Can you spell desiccated?

Well we are at the last bit of our visit to Rio de Janeiro, and preparing to travel back home, before we go we are invited to dinner in Leblon, which has the second most expensive real estate in the world.

So we decide to fill our only day off by travelling on the cable car up to Sugar Loaf. It has been such a busy week that me and Ioan are shattered, so to keep our spirits up we start to play Parallel Universe, where we see people who look like people we know, so on top of Sugar Loaf, high above Rio we see, Christine Pritchard, Jeremy Turner, Roger Burnell, and 36 Dyfan Jones's.

We stay up the top to see the sun set over Rio, and then we make our way down to have another lovely evening with people who we have just met this week. Our host lives in an apartment in Leblon. The views of the city are once again stunning. We have dinner on the terrace flanked by the two most iconic views of Rio. Alison our host runs an agency for hotels and B&B's in Brazil, which are off the beaten track - www.hiddenpousadasbrazil.com.
The guests at dinner are chatty and funny and the conversation jumps from Wallace to pop up parties, facebook and the spelling of desiccated.

D-E-S-I-C-C-A-T-E-D. Desiccated. I'm in a spelling bee competition!

I win!

We discuss stories and myths from Brazil, which would make great plays for young people. There are lots of ideas for me to follow up when I get back home.

Our flight is late on Saturday, so our last couple of hours in the city are spent at Tijuca National Park, it is an 8000 acre rainforest and is home to hundreds of species of plants and wildlife, many threatened by extinction, found only in the Atlantic Rainforest (Mata Atlântica in Portuguese). After all the original forest had been destroyed to make way for coffee farms, Tijuca was replanted by Major Manuel Gomes Archer in the second half of the 19th century in a successful effort to protect Rio's water supply.

A jeep picks us up at our hotel, and take us through some of the most affluent areas in the world alongside the poorest areas. This happens a lot in Rio. I can't quite get my head around it. We pass Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro. It has a estimated population of 250,000. It clings to the hillside with unparalleled views of the city, and just a kilometer from the beach.

We climb high into the forest, and it is stunning. Our guide is really knowledgeable and points out such plants such as tobacco, coffee and bromelia, which grows without roots, and grows nearly everywhere in the forest and even on electric cables. He shows us a tree called the Embaúba, where the trunk is hollow and ants live inside and drain the plant of chlorophyll, which then turns the leaves white. He shows us a tree called Pau-Brasil. When Portuguese explorers found these trees of a deep red hue inside on the coast of South America, they used the name pau-brasil to describe them. Pau is Portuguese for "stick", and brasil is said to have come from brasa, Portuguese for "ember". Brazilwood trees were such a large part of the exports and economy of the land that the country which sprang up in that part of the world took its name from them and is now called Brazil.

I ask if thats where the word brazier comes from. No one answers. No one is interested.

Brazier. B-R-A-Z-I-E-R. Brazier.

I take the opportunity to film video footage in the rainforest for our autumn production of The Butterfly Hunter and for our online resources. I have high expectations and I imagine that I will be deafened by the sounds of birds and animals, and that I will be surrounded by butterflies and insects.

But it is silent, no sounds of nature at all, apart from a little woman in our group who is constantly talking!

And it's not me!

Ioan points out a huge butterfly (the only one) swooping around. I try to capture it on film but its really difficult. It flies high into the canopy, where it knows it'll be safe.

I think of Wallace and how difficult it must have been for him, mid 19th century, trying to capture these insects. There were probably more around in his day...

We get back in the jeep, and travel back into the city. The sun has come out, and its very hot, we pass Ipanema and Copacobana beaches, where people are out enjoying the winter sun!

We return to Santa Teresa and pack for our journey home and we wait for the taxi to take us to the airport.

We bid farewell to Bill and Sue our fantastic hosts at Um Meia Tres- www.hotelinrio.net. Promising to return.

We arrive at the airport and reminisce about our arrival a week ago and how apprehensive we were about arriving in Rio, and how misguided we were about the place.

Suddenly we see two versions of my mother! The Parallel Universe game continues and we laugh ourselves silly out of Rio!

"Beautiful day. Glorious. I needn't have brought my jacket..."

Me and Ioan decide to visit Corcovado - Christ the Redeemer statue which overlooks Rio.

