Phenomenon in theater, Clayton Nascimento talks about the success of ‘Macacos’ and international tour | Fun

Rio – Clayton Nascimento lived in the student accommodation at the University of São Paulo (USP) when, one night, he turned on the television and saw an entire crowd in a football stadium calling a player a “monkey”. At that moment, he awakened in the then student the curiosity that led to the book and show “Macacos”, a critical success and described as a phenomenon by the great actress Fernanda Montenegro.

“People are doing this in a televised space. How are they swearing knowing that they are most likely being filmed? That’s when it clicked for me. That’s how my research began to find out what the origin of monkey swearing is,” he explains. the actor, screenwriter and theater director.

The 35-year-old artist, who arrived at the theater as a child, taken by his mother, ended his performances in Rio in March with packed audiences and is now moving on to higher flights, such as an international season starting in May. In his baggage, a Shell Theater award and many future plans, such as the contract signed with TV Globo to be a scriptwriter for a new project for the network. To the DAYthe actor talks about the creation of the show, his great inspirations in art, his performance in the soap opera “Fuzuê” and about racism in the country.

‘Monkeys’

The play is a monologue lasting around three hours, in which the actor portrays and exposes racism and the history of Brazil. The show was born from a 15-minute scene shown at short scene festivals in several states in Brazil. Clayton says he saw it as a chance to test the quality of his production, bringing content that each region would like to see.

“I said that if they called my play to Rio de Janeiro, I would take an episode of a study about slavery there. With that, a 5-minute scene was added to 15 and so it was in each festival I participated in. The play gained its first hour and forty minutes”, he explains, who was born in Piauí, but grew up in São Paulo.

In 2022, he debuted the long-form presentation, when he decided to insert his own story into the script. “As I had gone through a very unpleasant situation on Avenida Paulista, I had agreed not to say anything about myself”, comments the actor, recalling an episode of racism he suffered in São Paulo, when he was stopped at a bus stop, accused of robbing a store and beating a woman.

“Time goes by, I lose my mother along the way and I realize that it would probably be the only monologue I would ever do in my life. So, I thought: ‘Leave in dramaturgy who you were’. So, I put on an episode about me, and the piece reaches two hours and 10 minutes”, he details.

Clayton interacts with the audience throughout the performance, which makes the attraction last three hours. “There are nights when the play lasts two and a half hours, when the audience is quieter, but when the audience talks, plays, laughs and claps, it goes on for two forty, three hours, and that’s how I got to that number” .

The actor reveals that, as a citizen, he would like to watch the show to understand the mix of sensations that the audience reports. As a director, he explains that he needed to think of tools to get the public’s attention to a difficult topic, such as racism and slavery.

“When I learned that if the whole audience laughs it’s because they recognize each other as a community, I need to make the audience laugh when I talk about racism. Then, I go back to the rehearsal room and find out where I can get the laugh without inferiorizing the importance of the subject nor the intellect of the public. One thing we learn from the beginning of studying performing arts is that the public is not stupid”, observes Clayton.

History in the present

One of the characteristics of “Monkeys” is that it is an open work. According to the artist, this happens because it is directly linked to history. “It’s a piece that is connected to the story, and the story is an open book. Of course I have very well defined points. But, often, it becomes an open book, as happened when I had to talk about the new events in the case da Terezinha”, he says, referring to Terezinha Maria de Jesus, Eduardo’s mother, who was killed by police officers in 2015 in Complexo do Alemão, North Zone of Rio, at the age of 10.

Inspiration

Asked about the inspirations that make him take to the stage, Clayton mentions several names, such as the actor, playwright, poet and writer Abdias do Nascimento and the actors Lázaro Ramos and Taís Araújo. “Women inspire me a lot. As I studied, I saw what women went through and still go through to survive in history… It’s a lot. I’m a big fan of the critical artistic strength of Léa Garcia, Ruth de Souza, Neusa Borges and Zezé Motta, with whom I had the joy of working closely recently”, he presents, also highlighting actor Milton Gonçalves. “It opened the way for me to get into a soap opera.”

“And every time I’m on stage or I’m going to go on stage or maybe I feel tired or maybe I’m in automatic mode, I put on a good Beyoncé and it’s not even just to play, it’s on a screen, because when I see this woman working , it shows me a lot about quality and the importance of rehearsal. Doing things looking for the best of what you can do”, analyzes the actor.

From theater to TV

In 2023, Clayton divided his days between the play and his first soap opera. He played Caíto Figueroa Roitman in the soap opera “Fuzuê”, shown at seven o’clock on TV Globo. “It was very wonderful, because it changed the language. I left the theater with an expansive language, and I needed to go to TV, which is a little more minimalist. How to guarantee power and delivery without reducing quality? I dedicated myself to studying during the soap opera and it was a great learning experience”, he says.

The interpreter also explains that his success in theaters had nothing to do with the invitation to work on the serial. “People usually think that I won the Shell (Prize) and then I was invited to be in a soap opera, but the path was the opposite. When I won the award, I had already been approved to be in the soap opera. I did a test like the actors coming through the front door.”

Television is still in the artist’s plans. “I was hired by Globo as a writer and director for a project that will air this year. I’m already writing and understanding how this will happen”, he reveals.

International tour

After saying goodbye to Rio de Janeiro with sold out tickets and a full theater, Clayton Nascimento moves on to an even more challenging pace, with an international season, interspersed at times with performances in Brazil.

Since the end of his performances in Rio, the actor has already sold out tickets at the Curitiba Festival and on May 21st and 22nd, he will perform for free at Parque das Ideias, in the Center. Then, in June, he travels to Europe. “While I will be on the international tour, I will also be on a national tour. Most of the time, I will go to a festival, being punctual. So, in the holes I will be here”, he says.

The actor confidently awaits the play’s reception in other countries. “My only fear is when I arrive in Portugal. It’s the only place that nowadays I’m in doubt about what will happen”, says the screenwriter, who mentions the country in several moments of the show.

“What’s more, I have a strange security driven by my intuition. Portuguese artists write to me wanting to see the show. In Brazil, some Portuguese have already watched it and said: ‘what if everything you say is a historical fact’, and in fact it is , ‘this makes us reflective in the face of the history that we learn and teach’. That’s it. There’s a whole network to see my arrival in the country”, he adds.

Racism

Regarding racism in art, the Piaulista native, as he defines himself, believes that there is a change underway: “I’ve felt it much more. Now, we see the arrival on television of actors, directors and screenwriters. We see that the subject gets closer and closer and with a guise of black people, who chose these pieces of clothing”.

“It’s changing. Above all, what’s happening most now is that black people are talking about black people. And that’s the point that I think is most important to bring up. The guarantee of all this is that we won’t have romanticized pain, blunts historical and we will not have pain in a romanticized place nor caricatures of subjectivities. We will have subjectivities”, he concludes.