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Union Internationale de la Marionnette

Non-Governmental Organization affiliated to UNESCO

Contemporary texts

A chegada de lampião no inferno

Vellinho , Miguel (Brazil)

Co-author : Mario Piragibe
The play is about the death of Captain Virgulino Ferreira, a.k.a. Lampião, a historical brazilian bandit, an his subsequent arrival in hell. It is freely inspired by a popular poem of the same title, and also in parts of Aligheris’s Divine Comedy. It is divided in two distinct parts, being the first a presentation of the cicle of banditism as it was in the northeast region of Brasil during the XIXth century and part of the XXth century: the banning process, witch happened due to the violent and poor life conditions, and eventual transformation of the banned into one of the bandits. This moments finished with the enactement of the massacre of Lampião group by the volante police in 1937. This act is played entirely without words, and with direct manipulation puppets. The second act is played by actors and objects, and enacts the tour of Lampião from his arrival in hell to his final meeting with the devil. It is inspired by Dante’s Inferno, and as happened in Aligheris’s poem, the captain is accompanied by a guiding figure, also a flute player. The bandit seeks ” the owner of hell ” in order to defy him for its ruling. After fighting a series of demonical creatures, such as the hell’s Gatekeeper and Cerberus, the three headed dog, Lampião meets with the devil himself, a pityful figure who declares that hell is not to be ruled, but to be suffered. It makes him want to be back among the living, and ask the flutist if he can do it. The flutist promises to take him back to earth, but in a different way. He, then, reveals himself : he is Vitalino, a famous northeartern clay artist, who became famous with Lampião’s sculptures. He mixes the captain in the mud and takes back some if it in order to make him come back ” as an ideal “.