Amazonia

Colin Teevan

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781840028959
• eBook ISBN: 9781786822079
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

The village of Todos Os Santos is under threat from developers who want to clear the village and the forest for farmland. Meanwhile, the village bull won't dance the traditional bumba meu boi and the pregnant Catarina has developed a taste for impossible foods that her husband Francisco must get for her. Can the spirits of the forest help our heroes save their environment, their way of life, and themselves?
Fantasy and reality dance through this spectacular Amazonian adventure, inspired by the life and politics of Brazilian folk hero Chico Mendes. Amazonia ran at the Young Vic Theatre, London in the Winter 2008-2009.

Act One

SCENE 1

Enter CHICO. His shoe squeaks. He takes off his shoe and examines it.

CHICO

Rubber. Rubber soles. Funny stuff, rubber. Magic stuff. Makes everything from tyres and trainers to the rubbers at the end of your pencil. That’s where it got its name. Does anyone know where rubber comes from? (Response.) From the juice of the rubber tree. And do you know where the rubber tree comes from? (Response.) From Amazônia. I suppose for most of us the story of Amazônia begins with rubber. I’m Chico, and I’m from Amazônia and it all began for me with rubber too. I was a seringueiro, I used to drain the rubber latex from the rubber trees. From the time I was a boy I’d walk a huge circuit through the rainforest. I know the forest like I know my own hand, it’s the blood that flows through my veins, there is a map of it in my heart. Will I show you? (Goes to open shirt.) Unfortunately it’s on the inside of my heart. Maybe later. Rubber was the reason Europeans first came to the Amazon and why Brazilian workers moved there, to get as much rubber as they could. Back then rubber was the big thing. Like gold, and it was like a goldrush. Everyone wanted it. But then a Englishman named Henry Wickham snuck into the Amazon and stole a thousand seeds back to London. His shoes didn’t make a squeak as he sneaked off. First you’d rubber trees in Kew Gardens in London, and then they were growing them in Malaysia on huge rubber plantations. That was the beginning of the problem for my forest. You started making your own rubber and you didn’t need ours. Do you have forests where you come from? (Response.) Are they so big that you could walk for months and months and never reach the other side? (Response.) What country are you from? (Response.) England? Do you know Mr Henry Wickham? Well you tell him from me if you see him – (Response.) O you don’t. Do you know Mr William Shakespeare? (Response.) I do.

‘And never since the middle summer’s spring

Met we on a hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls though hast disturbed our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge have sucked up from the sea

Contagious fogs which, falling in the land,

Hath every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents.

The ox hath therefore stretched its yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard…’

Midsummer’s Night Dream. You see, you English took our rubber seeds, but we took your Mr Shakespeare in return. And he wrote a lot about forests. And our forest like his forest is all out of season with itself. That’s why I have come back. To warn them. The people who live here in Amazônia. To help them. Because tonight is no ordinary night, it’s Midwinter’s night, that’s right, June 23rd. The Feast of São João, Saint John. It’s when every year across Brazil they dance the bumba meu boi, and ask Saint John’s help for the coming year. And here come the villagers of Todos Os Santos with thei...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Characters
• Contents
• Act One
• Act Two