amazon in the period 1906-1910 he also kept what became known as the ‘Black Diaries’, a record of his homosexual encounters across the same period which were used by the British Government to dissuade Casement’s supporters who argued for a repeal of his death sentence. Accusations of forgery were made, with Casement’s supporters claiming that the ‘Black Diaries’ were part of a plot to disgrace him. Although some academics still claim that the diary is a forgery, handwriting experts have established its authenticity. Casement is then a complex figure – a member of the British establishment who worked to overthrow it; a man who exposed abuses while his private life involved sexual exploitation. This rich material has been worked by Domingos Nunez into a drama which, while based on Casement’s own words from the diaries is an enhancement of strict documentary theatre in that it uses physical movement and music – this composed especially by the Brazilian Alberto Heller and based on recordings made in the Amazon on a research trip taken by the theatre company in August, 2014. Professor Richards was part of the research trip and at the rehearsed reading last October took part in a post-play discussion along with Domingos Nunez and Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos, which probed the complexities of Casement’s sexuality and politics and Brazil’s part in his story. The fact that the event was attended by the Irish Ambassador to Brazil, Brian Glynn, underlined the rich relationship between Brazil and Ireland, one which will take on an extra resonance later this year when the full production of Diários de Roger Casement will establish that Brazil, as the country in which Casement was radicalised, played a significant part in the making of the Easter Rising. For a link to a discussion of documentary theatre, Brazil and Ireland at UCD see the podcast http://www.ucd.ie/humanities/events/podcasts/2014/representing-the-past-documentary-theatre-ireland-brazil/index.html