The theater of mutual loneliness is a method of dramatic theater created by the poet and director Ivan Antônio throughout ten years of research about human loneliness. In order to create the method that, for Ivan, is still being built up, the director sleeps around the streets, for five to ten days a year, among beggars, stray children and abandoned old people, without their being aware of the fact that there is a great drama writer and theater director around them. Right after these ten days he goes back home and the then appears again among those who he went around begging with, whom he slept among under bridges or in lodging houses and shared the cold sidewalks of churches and squares. After informing them who he really is, Ivan Antonio invites his new friends to know the organizations “ongs” (non profit institutions, schools, companies, universities…) where he gives dramatic theater classes. In those places he shares the method with attorneys, businessmen, journalists, psychologists, students, teachers, police members and so on. These different social sections receive these street residents and integrate them with each social group.
Ivan created an institution called Teatro da Solidão Solidária (an alternative center of arts and Citizenship), in São Paulo in the 90’s - an institution which presided over and Developed until 2004, when he went back to Bahia in order to show the methodology to other parts of the world. In the capital of São Paulo, besides applying the method in the non profit institution, he applied the method in FEBEM (a Brazilian institution which teaches stray adolescents the importance of citizenship and respect having them as inmate during the process of adaptation), for four years. The adolescents that took drama classes right after they were off parole were invited to continue the classes with a teacher in the institution.
The method was also applied to the Guarani Indian people and to businessmen. Once In every three months he invited all the main participants of the group to have a class together. Ivan defines this great meeting as a celebration. There are set beggars and businessmen, FEBEM adolescents and businessmen children, police members and ex-prisoners. All of them brought together by a common wish: helping one another.
Besides Brazil the method has been used in countries in Latin America and Europe. Wherever the director gives classes he uses the methodology to make this great meeting happen. The theater of mutual loneliness has, throughout the years, been a way to bring people belonging in different social sections together and a means to tenderness and human solidarity, among many people in the world.
