Júlia Guerra, a Brazilian-born actress who began her theater studies in 2013, has been residing in Portugal since last year. She decided to stage a work she first encountered during her academic pursuits, one she “always thought of bringing to the stage,” as she stated.
Despite addressing complex issues, the play is a comedy, explained the actress, referring to the piece written by Roberto Athayde in 1973, against the backdrop of Brazil’s military dictatorship. The play debuted the same year with Marília Pera at the Ipanema Theater in Rio de Janeiro.
In 1974, the production premiered in France at the Montparnasse Theater in Paris, starring Annie Girardot. Over the course of more than 40 years, the play has been staged in over 60 productions with different actresses and has reached more than 30 countries across the Americas and Europe, including Germany and the United States.
Touring the play across Portugal is among the actress’s goals. She produces the play and has worked with the Teatro do Imigrante, performing at the Ajuda community center.
Júlia Guerra emphasizes that ‘Apareceu a Margarida’ “is not merely a militant piece,” describing it instead as “a great irony.”
‘Apareceu a Margarida’ focuses on a teacher alone in a classroom, wielding her authority in an aggressive, comedic, and unpredictable manner. The staging leverages this school setting to “broaden reflections on power dynamics in social life,” she added.
In a “new reading” of the play, director Alexandra Marinho, a researcher at the Center for Theater Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Lisbon, delivers the text with a “critical view influenced by political theater and Brechtian distancing techniques,” noted Júlia Guerra, who has experience in theater, film, and streaming in Brazil, and debuts in a monologue in Portugal.
Translated into over 15 languages, ‘Apareceu a Margarida’ urges audiences to “consider how power is concealed in policies, gestures, and silences and how theater can act as a tool for revelation and resistance,” concluded Júlia Guerra.
In 2018, the company Baal17 from Serpa presented the work at the local cinema theater led by Brazilian director Clovis Levi. They noted that “Margarida portrays, with overwhelming rage, the totalitarian regimes proliferating in the 21st century,” particularly concerning political, religious, and sexual intolerance.
“Power, repression, manipulation, society, and its contradictions are present,” according to the EmCena Project, which also showcased Clovis Levi’s production in 2019 in Vila Nova de Santo André, Santiago do Cacém.
Aside from its debut in Lisbon on Saturday, November 12, ‘Apareceu a Margarida’ will have three more performances at the Sociedade Filarmónica Recordação D’ Apolo: on Sunday, November 13, and on the following November 19 and 20, all at 7:00 PM.
With dramaturgy by Roberto Athayde, the play also features Denis Buenos in the performance. The set is designed by Júlia Guerra, who also collaborates on the costumes with Alexandra Marinho de Oliveira.
