Branca de Neve/Snow White
In 2004 I collaborated with David Pratt on Branca de Neve (Snow White) for the New York International Fringe Festival. Our conceit was to tell the tale of Snow White in Portuguese (it is as popular in Brazil as in the U.S.) to an English-speaking audience. That was David’s role. My role was that of Maryanne de Anne MacLaine-Paris, a drag character I had created some years before.
Maryanne would greet and flirt shamelessly with the audience, handle props during the show, adding bits of her own and generally making trouble. When told to bring on the seven dwarves (Port. sete anões), she brought out seven dildos and vibrators (Port. consolos). The narrator was appalled, but quickly rewrote the show to accommodate Branca’s seven new “friends.” There was even an interruption from a representative of the National Endowment for Nice Entertainment (Rosemarie Sciarrone). But all ended happily for the characters, and all ended happily for us, with audiences laughing uproariously.
We were, in our playful way, exploring a number of questions. Why was it inherently funny for an audience to hear a familiar story in a foreign language? Why was the humor compounded for Brazilian audience members, for whom the show included the reactions of the English speakers sitting around them? (Some Anglophone attendees had studied other Romance languages or Latin, and enjoyed their edge in decoding parts of the script.) And what about those consolos? What did we suggest about the story of Snow White? What did it mean that the consolos were introduced as a surprise, an act of rebellion, by the already rebellious drag character Maryanne? What is the role, the job, the duty of queerness in art—and in a world—where heteronormative narratives so often prevail? The National Endowment for Nice Entertainment would certainly not engage such questions, so we did, far off Broadway, with homemade props and rehearsals in our apartments. Where great rebellions often begin!
Press/Media
Brance de Neve was publicized/reviewed up by TheaterMania
Acknowledgements
ROGÉRIO M. PINTO
Co-Creator, Performer
DAVID PRATT
Co-Creator, Director, Performer
ROSEMARIE SCIARRONE
Performer
DEB UNGER
Stage Manager
MARK KINCH
