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Aaron Cunningham lets out a scream. Like a cartoon character, he sprints into
a wall and is flattened by the impact. He crashes to the ground, apparently
dead. Taking her cue, a Brazilian girl develops a vicious coughing fit and
falls next to him.
A year ago, Aaron was another frustrated twentysomething from Moss Side in
Manchester, whiling away the hours working in a call centre. Now he is an
actor, and is encouraging a group of young Brazilians from a favela, or
shanty town, in Rio de Janeiro to think of dramatic ways to die.
Aaron, 24, would be the first to admit that, in outlook as much as geography,
he has come a long way. He is a part of a cultural exchange called
Contacting the World, involving 12 young theatre groups from as far apart as
New York, Bombay, Bethlehem and Kathmandu. Each company, made up of 16 to
26-year-olds, is twinned with another.
Aaron's company, Space 3, based at the Contact Theatre in Manchester, is
linking up with the Afro-Reggae theatre troupe in Rio. The groups work
together for 18 months, exchanging ideas over the internet and organising an
exchange to allow one member of each group to visit the other. Each company
has created a production that they will perform in Liverpool next week as
part of the city's Capital of Culture celebrations.
While Aaron is visiting the young Brazilians to share ideas in their small
studio, what sounds like gunshots go off. No one flinches. They turn out to
be fireworks - a method of communication between drug gang members who
control the favelas, illegally built shanty towns. The firecracker signals
that police have left the area.
Soon young men, barely teenagers, go back to patrolling the streets with a
smile on their faces and machineguns strapped to their backs. Violence, and
the threat of it, is part of daily life.
Aaron is not fazed by the guns. Growing up on Moss Side's estates, he says,
means you cannot get away from the gangs. Some of his old friends ended up
in them. “Some fortunately are still alive, and some unfortunately are
dead.”
Those in the Rio theatre troupe can relate to Aaron's story. Though
Afro-Reggae is trying to rescue youths at risk of becoming soldiers in Rio's
30-year-old drug war, the traffickers like the group. Some drug runners even
encourage their children to join Afro-Reggae rather than take up the family
business - to help them to avoid a premature and violent death.
The statistics are stark. The well-publicised violence in Israel and the
Palestinian territories claimed the lives of 467 under-18s between 1987 and
2001; during the same period in Rio de Janeiro, 3,937 were killed.
Afro-Reggae provides a way out.
“Nowadays, a drug trafficker is not the only good reference of what it is to
be successful in the favelas,” says Washington Rimas, 32, known as Feijão
(“bean”). “Afro Reggae proves you can get a good job and fame without drug
trafficking.”
Feijão should know. A former drug lord, he was jailed briefly on gun charges,
an event he proudly says was covered on the front page of national
newspapers and even the BBC. He was never found guilty; when he returned to
his former life, however, he had lost control of his favela.
Afro-Reggae thought his criminal connections could be put to better use. He
became a conflict mediator, using his links to ensure that Afro-Reggae has
open lines of communication with the drug leaders.
Feijão is the most striking example of Afro-Reggae's successful outreach, and
he knows it. “It's unheard of for a big boss to get out. To be alive at 32
is quite an achievement. Most of my friends had died in their twenties.”
Afro-Reggae began as a reaction to the never-ending violence. There are more
than 600 favelas in Rio, with Vigário Geral among the most notorious. Some
have dubbed it the “Brazilian Bosnia”.
In 1993, when an allegedly corrupt police chief and three of his policemen
were shot dead by order of Vigário's drug lord, the military police carried
out a revenge attack in the favela, killing 21 innocent people.
Anderson Sa, founder of Afro-Reggae, was a minor drug dealer at the time. He
led a group of young men who were tired of violent retaliation. “Amid the
turbulence, the massacre, my connection to the cartel, I started to think of
a better life,” he says. That group first created a cultural newspaper, then
a band.
The music took off. From small beginnings as a group that ran school-benefit
concerts and workshops for kids, the band came to support the Rolling Stones
in their concert on Copacabana beach in 2006, before an audience of one
million. It has become nothing short of a cultural NGO, with up to 3,000
members in different favelas across Rio.
The group, which provides everything from dancers and percussion bands to its
fledgeling theatre company, does not hide the fact that its mission is
social engineering.
“The most important thing is the social impact - we have educationists,
psychiatrists and social workers here,” says Shico Olivera, an Afro- Reggae
co-ordinator. “Afro-Reggae has direct contact with kids and parents. The
arts, dance and music is just used as a tool to attract young people.”
Halfway across the world, Aaron's theatre is attempting something similar.
Unlike most British theatres, Contact theatre is not just a haven for the
British middle classes.
