Denise Stoklos in Mary Stuart

DENISE STOKLOS (BRAZIL, 1987)
TRANSLATED BY DENISE STOKLOS AND MARLÈNE RAMÍREZ-CANCIO

This imaginary encounter between Queen Elizabeth and her imprisoned rival, Mary Queen of Scots, is one of the signature pieces of Brazil’s most brilliant solo performer. Stoklos’s ‘essential theater’ combines mime, vaudeville, Brechtian techniques, and a medley of languages in an intensely physical style of performance that dramatizes the obstacles to human communication. Mary Stuart jumps between past to present, moving from Shakespeare to Sarajevo to Rwanda in a comment on ‘the tragedy of power in human history’¾a tragedy that ‘keeps repeating, repeating every day.’