Born in Rio de Janeiro, Christiane Jatahy is an author, theater director and filmmaker. She is graduated in theater and journalism, and she holds a postgraduate in Art and Philosophy.
Since 2003, her works are in dialogue with different artistic areas. She put on several plays that question the boundaries of reality and fiction, actor and character, theater and cinema.
Starting from 2004, she wrote and directed the following works: Studio, The lack that moves us or All stories are fiction and Cut.
She also created and directed The lack that moves us, a film continuously shot for 13 hours by three portable cameras. This material resulted in a feature film that participated in national and international film festivals. It remained for over 12 weeks in the Brazilian movie theaters. The film’s raw material was projected simultaneously on 3 movie screens for 13 continuous hours. This video installation was exhibited at Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro, São Luiz Theatre in Lisbon and Centquatre in Paris.
In London, she created and directed the project In the comfort of your home, a documentary/video installation with performances of 30 Brazilian artists in English houses.
In 2016, she was a l’École de Maîtres’ guest director.
Deepening the relations between theater and cinema, she created Julia, based on Strindberg’s work Miss Julia. This work is a mix between theater and live cinema. The play/film was exhibited in major film festivals and European theaters. Julia made her win the Shell Award 2012 for Best Direction.
In 2013, she developed the audiovisual and documentary installation project Utopia.doc, which was performed in Paris, Frankfurt and São Paulo.
In 2014, she released the creation What if they went to Moscow? based on Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, a simultaneous play and film piece shown in two different spaces. For this work, she won the Shell Award, Questão de Crítica Award and APTR Award. What if they went to Moscow? is still on the road, traveling in festivals in Europe and in the United States.
In 2016, in order to end the trilogy including Julia and What if they went to Moscow?, she created The Walking Forest, a free adaptation of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth combining documentary/video installation, performance and live cinema.
In 2017, at the invitation of the Comédie-Française, she created for the Salle Richelieu the show The Rule of the Game based on the namesake film by Jean Renoir. In the same year, at the invitation of the Theater der Welt Festival and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, she created the Moving People installation/performance, a version of Bernard-Marie Koltès’ In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields.
In Lisbon, she was the guest artist in Artista na Cidade 2018, presenting all her works in the main theaters and cinemas.
In 2018, she started to develop the diptych Our Odyssey, inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. The first part, named Ithaca, premiered at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris. The second part, The Lingering Now, which was filmed in Palestine, Lebanon, South Africa, Greece and the Amazon, is a dialogue between theater and film, mixing Greek fiction with real stories from refugee artists. This creation, produced by Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles and SESC, premiered in São Paulo (May 2019) and at the Festival d’Avignon (July 2019). With several co-producers, the play will continue its tour in Europe, Asia and USA.
Currently, Christiane Jatahy is an associate artist of the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Centquatre-Paris, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Comédie de Genève and Schauspielhaus Zürich.
COMPANHIA VÉRTICE
Cia. Vértice was created to formally expand research into theater languages, contemporary methods of communication and the subsequent experience of participating viewers and artists – generating new approaches and perspectives in regards to the stage. The company investigates conceptual limits – ideas such as; the actor in the scene in the present moment (here and now) and the reference to a fictional character, combining reality and fiction to create a third theatrical zone, the intentional blurring of the physical division between the actor and the audience, communication with other artistic areas and the use of unconventional spaces or unconventional use of traditional spaces. The purpose of this research is to liberate the theatrical experience for the viewer so that he may participate more actively in the presentation.
Besides the creative apparatuses, the main content of all works by Jatahy is the reality of Brazil and these country’s present society. Real life steps into the stage through research done beforehand and its connections to the present time, to the here and now.
The steps of a research
For 2004′s play “Conjugado”, interviews with people who live alone in Rio de Janeiro were carried out and recorded on video. This material generated storyline content for the play and became a documentary shown as a video installation piece inside the play.
“A Falta que nos move”, 2005-2009, was based on personal material in which the actors revealed a generation in their mid-thirties, who lived their childhood and youth in a country under a dictatorial regime. The political issues affect the personal history of each of these actors/characters. They play was thought of as a non-play, in which the cast would cook and drink on the stage, blending reality and fiction, to talk about memories and relationships.
Corte Seco, 2010, was created based on real lawsuits and a research made through interviews and visits to the Rio de Janeiro Court of Justice to put together a play with far-reaching dramaturgical structure.
Julia, 2011, is a play that navigates between 19th century novel and contemporary realities, bringing to stage political and social issues of today’s Brazil. The relationship between the two leading characters is based on sex and power, in a game that reflects the Brazilian class-hatred reality.