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Cardenio (Brazil, Script
Adapted by Reinaldo Maia
Translated by Fernando Paz
Click here for the complete script in English, or here for the Portuguese.
When the lights come up, we are in the country. Sounds of festive celebration coming from another room. Music. Laughter. Rudi enters, an Albanian technician.
Rudi (to audience): Some people just don’t understand. Think I’m bullshitting them. That it is just philosophy... But an honest structure, simple, basic if you can, that’s what makes the world a canvas. Strong, simple, where we can act like equals, same level field with the European theaters. (The actors enter and assume a classic Renaissance pose on the stage. Music)

Structure! Because instead, all around you have baroque structure, a village party stage where social position, politics, economics, rich and poor, are nothing but an unbelievable speech, it can fall down! And it doesn't stand. Because everything in life is a structure. The plan of your day: first this, then that, then lunch... This is a structure! Because in life, this is what we need. Because why? Do you know why God invented time? (Cuts music.)

So everything would not happen at once... Structure! (Music comes back in a faster rhythm.) And you have. It can be beautiful. It can be simple. It can enhance life. If you don’t have a structure, the ensemble doesn’t stand, a production doesn’t stand, a man doesn’t stand. You fall through it to the bottom, it makes you stand crooked all the time. (Stops music.)

Everybody dreams of a structure that is fair, (vocal music) that lets you breathe, that lets you be a free man and have children and have food and have love... Cause if you are always down, how can you make love, make theater? (Instruments come back again. Vocals keep going on.) Where are you going to stand if you don’t have a place to stand? In Harvard! (Actors react and come back to music.)

What can we do? Nothing! You come and go, come and go, but if you have no place to stand, then you are nowhere. (Cuts music.) I'm not saying, what I do, it's like God, but almost.