Julia

About

JULIA adapts August Strindberg's Miss Julie through a contemporary Brazilian setting. The production moves the aristocratic and servant-class conflict into the affluent districts of Rio de Janeiro, where Julia becomes a wealthy young woman and Jelson is her father's Black chauffeur. The adaptation uses the source text as a framework for examining class, race, desire and relations of domination in present-day Brazil. The staging treats theatre and cinema as simultaneous, visible processes. Pre-filmed material and footage captured live in front of the audience are combined into a film during the performance. The actors therefore operate both as characters in the fiction and as participants in the making of the film. Separate movable screens reveal a bedroom and a kitchen and function as filming locations. Projectors follow the moving screens, while the film is cut, repeated and reworked in real time, exposing the technical construction of the image.