Soccer, Samba and a Theatre Festival

Yesterday I went down to Braziltown to watch the Brazil-Australia game. Cervejaria was packed, and apparently only letting in women, so I had to watch the game on a patio with some wannabe Brazilians. During halftime, with the score still 0-0, a samba band set up outside Cervejaria and played throughout the break. In the second half, Brazil stepped up their play, with an early goal by Adriano and a late goal by the supersub Fred making it 2-0. The samba squad, in matching blue T-shirts inscribed “Batucada Carioca”, returned to the street, and the party began in full swing. Unlike the Angolan revellers, who made allowance for oncoming traffic in the midst of their celebration a week ago, the Brazilians took over the street entirely. The police car had to drive through the crowd three times, siren blaring, to clear a path for a bus to get through. All the same, the stretch of College in front of Cervajaria was unofficially closed for traffic, with only cars bearing Brazilian flags allowed through. The party was a thousand times more lively than the yuppiefest “Taste of Little Italy”, officially closed to traffic, one block to the east.

In the evening I went to Dufferin Grove Park for the Cooking Fire Theatre Festival. On my way, I was passed by a cavalcade of cars bearing cheering Koreans, five cars long. The Koreans were celebrating their country’s draw with France. I arrived at the park in time for dinner, which was bean soup and slices of bread baked in the park’s outside ovens. I found my Czech Lit professor, and ate with her and her English/Zimbabwean friend, who supplied me with red wine and lectured me about recycling the plastic cup that I drank it in. Then we moved under the trees to watch the first play, as directed by a proper British lady on stilts and a women with a dog marionette. The first play by a theatre company from Halifax, was about two cooks and their baby, who is possessed by an onion. The resolution was ambiguous.

After a twenty minute strudel break, the next two plays took place against the backdrop of the playground. The first was an adaptation of a Japanese legend about a boy-warrior who brings writing to Japan, told using puppets by a company from New York. The second was by far the best of the evening, by a company from Victoria. It was the story of a cowboy who becomes split into two people by his unresolved love for a women that has left him. The play included musical numbers, complete with accompaniment by violin, mandolin and guitar, and dance routines. The last play, which took place in the Uzbeki yurt, was about the German artist Käthe Kollwitz, and didn’t quite have a point, but made nice use of mounted photos and the artist’s engravings.