Antonio Hohlfeldt - Jornal do Comércio

If the contemporary world is characterized by the fragmentation and loneliness caused by isolation and individualization, leading us to memory loss and, as a consequence, the sense of history, it seems to be the Greek dramaturg's desire for a reintegration with the Cosmos, which is also the human community. The play’s symbology proposing the acceptance of the different (or the difference) is evident. And current.

The actress Liane Venturella, under the direction of Camila Bauer, materializes a staging that, if we were in live theater, would require a small space that could bring the audience/witness/interlocutor closer to the character. The camera, however, performs this role. The character looks straight at us. But she does not defy us, she dialogues, as she says. The play does not work for digression, because the scalpel’s cut is sharp, it demands the spectator’s adherence. In this sense, the nonexistence of makeup in the actress is fundamental. The video by Julio Estevan and Nando Rossa, with lighting by Ricardo Vivian, plus costumes by Fabiane Severo and soundtrack by Álvaro RosaCosta achieve the necessary dramaticity. Liane is, of course, a Greek character. Contemporary.

[Complete review in Portuguese here]

 

Tania Brandão - Folias Teatrais

In her first monologue, the option was to develop an artistic experience, to create something new, in between theater, film, video. With Camila Bauer’s direction, the actress faces the spectator under an incandescent tone of appreciation of life, as if each word could be her last.

The scene is casual, the tension and attention are focused on the actress and the text, not in special effects. The proximity leads to a new thought about the human condition, proposed in a direct shot, with no filters.

[Complete review in Portuguese here]

 

Airton Tomazzoni - CENA.TXT

To face this text that challenges discourse, enunciation and digital staging, was necessary an actress and a director with courage and ability to remain with so little and turn this scarcity into the right, necessary and coherent choice. The falsely casual acting leads us to a colloquial tone whilst the character smokes, drinks water, sitting at the bed foot. And just like that, as if in a chat, finds the nuances and subtleties almost inconspicuous that shape the conversation in a way that we gain an astounding intimacy with what is being said. Because the text itself announces: “It was not what my words wanted to say”. There is a cared carpentry that gains strength in the economy of the gestures and in the articulation that finds the correct emotion, just right. The exercise of the great actress that Liane Venturella is and how she shares it in such a generous and wholesome way, moves us and makes us dive into this text that twists and turns in the heart and the mind.

(...) We have an actress that knows her craft and a direction that allows that. I’m not afraid to say that I faced a great theatrical moment to which I was connected through a camera.
[Complete review in Portuguese here]

 

Renato Mendonça - Coletiva.net

‘Defeat’, to me, is unarguably theater allocated in a video platform. I say that because the 30 minutes of the spectacle enclose some of the most dear principles of the live scenic art, at least to me: autonomy of the audience, shared time, body strength. The option to avoid any kind of image or editing effect, to propose a long take (using another area’s term…) and to avoid time leaps proves to be correct.

(...) In this point, the absence of a soundtrack also represents evidence that the director gives up any kind of resource to externally guide the emotions, giving to the actress and the text the responsibility to conduct a victorious ‘Defeat’.

We come to the actress and the text. What to say? About Liane, that she accumulates more than  the technical ability and the physique du rôle - she has the maturity to stage this text. It is when I see at least one advantage for theater to migrate to digital platforms - to facilitate the recognition of our talents in other places.

(...) Actress, text and direction of ‘Defeat’ concur so that those discoveries and provocations feed one another. Using an expression that appears in the play, there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. Even though the world of reality defeats us.

[Complete review in Portuguese here]

 

 

José Cetra - Palco Paulistano

In a little over 30 minutes, this woman addresses the camera and, therefore, the spectator, trying to explain in an almost didactic fashion how life made her get to that point at the same time tense and fulfilling, where her only wish is to sleep soundly until she reaches the “heart of the sleep”. She is in her bedroom and smokes compulsively while telling her story. (...) in Defeat, the actress is in front of the camera and in a single shot she tells her touching story in the most natural way possible. It is even believable that she is actually speaking with the spectator. The apparent coldness of her testimony purposely prevents any emotional reaction from the audience. 

Photographed in a very subtle color, the spectacle has a lean direction by Camila Bauer, who focuses her attention on the brilliant work done by the actress.

[Complete review in Portuguese here]

 

Diego Ferreira - Olhares da Cena

The spoken word as a possibility of communication, extremely elaborated and materialized through the body and voice of Liane Venturella, which produces in the spectator a kind of catharsis, as if we were voyeurs of that woman’s intimacy. We penetrate in “Defeat” throughout the world of words, and through them we undertake the very own metamorphosis of the narrative. (...) And if this daily life is the current Brazil, those words create other dimensions that potentialize the speech of the text, because it starts from the materiality of Dimítris’ text to deepen subjects that are extremely important to all of us in Brazil, such as the political and sanitary chaos. It is the perfect moment to pause and reflect about our own precarieties. This dialogue is necessary, it is healthy, it is urgent, even as an exhaust valve, as an escape from facing chaos.

“Defeat” is a partnership between the Gompa Collective and Cia Incomode-te and evidences the notable work of Liane Venturella as the great actress that she is, having as a possibility of creation her presence and all her capability of articulating through pauses, silences and the appropriation of a text that at first glance seems simple. However, simplicity is not always something easy to access, and here her performance in this experiment is masterful. So is the work of Camila Bauer, who in every new work reinvents herself as a stager, whether in the language, poetics or aesthetic, but always innovating and bringing the new to the stage, or to the screen, which is the case of this experiment. An intimate and revealing production that provokes our imagination through the great use of the word materialized in the body and the voice of a great actress.

[Complete review in Portuguese here]

 

Brasil de Fato

The thoughts of a woman alone in her room, interacting only with the spectator on the other side of the computer screen. A proposal that is apparently simple, but that reveals itself to be something much deeper.

In that sense, we see through the screen someone that seeks each word to try to translate what she feels and thinks, denouncing the limits of her own experience, at the same time as she testifies the urgency of the word.

[Complete review in Portuguese here]

 

Roberto Oliveira - Comenta UMBU

To praise Liane Venturella’s performance in Defeat would be repetitive and almost unnecessary. On many occasions, she has demonstrated the excellence and quality of her performances, which are always surprising, original and true pearls of acting. In “Defeat”, she faces two huge challenges. To face a text that is extremely difficult based on its infinite repetitions and its philosophical tone. To face the intimate and minimalistic proposal chosen by the stager Camila Bauer, who righteously, in my opinion, takes off the external actions and any other unnecessary things from her direction, preferring to throw the actress to the lions (in the best sense). Liane overcomes every challenge and puts her work as an actress at the center of the spectacle. Both of them trust in  Dimitris Dimitriadis’ writings. Camila Bauer trusts the actress. This makes one job to potentialize the other two.

[Complete review in Portuguese here]

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