One day, Contact hosts a “spoken word” hour where the performers rap, read
poetry and perform improvised skits. Leading the way is the half-Libyan,
half-English Ali Gadema, 28. “Extra extra, read all about it. Freedom of
speech, just don't shout about it,” he raps.
Following him is a black poet, a young white rapper and an actress whose
family originated in Somalia. On the face of it, the only thing linking this
disparate group of artists is their strong Mancunian accents.
Aaron calls Contact a “holy place”. “I'm free to express myself here in any
form, in any way, and I'm not judged for it,” he says.
Contact is unique because of its outreach work, says John McGrath, its
artistic director. The theatre goes into socially deprived areas, such as
Moss Side, and temporarily sets up workshops there, encouraging local kids
to join in. The main theatre in Manchester has an open-door policy. The free
workshops are often run by young artists who have come through Contact's
doors in exactly the same way, and the theatre has built its reputation
through word of mouth. “The posters don't bring young people into the
theatre, but the peer connections do,” says Mr McGrath.
This in turn provides an audience for the shows: two thirds of their audience
are under 30. The theatre never puts on an established play, or any
previously performed work. Instead it features new productions created by
the theatre's artists.
This is how Aaron got involved. He stumbled into an old friend from school at
a bus stop who told him she had a performance that night. Intrigued, Aaron
went along to see it. “To see someone that I've known all my life up there
opened a hidden world to me,” said Aaron. “I was like, ‘I could do that'.”
He turned away from his life of “working in call centres, hanging around in
the same locations with the same people since I was 14”. He says he is part
of the “fatherless nation” - like many in the area, a child from a broken
home. He blames the lack of fathers in the community for the lack of positive
role models in the area, and as a reason why some people he knows drift into
gangs.
He admits that he had a rebellious streak as a teenager, but he was sheltered
from “the smackheads and the gangs” by his strong mother. “If I didn't have
the family I did have, I don't know what I'd be doing now,” he says.
The two theatre groups will perform tomorrow in Liverpool as part of the
Contacting the World festival. Aaron explains that the night will be a
microcosm of what the both theatres, thousands of miles apart, are
attempting to do. “You'll see then just how the arts can change people and
have an impact on people's lives. It'll be living proof, right there.”
Contacting the World takes place from tomorrow until Saturday at the Liverpool
Institute of Performing Arts. Space 3 and Afro-Reggae will perform tomorrow,
and also at the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen on August 4 and 5.
Case study 1: Etilaine Andrade, 20
Etilaine lives in Parada de Lucas, the favela that borders Vigário but which,
until last year, was controlled by an opposing drug faction. Entering
Vigário to go to Afro-Reggae was not allowed, so she would travel on a bus
around the two favelas to enter Vigário from a different way. “I would have
been killed if the drug factions had found out what I was doing,” she said.
Last summer, Third Command, the drug faction in control of Parada de Lucas,
invaded Vigário and forced out Red Command. Red Command have tried twice to
retake the favela, once “renting” an armoured police car for the invasion.
Etilaine explains that the status quo may be shaky, but she is just pleased
that she can act without risking her life doing so.
Case study 2: Ali Gadema, 28
At 24, Ali Gadema was homeless. A friend found him a part in a play, he was
spotted and went on to audition for the Contact theatre.
Ali, who says he is “half Libyan, half English”, spent his childhood in
Britain. He was bullied at school and became increasingly violent and
aggressive. His mother, who was disabled, couldn't cope, he says, and he
found himself on the street. After getting his break through Contact, Ali
now earns a living as an actor. He claims he once had “sheer disdain for
anyone from the middle classes” but is now a published poet.
Ali has set up his own theatre company and has been shortlisted for a BBC
fellowship to perform in radio plays. He also teaches in prisons and schools
and says enjoys working with the most difficult children because “I can
identify with them and they identify with me”.
Case study 3: Raphael Siqueira, 22
On the roof of an empty building overlooking Vigário, Raphael is explaining
why favela life beats living in Manchester. But the interview is
interrupted. A young man, loaded gun in one hand, walks on to the roof and
surveys the scene. Raphael shushes the gunman, and chides him for
interrupting. The man apologises with a wave of his gun, and disappears.
Raphael explains that survival in the testosterone-fuelled environment of the
favela means that you cannot be intimidated. Raphael should know - he is
gay, but is still given respect by the gangs.
Raphael has been part of Afro-Reggae for 8 years, and is one of their star
actors. He said that many of his friends ended up in the gangs, and many
died as a result. At 16, he became a father, a duty he has grown to love.
When asked whether he has seen shootings or violence, he shrugs: “Of course,
but then everyone here has.”
