Theater director José Celso Martinez Corrêa, known as Zé Celso, died this Thursday, July 6, at the age of 86, in São Paulo.
He was hospitalized and intubated on Tuesday (4) at the Hospital das Clínicas, after a fire broke out in his apartment in the Paraíso neighborhood, in the South Zone of São Paulo. As soon as he was hospitalized, his niece, Beatriz Corrêa, told the press that Zé Celso even underwent surgery, with about 53% of his body burned. He was also given norepinephrine for a dramatic drop in blood pressure and an intravenous anesthetic for pain.
According to reports from residents of the building, the fire started due to a short circuit in a heater. His husband, Marcelo Drummond, is stable and under observation due to smoke inhalation.
Who was Zé Celso?
Renowned playwright, director, actor and musician, Zé Celso took the first steps in his theatrical career as an amateur during the final years of the 1950s. Son of José Borges Correia and Angela Martinez Carrera, he even attended the Faculty of Law at the University of São Paulo, but did not complete his graduation. It was during this period, however, that he began to take his first steps in dramaturgy.
Born in Araraquara, in the central region of the state of São Paulo, he moved to the capital and also became known for leading the company Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona, initially formed by law students from Largo São Francisco, on Jaceguai street, in the Bixiga neighborhood, in 1958. It was in this company, created at the XI de Agosto Academic Center, that his first plots were staged: Vento Forte para Papagaio Subir (1958) and A Incubadeira (1959). More recently, he resumed famous plays in the theater, such as Bacantes and Roda Viva.
Zé Celso was also the owner of controversies within the theater, when he brought actors with naked bodies and staging, for example, sexual relations. One of these situations escalated to international repercussions when his play Os Sertões was presented in 2005, in Berlin, Germany, by featuring nude acts in certain scenes. In Europe, it earned the title of "porn theater".
Even in the face of some negative reviews, the director has always come out in defense of his plays and the values embedded in them. "Theater is live. Eye to eye, breathing the same air, under the same temperature, having lived the same day in the same city, actor and spectator establish a relationship - real, symbolic, physical, esoteric, intellectual, sexual - irrecoverable, irreversible and irreproducible. This is its strength and its curse," wrote director and writer Aimar Labaki about Zé Celso's theater.
"The theater of José Celso Martinez Corrêa belongs to this family. Even the most emotional testimonies of actors and spectators, the precise descriptions of historians and critics or the competent recordings in super-8, video or DVD are frustrating for anyone who wants to recover the aesthetic pleasure of watching a show by one of the greatest directors of the Brazilian theater."
During the military dictatorship in Brazil, Zé Celso persevered, facing prisons, torture and exile in Europe and Africa, without ever ceasing to publish revolutionary texts. Zé Celso occupied the same place in theater that Glauber Rocha meant for cinema or Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Tom Zé for tropicalism in music, all at the center of a cultural revolution in the midst of the authoritarian escalation of the military dictatorship in Brazil. The director returned to Brazil before the end of the dictatorial regime, fighting for democratic opening and the resumption of his work.
During the government of Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party), Zé Celso does not hesitate to talk about the extinction of the Ministry of Culture, created in 1985 by the government of José Sarney.
Remember: Zé Celso Martinez Corrêa sobre Bolsonaro: 'Esse governo não tem nem pé nem cabeça'
"The new generation will not embark on this much, no. One part embarks, but the other does not, if we continue working in culture, doing what we are doing, in a more satirical, more parodic way, as is the case of "Rei da Vela", of "Roda Viva", in my case. But in the case of other plays on display, everyone's doing it, except for the groups that are really alienated. But the culture is very strong", he said in January 2019 in an interview with Rede Brasil Atual.
Throughout his remarkable career in theatre, Zé Celso had the opportunity to collaborate with distinguished figures in the arts, such as Augusto Boal, Chico Buarque, Sérgio Britto, Raul Cortez, Pascoal da Conceição, among other renowned talents.
Zé Celso occupied a unique place in the theater industry by becoming the longest-lived professional in activity in Brazil. His prolific career is marked by the creation of approximately 40 notable theater plays, including emblematic works such as O Rei da Vela, by Oswald de Andrade and for having made Roda Viva, As Bacantes, Os Sertões and the renowned series Cacilda! become emblems of the tropicalist movement.
Edited by: Rodrigo Durão Coelho