We catch a taxi outside a shop in Santa Teresa, and we are off in what I can only describe as a bile curdling journey by a driver who is hell bent on meeting his maker. We swerve dangerously at high speed from one side of the narrow road to the other as we make our way up the long, and twisty road to the top of the mountain. Jesus looks down at us with his wide stone arms welcoming us up.

I don't want to die on my way to meet Jesus, i say to myself, as I try desperately try to stop myself form being sick.

We arrive safe and sound at the redeemers feet.

We decide to tell Schumacher not to wait, we'll get another taxi down the hill, thanks!

The monument is unbelievable. 39.6m tall, high on a mountain 750m above the sea. But it is the view of the city that takes your breath away. Its like a prehistoric land dotted with skyscrapers at the shore and iggledy piggledy favelas clinging on to the hillside for dear life, and all surrounded by rainforest. Amazing.

I film Ioan reciting "Treftadaeth" for the Cydweli 900 celebration.

And we make our way down the hill in a leisurely taxi ride to meet Wallace Cardia at Spectaculu. The meeting is arranged by Paul Heritage of the People's Palace, and it is great to see a school which trains young people from the favelas to become professionals in the creative industries. Photography, set design, set building, make up , and costume design are taught. The school receives its funding from private sponsorship, and donations. It is an impressive programme.

We get a bite to eat in Santa Teresa and then prepare for our performance of the Wallace play at Tavares Bartos a favela, whose views over the bay look out onto Sugar Loaf.

We arrive promptly at 8, at the Maze Inn, the home of the prolific Bob Nadkarni, who at six years old, tore a picture from a magazine, of a little white house fringed with coconut palms and stuck it to his bedhead.

Not dissimilar to Wallace.

The website describes Bob (http://basebrazil.com/):-

"Son of a clergyman and a playwright, Bob studied fine arts in London, was sculptor on Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey, a war cameraman in the Middle East and a BBC TV correspondent in Brazil. During the making of more than four hundred documentaries, he broke bread with rich and poor, poets and gangsters, cowboys, ministers, thinkers, musicians, generals and mothers of the tortured. He wandered through dazzling palaces and the rubble of destroyed civilisations. Longing to return to painting, he opted to build a studio home in a Rio favela. Underneath he created a community centre with adult literacy schooling and a free pre-natal clinic followed by an art gallery. Then in 2004, the idea of The MAZE Inn was born so that open-minded people could stay amongst the real Brazilians and feel the pulse of Rio de Janeiro. Bob is married and has four children, is preparing his next exhibition and writing his first novel."

The performance goes well, and the name of Alfred Russel Wallace is introduced to another group of people.

This impromptu evening is arranged by Bill, our host at our hotel, who during the week had mentioned that he loved Under Milk Wood, so me and Ioan read the beginning of the play for him.

Interestingly none of the audience had heard of Dylan Thomas either.

What is it with Welsh geniuses that they are so easily overlooked.

The evening ends with us listening to the band, whose singer studied languages in Cardiff, and who speaks welsh.
It's a small world - but I wouldn't want to paint it!

Flutterby

I answer the door of my hotel room, and who is there but Wallace. ARW.

I have called Ioan early - 7am to film some sequences from the play. We go up to the garden behind the hotel. Planes fly low over the rooftops and destroy any attempt I have of creating an explorer in the jungle in the mid 19th century.

But we get some stuff. A huge blue butterfly flutters by and I try to film it. But I am so cumbersome, I'm like an elephant charging through the undergrowth that the butterfly effortlessly flits by and disappears.

I realise how patient you must have be to be a wildlife photographer, and light on your feet, must help too.

I thought we would see an abundance of insects and butterflies, but that butterfly was the first I have seen while we have been here, but I suppose we are in the middle of a city, so we decide to venture into the rainforest, and so on Saturday before we fly home, we will be taking a jeep tour to Tijuca National Park. It is the largest urban forest in the world, home to 30 waterfalls, hundreds of plants and trees and at least 100 different species of animals, and right in the middle of Rio.

So surely even I will be able to capture something on film!

Angenoo, Ildeu and Elasticity!

A taxi picks us up at the hotel to take us to Museu Da Vida, for meetings about the next stage of our collaboration.

