genoeg van Samba with Viviani and Mike Bodeé directed by Titus Tiel Groenestege
Genoeg van Samba is not a cabaret or an autobiographical work or a play or a concert of Dutch or Brazilian songs or a contemplative piece and neither a funny madness. In turn, Genoeg van Samba is all in the form of tribute to the Dutch cabaret and their artists where Viviani tells with an open hart her experience living in Holland since 1990. Through music, narratives and dialogues in English and Dutch, sometimes funny, melancholic and sometimes delusional a singer and an actor piano player on stage take the audience by the hand leading them to a journey where life has no manual of instructions to be followed.
"Genoeg van Samba"
according to Albert Tola
"The writing process of "Genoeg van Samba" was a fascinating support to Viviani's talent. I have heard her wonderful voice many times in theaters, concert halls and stages in Barcelona, and each time I have fallen in love again. It is a beautiful voice, yes, but also deep, sometimes serious, charged with life, pain and wisdom. Now, by this process of writing and shaping the script of Genoeg van Samba with her, these adjectives took on a new dimension: the subtext that beat behind that voice that I loved. What was the shadow that tinged her voice with that velvety darkness that attracted me so much? When she offered me the honor of accompanying her during the writing of her autobiographical cabaret, I had the opportunity to peek into this mystery. We worked for many months in sessions in which she spoke and I wrote, very quickly, situations that she confessed or remembered or wanted to forget. Sometimes I would ask her something or a question and she would be the one who wrote about it. It was a kind of dialogue, in which I also considered my own life through the questions I posed.
It was from this process that the idea of dialogue on stage between the singer/actres and the ducth actor/pianist was born. In a playful way - although something psychoanalytic in the background - the pianist reveals the subtext that underlies what she says: he expresses the shadow, everything she does not want to hear. He contradicts her, challenges her, makes fun of her and loves her at the same time. He represents the "yang" and masculine figures in her life. He is all the man that she loved or desire or fear.
Later, when we had a written text, we began to read it and reread it as a play, paying attention to the musicality of the phrases and their relationship with the songs. As when a sculptor looks for the form of sculpture in stone, we looked for the theme of this cabaret, and doing that, I also find out that the same subject was what dyed her voice and touched me so much: the pursuit of self-knowledge through the act of love and be loved.
I think that the empathy and self-reflection that I experienced around this subject during the process of writting Genoeg van Samba are the same that the audience will have when confronted with this play. As I know this sensitive actress and singer cannot be different: the voice –literal and metaphorical– of Viviani Godoy will lead you through the Dutch cabaret songs and towards what she had learned through love in all its facets, colors, joys and troubles."
Who is Albert Tola?
Albert is a playwriter, poet and storyteller. Translator and teacher of dramaturgy.
Graduated in playwriting at the Institut del Teatre ( Catalonia, Spain) he followed workshops given by José Sanchis Sinisterra , Abilio Estévez and many at the University of Arts (Universität der Künste, UDK) in Berlin.
His plays Salento, El último secreto de James Dean, Niño fósil, Los niños oscuros de Morelia, Las noches malas de Amir Shrinyan, Mala noche, Vino lunar, Sarab, El Palmeral, Últimas notas de Santiago Rojas were translated to French, German, Greek and Turkish and premiered in cities like Zaragoza, Madrid, Berlin, Bogotá, Monterrey, Santiago de Chile, Quito, Istanbul and Athens.
In 2018, Bogotá, with his play Los niños oscuros de Morelia he won the prize Jorge Eliecer Gaitán best play.
As a playwriter in a dance field he works especially in the PI(È)CE Project with Constanza Brnčić and Julio Álvarez . Toguether they created and founded the company La Sospechosa.
His work as a translator of contemporary German drama has led him to be specialized in the work of Roland Schimmelpfennig, which he has published several articles, interviews and translations in magazines and publishing houses such as Pausa, Primer Acto, ADE Teatro, Artezblai and Lleonard Muntaner.
Albert Tola is also the author of the monographic book Rosa-Victoria Gras, Dimensión creativa de la lengua, published by the Institut del Teatro. His poetry work has been published in performances and in magazines.
In 2006, with Alicia González Laa and Andrea Segura they created A3 Teatre to promote contemporary art and open space to the plays written by their own authors and in 2011 he founded the theater company Nigredo with Rodrigo García Olza.
Many of his plays are published by the Institut del Teatre, Ediciones Teatro del Astillero and in the magazine ADE Teatro, and can be ordered online at the website: http://www. contextoteatral.es
Credits
Photographers:
Marluci Martins
Cida Pinheiro
Chico Ferreira
Fred Polet
Ruud Gosse
Peter Van Der Meer
Rogerio Bizzocchi
Daniel Kempisty
Sytske Kok (script support)
Bea Correa (script support)
Petra Van der Eerden (script support)
Eugene Van Meteren (script dutch translation)
Ariane Amarantinis (script english translation)
Ron Beenen (Photo and Video)
Josep Maria Jordana (Graphic art Press/Discography and video)
Taco Nieuwenhuizen ( Website)
Joost Drossaers (Websupport)