for many years – at least since 2010 – Luís Miguel Cintra came announcing the end of the Cornucopia in the terms that we knew, and that since its foundation in 1973, established the company as one of the largest, if not the greatest reference of the Portuguese theatre contemporary to successive generations of directors, actors and spectators. Now, it seems, to be definitive: the company of Luís Miguel Cintra’s going to do on Saturday to be his last show, reported the Antenna 1 this morning: “we Were overdue,” said the well-known actor and director to the microphones of the radio. A statement of the historical company of Lisbon said the reasons for the decision: "throughout these years we have done a lot and less evil, b ut also we believe to already be at the age to dare to say that we do not know nor do we want to adapt the management models that have more difficulty in habituaríamos to fulfill.”
This Saturday, at 16h, promises-if the last presentation of the company, with a recital free admission from texts of the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. At the same time will be released the second volume in Teatro da Cornucópia, Shows, from 2002 to 2016.
Cornucopia: four decades of theatre leave a lot of tags (and photos)
“we have Reached the moment in that there are no more conditions to continue to do our job,” confirmed to the PUBLIC the scenographer Cristina Reis, with whom Cintra divides the direction of the Cornucopia. “Do we identify with the funding model nor the production model that became the norm, we do not know work like that – and you may not want in spite of all that tropecemos so calamitous,” he said, noting that it is the determination of the company does not dispel a practice of 43 years (and 126 shows) that considers, without false modesty, “quite exemplary”.
Responsible for the sets and costumes of nearly all of the shows of the company since 1975, as well as for their graphic image, Cristina Reis laments the end of the adventure started even before the 25 April by Luís Miguel Cintra, Jorge Silva Melo, but caveat that “the Teatro da Cornucópia did all that he had to do in these 43 years.” The difficulty of safeguarding the uniqueness of the way of doing of the company before the demands of the public funding model (which requires the structures to support them, for example, a minimum of three new productions per year) is, he says, the main reason for the outcome now announced: “Always funcionámos as a small unit of production, a small factory, where I did everything. But have been exhausted all of our capabilities to keep the company at the height of the purposes with which it was drawn and that, I think, everybody knows. We went to the limit of our financial capacities. Our model may not interest to the spirit an d the practices of the contemporary world; we are probably out of time. And, of course, are not new, there is here the contours of a different nature. Is so, it is life.”
At the end of 2015, Luis Miguel Cintra had already announced his farewell of the stage as an actor, though he continued to stage and direct the Teatro da Cornucópia, after you have explained publicly that he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Before, in several interviews, had shown themselves to be tired of a model of support to the artistic creation, which requires companies with the relevance and the legacy of inestimable of the Teatro da Cornucópia to convince periodically the State of providing a public service: “it should be more than recognized that pay more than a service, and that is useful to the public that existamos”, he said to the PUBLIC in 2010. And yet, in the same interview: “there are Only two solutions: or we are aided by the processes of co-production, or have entered the market and manufacture products that can sell (…). Or, so, we do shows of much smaller dimension and which, in a way, reduce the expectation in relation to our work. This is perverse, because if you can reach a situation in which we ask: because you’re subsidizing if what they produce is only this? It is a situation a lot more complicated which I don’t know how we’ll be able to get away with it.”
The farewell of the past year has exacerbated the doubts about the survival of the company in a scenario post-Luís Miguel Cintra and Cristina Reis. Project absolutely copyright, and therefore absolutely inseparable from the course of Cintra as an actor and director, in the Cornucopia the problem of succession would have never had an easy solution – if it could even be the solution.
Luis Miguel Cintra leaves the stage but will continue to stage
The Ministry of Culture "regrets the closure of one of the structures of the most important theatre in the History of Portuguese Theatre", informed the cabinet of the minister of Culture in a note sent to the PUBLIC, adding that the situation has been closely monitored by the secretary of State for Culture Miguel Honored, which has the area of the theatre to its responsibility.
Contacted in the meantime by the PUBLIC, the secretary of State has assigned the decision – said to have attempted, without success, to avoid the “huge casualization” and the cuts “very significant” that the cultural sector, and the theater in particular, have suffered in previous years. “It is painful to see disappear an artistic project of greater relevance and of greater importance. We wanted this decision to be reversed, would be excellent news. I can not imagine that the Cornucópia Theatre does not have a place of the future in the panorama of the cultural sector in Portugal, quite the contrary. There is a loss inevitable and irreparable harm in the decision that was taken.”
Miguel Honored not help, for already, if the new funding model for the creation that the Government expects to approve in the next year will ensure a special status to companies like Cornucopia that the dispense of the current procurement procedures, such as Luís Miguel Cintra came to claim. “We are making every effort to create a new model in tune with what the cultural sector for the Portuguese that the Teatro da Cornucópia is one of the references,” he stresses, adding that it is premature to advance any of the details.
Luis Miguel Cintra, teaches us how to die
The Teatro da Cornucópia, which has a support of the State through the Directorate-General for Arts (DGArtes), received this year 309,6 thousand euros, a grant that is given for a period of four years, according to explained to the PUBLIC Paula’s Balcony, the director-general of the Arts. If the Cornucopia has come to receive 600 thousand euros per year in 2006, for example, the director-general says that the support have a maximum limit, but that, even so, “there are few structures with a support as significant” as the company of Luis Miguel Cintra between the 127 structures with support multi-year.
According to the DGArtes, such as the Cornucopia, also receive close to 300 thousand euros, the Teatro o Bando, Portugal, and the Acert, Tondela. Above, in the 350 thousand, appear the Workshop, Guimarães, and the Theatre Company of Braga, while in the 400 thousand are the Almada Theatre and the Teatro Viriato.
“With the decision of the closure of the Teatro da Cornucópia, the Ministry of Culture has expressed its readiness to collaborate so that this closure to take place, in the best way, out of a profound recognition of and respect for Historical Heritage – tangible and intangible – that the Company leaves it to the Portuguese Theatre.” The ministry says it will ensure the rental of the building in the Bairro Alto Theatre “for a period of over a year, so that the process of closing, and all the jobs that there are, are conducted in appropriate conditions,” adds the note. Several years ago, of the rest, which the ministry assumed the payment of that income, in the amount of six thousand euros a month.
The same note it also recognises the 43 years of the company’s work: “their creations and their performances have been, since 1973 until today, a reference to actors, directors, and professionals in the area of the Theatre, and, of course, also to the public.”
“This time it is difficult not to say vulgar things,” says the director Ricardo Pais. “It is a loss more or less irreparable, but if the Luís Miguel Cintra and his companions find that it is time to close the activity and do it with the dignity that has always characterized I have immense worth, but I have to accept.” About the criticism of the state support to the artistic creation, the reason invoked by Cintra for the closure, Ricardo Parents do not want to even pronounce, but it does suggest that they are a problem even in national theatres, "which should be the most visible face of cultural policy".
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