Monologue based on reports explores the daily lives of refugees in Boa Vista

A common question in a country where poverty is on the rise and State action is left behind opens the monologue “Boa Noite Boa Vista”: what can I do to help?

The public does not leave with answers to the play starring Eduardo Mossri on display at Sesc Pompeia, in São Paulo, but it is encouraged to think. The show was born out of a trip by the actor to Boa Vista, in Roraima, one of the centers of the migratory crisis that annually brings thousands of immigrants and refugees to Brazil — especially from Venezuela, but also from countries like Cuba, Haiti and Colombia.

Mossri stages stories that he collected: he talks about the massive presence of children and specific reports of LGBTQIA+ immigrants and, at the same time, tries to find common points of everyday life in Boa Vista.

Roraima is one of the states in the country with the highest number of asylum requests, due to its proximity to Venezuela and Guyana. In 2021, there were 10,403 requests there-nearly 15% of that year’s total.

The saturation of the place is accentuated with a migratory flow that only grows. From January to November last year, around 45,000 people applied for asylum in Brazil, almost 15,000 more than the previous year’s figure.

The actor stayed in the city for a month, where he heard testimonials that first took the form of a diary — until then without the intention of becoming a show. From the key question that permeates the work came the conclusion that the best way to help was to take what he observed to the stage, thus sensitizing more people to the issue of immigration, one of the main international challenges.

The monologue also forms a trifecta of Mossri’s human rights-related works. First with “Ivan and the Dogs” (2012), about the social impacts of the economic crisis that devastated Russia in the 1980s, and then with “Lebanese Letters” (2015), in which the actor, of Lebanese descent, addresses stories of immigrants from the country in the Middle East who landed in Brazil.

There is also “Orfãos da Terra”, a Globo production that hit TV in 2019. In the soap opera, Mossri played Faruq, a Syrian doctor who lost his family in the civil war that has raged in the country for more than ten years, a dictatorship led by Bashar Al -Assad, and emigrated to Brazil, where he found it difficult to practice the profession —a common scenario for immigrants trained in the area who need to revalidate their diploma.

Familiarity with the theme, which he says he was interested in as a way of understanding his roots, appears in the play, and Mossri encourages the audience to participate by answering questions about immigration.

The work draws attention to issues that, in the face of such a demand for refuge, may seem secondary. At one point, the actor plays a part in which an immigrant, whose nationality is not revealed to the public, claims that he is a refugee. But he is not a refugee.

It may seem like a minor difference in the choice of terms, but the provocation mirrors one of the issues that most concern migration specialists: the huge queue of people who have applied for refuge and after years have still not had their applications analyzed.

There are ongoing debates and research on the subject, such as the recent thesis by psychologist Andressa Martino, at UFABC (Federal University of ABC), in which she states that, with this “permanent provisionality”, the State ends up creating a new label, a new migratory category: that of the eternal asylum seeker, who lives in a limbo of insecurity, without feeling like a Brazilian citizen.

“Boa Noite Boa Vista” is directed by Antonio Januzelli, known as Janô, Mossri’s professor at the university. His method, the actor’s dramatic laboratory, in which he invests in the interpreter’s work, with stagings that arise from the actors’ internal concerns, is a fundamental part of the show, which continues at Sesc Pompeia until February 17, with a session with a Libras interpreter. on day 8.