The taxi driver asks for "Angenoo". That's me! That's how he pronounces Geinor- I love it.

So off Angenoo and Ioan go to the museum.

Museu da Vida is described as...

"A space of integration between science, culture and society, the Museum of Life aims to inform and educate in science, health and technology in a creative and entertaining manner, through permanent exhibits, interactive activities, multimedia, theater, video and labs"

Diego and Bruno take me and Ioan around the beautiful castle, which encapsulates the idea of merging science and art. This beautiful building was created as a laboratory, for scientists to discover vaccinations, but the setting is breathtaking. Moorish inspired architecture, which when you are inside reminds you of a Escher drawing. The carving of the wood and glass panels, that decorates the interior are unique to each floor and room.

We then arrive late to a meeting (very brazilian!) with Rosicler, Clara, Wanda and Gustavo, to discuss the next step in our collaboration with the museum. They explain that the children who see our play take part in activities related to themes of evolution. It's fascinating, because we have a similar model back home with our collaboration with Swansea Museum.
They have an excellent exhibition about Wallace and Darwin, with images and pictures which will be great for our project in the autumn, and some of the activities which illustrate evolution are fantastic and I ask if it would be ok for us to use the same activities for the children back in Wales.

I discuss how we at Theatr na n'Óg create our education resources by working with the Professional Reference Group and also having teachers seconded to the company to create the resources with us. They seem impressed by the way the company collaborates with teachers.

It make me realise how well set up we are in Wales, and how advanced we are in what we provide for young people in Wales. It is unique and priceless.

The meeting is held in English and Portuguese and we discuss the potential of our Webplay project, where children from our area will be able to communicate with young people in Rio, using the play about Wallace as a focus. It is very exciting and everyone is enthusiastic about its potential. We set an action plan and now the true collaboration begins.

We bid them all goodbye, and exchange pens!

Luisa meets us and takes me and Ioan out for food with her husband Ildeu Moreira.
Don't even ask how you pronounce that! Apparently no one can.

It is a lovely evening Luisa and Ildeu are very funny, and we discuss a variety of things from trips up the Amazon to the theory of elasticity! Yes and all over pizza and chips.

Ildeu shows us books about Robert Hooke, the scientist who is famous for many things but mainly for first applying the word "cell" to describe the basic unit of life. We are shown his microscopic illustrations of bugs, fleas, flies, from the 17th century. It is fascinating, and could be a great show for young people. I start to think about the story.

We end the evening with Ioan signing up to a trip up the Amazon in 2013, and Luisa and Ildeu signing up for a trip up the Usk in February.
I know which one I would go on....

Lost in translation

The performance goes really well. Standing ovation.

We then settle down to watch the Portuguese version of my play. I watch the actor, and listen to the script via a translator.
What a strange experience, seeing such a familiar story to me played out in another language, performed in a different way to our version, but compelling, funny, and poignant.

I laugh at moments that have passed and Ioan tells me to stop laughing so loudly. I forget there is a delay.

I say to myself , you must savour the moment. Seeing my play being performed in a theatre in Rio, with people listening and enjoying the performance.

Feel very overwhelmed that from an initial idea told to me by Roy Davies, all those years ago, to this, an appreciative and enthusiastic audience half way around the world.

Luisa Massarani, the director of Museu Da Vida invites us to speak about the work of Theatr na n'Óg, and to a discussion about science and art, concentrating specifically on theatre as a resource to teach science.

It is an extremely knowledgeable audience, who talk passionately and eloquently about the power of theatre in illustrating quite complicating theories and processes.

It is fascinating and so inspirational. I start to think about a possible performance of our production to scientists and educationalists back home, to open up the debate on how to use theatre to teach science.

I have never really experienced simultaneous translation before, being a welsh speaker, I have never had the need to use the headphones in meetings or conferences.

A physicist asks me a question. I still have my headphones on, so as I answer, I'm hearing the Portuguese in my ear. I start to speak like Dory in Finding Nemo, speaking Whale, slow and deliberate. I take the headphones off.

And I'm off. The translator keeps up, and I think they get what I'm trying to say. We have created a play for young people about the man who co-discovered the theory of evolution by natural selection, so they will possibly struggle with the actual complexities of the theory, but for me it is more about introducing them to an exciting world of exploration. The story, the play is a springboard into that world, ready for them to investigate further. A play for curious minds.

