The actor Osmar Prado It included another success among so many careers that began in 1958, as a child. At 77, he has traveled the country since January last year, with the play “The Poison of the Theater”.
In each corner, confirms the strong presence of audiences, which already has more than 60 thousand spectators. The play began this Friday (14) the third season in Rio de Janeiro. This time, in the traditional Carlos Gomes Municipal Theater, in Tiradentes Square, in the center of Rio.
In a retrospective of the more than 65 years of career, Osmar identified himself as an accident, because he was early on his demonstration “for something he didn’t even know what it was,” when, around 7 years old, he asked his mother for the first time how he was doing to be an artist.
“Mom, how is it to be an artist? Although I had no idea what it was like to be an artist. This question came out of my mouth as she piloted a wood stove. She answered and killed me. Said: My son, to be an artist, has to be beautiful, loud. Her reference was Rodolfo Valentino, sex symbol of the period of the 1930s or 1940s. I would never fit this model. So she killed me in the birth, ”he told Agência Brasil.
This, however, did not end his trajectory. Salvation came with Aunt Trindade Augusta Prado, who was a worker and sister of the actor’s mother. “She was taking me, until I arrived at a test at the director’s house called Líbero Miguel, who wanted to start television drama on TV Paulista, as there were three televisions in Sao Paulo: TV Tupi, TV Record and TV Paulista,” he said.
Knowing that the director needed boys to make the first soap opera that would be adapted for television on Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, Osmar was taken by his aunt to Libero Miguel’s house, who asked him to decorate a half page scene.
The boy replied that he would take home to decorate, but the director said he would do it right there, and that he would play with the director’s wife. Osmar ended up gaining the chance to participate in production because of improvisation.
Libero explained how he should play the role. He would have to knock on the door, enter and start talking to the woman who was opposed to him.
“I knocked on the door. She said, ‘Bet in, sit here’. I went and bumped into the ashtray on the coffee table, which fell to the floor. I took instinctively, sat in the place she said and started talking. Two, three lines later, he stopped and said to me, ‘I don’t need it anymore.’ You will work with me, ”the situation told in detail.
At the age of 12, Osmar Prado represented the character Oliver Twist, also by writer Charles Dickens, already as a protagonist. “And so my life went on, I went to leaps and bounds. I did not take a course, no theater college. All my learning was in practice and in the contacts of wonderful people in the middle who helped me, gave me advice, referred me books. I had the privilege of working with [o ator] Sérgio Cardoso, ”he said, adding that Othon Bastos and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri were also great influences.
‘I was being taken’
Osmar recalls that the origin of his family was poor. The father, a former square employee of the square. The aunt, responsible for her career, was a worker and her birth was at home.
“I came not to misery, but of poverty. The delivery, when I was born, was made by my great -grandmother at home. I was born in a bedroom of a masonry hood, but it was a record with a bathroom outside, there was a bedroom and a room. My father and grandfather made a tug of wood to make a kitchen with wood stove in São Paulo in Vila Clementino. Today there is a huge building in that place. It was there that I started my life. ”
“I was being taken. It seems that it was the inexorably marked fate to be what I am, and I haven’t lost enthusiasm to this day. Thanks to the gods, because the God himself has nothing with it, poor thing, has so much demand because he would look at me, any boy? God has more serious demands, now the theater gods have smiled at me. ”
A criticism signed by Miroel Silveira, in 1959, was already pointing to the potential of acting of the still boy Osmar Prado. It was in the play “Nu, with violin”, in which he acted with actor Sérgio Cardoso, already seen as a prominent artist.
“My participation was so insignificant that he could have ignored me. In addition to not ignoring me, he said: ‘The boy Osmar Prado, despite having almost lost his voice in his debut, represented his scene to the end with immense bravery and exceptional personality.’ He said that from me. A mixture of pity for my despair, but at the same time I understood that there was a potentiality there. He predicted: ‘A pleasant revelation at the age of 12,’ ”he said.
