Journalism is often described as “a front row seat to history.” Reporters have access to places, and people, others do not. Some places can be rough-and-tumble. Think the paddock at a Formula-1 grand prix, backstage at a political rally, or surveying the world’s busiest, and most violent, gold mine from the lip of a hollowed-out crater in the Amazon jungle. Others can be as quaint as sipping tea with poets at the Brazilian Academy of Letters. People can include writers, actors, politicians and the occasional Mafia fugitive. As a reporter, I enjoyed the rare privilege of interviewing two major playwrights, Nelson Rodrigues, in 1980, and Eugene Ionesco, in 1982. Rodrigues was, and will likely forever remain, Brazil’s greatest playwright. Ionesco, a Romanian who lived most of his adult life in France, was one of the founders of the Theater of the Absurd. They were close in age, Ionesco born in 1909 and Rodrigues in 1912. In person, Ionesco was the more lively, reflecting something of the comic spirit of his plays. Rodrigues was sluggish in movement and slow in speech. He died only weeks after I interviewed him at his apartment overlooking the beach in Rio de Janeiro. A few years later, I met Alfredo Machado, founder of Brazil’s Editora Record publishing house. We got to talking about Rodrigues and I said, “By the time I knew him, he was in bad shape,” to which Machado replied, “He was always in bad shape.” Chronic pain, poor health and a string of family tragedies must have influenced Rodrigues in the course of writing his 17 plays, which bring a surface realism and an underlying mood of despair. Visitors to this website can access, via links at the foot of the page, transcripts of the original articles, in English, based on the two interviews along with PDF files showing the newspaper pages as they appeared in 1980 and 1982. In 2002, during my time at O Estado de S. Paulo, the newspaper reprinted the Nelson Rodrigues interview, this time translated back into Portuguese, on the occasion of what would have been the playwright’s ninetieth birthday. A PDF version of the Estado interview is also available via a link, below.
Nelson Rodrigues interview, original in English
Nelson Rodrigues interview, original in Portuguese
Meeting Eugene Ionesco, original in English
Nelson Rodrigues interview transcipt, in Portuguese
Nelson Rodrigues interview transcript, in English
Transcript of article on Eugene Ionesco
Photo Credit: old typewriter keys (PICRYL)