We finish by presenting Luisa with a photograph of Sgwd yr Eira in the Neath Vale. A place close to Wallace's heart.

There is then a reception of guava juice, cake and an abundance of mosquitoes!

Music Plays

The day of the performance. Car is picking us up at 11.00pm. Performance 1.30pm

And the day starts badly. As Ioan gets the costume and the props together for the show, my only responsibility is to go to my suitcase and fetch the CD for the soundtrack.
Zip, zip.
No CD!
That's all I had to do, was to be in charge of music! I search everywhere for it. No CD. So after running in 10 different directions at once. I do what I always do in situations like this - I call Eric. He just tells me calmly to download the music from Itunes, and then burn a disc!

Of course. Simple. Panic over. Music on laptop ready to go.

A car picks us up and takes us to the museum for the performance. The taxi driver doesn't know where he is going and heads into one of the favellas. I now realise that by having my laptop with me, I have my entire work on the laptop, my scripts, my research for stories, photos for shows etc, and I am heading into a favella in a tourist's taxi .

Why don't I ever back up? Must back up!

I wonder if this is what Wallace felt as he watched the ship burn with his entire collection of insects and birds onboard, which he had spent 3 years of his life collecting in the Amazon.

Note to self - Must backup!

The taxi backs up, out of the favella and we are on our way.

We meet the actor and the director of the Brazilian version of the show, and it is freaky seeing two Wallaces together, they look so alike.
It's like a scene from Spartacus
I am Wallace. No I am Wallace.

I set about burning the music onto disc in the office, as I look up on the wall next to the directors computer, I see the now very familiar photo of Wallace in Singapore on the wall. It is the same photo I used as the model for the costume.
"I use this as inspiration for the character's costume" Wanda, the director explains.
So did I.
Coincidence? Possibly, but not likely in my mind. The CD is burnt and slides out of the computer.

I set up the sound in the technical box of the theatre. It is a lovely theatre space, small and intimate, not dissimilar to The Dylan Thomas Theatre, where we perform our plays in the autumn.

Sound checked.

I go down to the stage. Ioan is excited and eager to do the play. I am just nervous.

But then I am always nervous before a show. Worse than the actors really. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that as soon as it starts, if anything goes wrong you can't stop it, it's out of your hands, out of your control. Its like being on a rollercoaster, you just have to enjoy the ride.

The play is to start at 1.30pm. Audience is still arriving at 1.50pm.

2pm, and its full.

Standby LX 1 Sound Q 1 (that's me)

LX1 Sound Q1 Go.

Music plays and we begin.

We are not in Neath anymore...

Arrival into the city, was a mad taxi drive as if we were part of Grand Theft Auto, but driven by a taxi driver who was a linguist, who, although he could speak Portuguese (obviously), Spanish, French, and a little Japanese, he could not speak Welsh (surprisingly).
Luckily for us his English was very good too, because we are staying a little off the beaten track.

Our hotel Um Meia Tres is a wonderful little hotel perched high above the city overlooking the downtown area and out to the bay. It's in an area called Santa Teresa, which is the old part of the city, and very much the artists area, with bars and restaurants, and where old libraries are turned into impromptu music venues, which sells great pizza, with a coffee shop and book shop. And not a Costa Coffee in sight.

Steep cobbled streets twist and turn their way high up to the emerald forest covering the sheer rock.

Our little hotel is surrounded by rainforest, with huge banana trees.
Toucans visit us at breakfast, and monkeys in the afternoon.

"The massive dark crowns of shady mangoes were seen everywhere amongst the dwellings amidst fragrant blossoming orange, lemon and many other tropical fruit trees, some in flower others in fruit at varying stages of ripeness. Musa Paradisiaca - The superb banana, of which I had always read as forming one of the charms of tropical vegetation, here grew with great luxuriance: its glossy velvety green leaves, twelve feet in length, curving over the roofs of the verandas in the rear of every house. Strange forms of vegetation drew our attention at almost every step." Alfred Russel Wallace

It's Monday today and we will be heading to the Botanic Gardens to rehearse for our performance tomorrow, and film excerpts of the play for our online resources, which will be available in September on our website.

Tchau for now