Artistic manifestations
Throughout his career, the actor alternated moments in theater, television and cinema. When he was invited to act in “The Poison of the Theater”, it was ten years since he did not participate in a theatrical montage. In this interval, he joined the cast of Rede Globo, playing the old character from Rio, with which he received the renowned prize of the Paulista Association of Art Critics (APCA), in the category of Best Actor.
“I ended my participation with a golden key [na televisão] And I didn’t come back, ”he said. “Every time I left television or television ignored me, the theater welcomed me and will always welcome me if I deserve it. Therefore, I have been doing the poison of the theater for over a year and I do not intend to leave. ”
The period in which he was removed from the theater is considered by Osmar as an “accidental gap”, since he would only do a job when he was really interested. The last performance had been in the Barbaridade Musical Comedy, inspired by the argument of writers Luis Fernando Verissimo, Ziraldo and Zuenir Ventura. Although well treated, the actor did not feel comfortable.
“I understood, from the debut of the play, that I was not comfortable, but I went to the end of the season in Rio and still did the season in Sao Paulo. Then I didn’t do it anymore and said to myself, ‘I don’t go back to the theater without me believing in the proposal and telling myself, that’s what I want to say when opening the cloth, ”he said.
And it was this call that made him consider a present power to act in “The Poison of Theater.” The actor’s profile was decisive for director Eduardo Figueiredo to think of Osmar for the role.
“I have more than 30 years of career and I often say that the actor has to be a creator, because he has to promote his essence and the potential as an artist in the project he is in. Osmar is this power, all the time he contributed to the process of creation, not only of the character, but as a whole. Despite his age, he has very strong physical work, has a body power, flexibility. So, we have a scenic agility in the show that is also the result of its availability. ”
The director also praises Osmar Prado’s ability to decorate the text of the piece, which he considers long. According to Figueiredo, the actor never made mistakes, not even in rehearsals.
“It’s normal in the rehearsal process for the actor to forget something, because it’s a lot of text. He never had this problem. It was always very prepared for the rehearsal with the decorated scenes of that day. He does not have this problem of forgetting the text, even though it is such a big and dense text. ”
Partnership
Actor Maurício Machado, who shares the scene with Prado into “The Poison of the Theater”, confesses that his colleague has always been an idol and a reference for him throughout his 37 -year -old trajectory.
“At the beginning of his career, it was an absolutely unattainable thing to be able to play with him. Until, in 1999, we almost made a piece together. It ended up not rolling. Now, with “the poison” [do Teatro]the director thought of Osmar, and I thought he could not have a more suitable actor, because besides the gigantism of Osmar’s talent, the character requires an actor with all this luggage and a wide range of colors, emotions that this character has. ”
“Osmar besides the great actor and genius he is for me, of the greatest and most important actors in all history that Brazil has ever had, is a great partner. We built a very amazing relationship since the first moment of reading, when we were sure that the characters chose us and that we would have a very beautiful partnership, very confidence and a lot of respect. It is a joy to be able to oppose him, who is the greatest Brazilian living actor. Osmar has always been a citizen artist. He is 77 years old and talks about all contemporary issues ”, praises Mauricio Machado.
For the director, Eduardo Figueiredo, the essence of the play also combines with Osmar Prado, because it is a spectacle that discusses civility and power. “We are all the time discussing the stance of the human being, as far as the ability to commit atrocities to commit. Where civility is in contemporary society, where we have wars, where human rights are disrespected all the time, ”he said.
Concerned about global issues, Osmar criticizes the predominance of nations on the world scene. “We are moving towards an outcome that, in my view, will be the outcome that humanity needs: the multipolarity of nations. Everyone will have to sit at the table to discuss the world without the predominance of anyone, but in order to collaborate. This ends the empires in general. We have to end the empires, below the emperors. May the full democracy come ”, twists the actor.
