CELT LEGEND GETS INTO A NEW DIMENTION WITH “THE SEAL LADY”A PUPPET MUSICAL SPECTACLE BY CIA ÓPERA NA MALA

By telling the story of a strange passion between a fisherman and a seal woman, the play shows the importance of the balance between nature and men in the 11st Cultura Inglesa Festival, in Brazil.

Scenes including puppets and actors, Chinese shadow theatre and live music, bring magic and originality to the juvenile spectacle The Seal Lady, which was idealized by Cia Ópera na Mala, to bring to the stage the Celt legend about the love between a fisherman and a seal woman. The actors, Cris Miguel and Sergio Serrano, themselves play Celtic harp, bagpipe, violin and bodran, using live music to captivate the children. In this enchantment atmosphere, the play is focused on environmental subjects, as the importance of the balance among culture and nature, the men and environment.
One of the characters was inspired on a real person: the Scotch woman named Fiona Middleton, who every morning, in the last 31 years, wakes up early to offer a violin concert to the seals of Islay Island, southern Scotland. “At first, one black head appears, then one more, then another, and other. Within ten minutes, at least 25 seal are listening to her music”, testifies Mr. John Robrins, from “Save our Seals” Foundation. Known as “Fiona of the seals”, her deepest concern is to take care of the melomaniac seal.

THE PLAY
The legend of a woman that changes into an animal is not privilege of United Kingdom; it is recurring on several cultures. “At Marajó Island, in the state of Pará, Brazil, there is the legend of the woman that changes into a female buffalo. In África, a tender maiden changes into a female elephant. In Japan, there is the tale of the woman that changes into a stork, tells the actor Sérgio Serrano.
The Seal Lady opens with Fiona and her daily concert by the sea-shore that attracts a seal family with its grandfather, the grandmother, the mommy, the twins, the youngest child and his attractive sister Brigite. At this moment, the fisherman Tom Moore, famous because of his prodigious voice, goes to his daily journey and caches Brigite taking off her seal skin and changing into a beautiful woman. After singing to her, tom steals and hides her skin and attracts the young lady to his house. From this day on, they fall in love, get married and have five children. Everything is ok until Brigite finds her skin and gets into a dilemma: to go back to the sea, or to stay with her family?
To support this plot, Sérgio e Cris alternate theirselves acting on the stage – sometimes using neoprene diving suits, flippers, diving masks, snorkel –, while playing music and telling the stories. They also manipulate puppets, which were made with both real and caricatured forms. Some of it are marotes - sort of marionettes manipulated by the mouth. Other puppets have a direct manippulation, by extensors (small rods).

The soundtrack was formed by the rereading of traditional themes of the Celtic collection of songs and by their own compositions. The bagpipe highlighted. According to Sérgio, this musical instrument or originary from Ásia and originally it was used by shepherds. “Some of the bellows are still being made with goat skin”, he says. In the spectacle, he will play a bagpipe, originary from the Minho Region, in Portugal. This instrument came to Brazil in the period of the discovery of Brazil.

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