Each day, a page. Each page, a moon. Each moon, Álamo.

ORIANA BARCELOS: “Álamo Oliveira recalls the founding of the theater group 40 years ago: ‘There was nothing poetic about the creation of Alpendre.'” Diário Insular, 28 December 2016. Translated by Katharine F. Baker

Few theater groups in Portugal can boast of marking four decades of life. What is certain, however, is that one of the names that is part of this short list is in the Azores. Alpendre, born and nurtured in Angra do Heroísmo, turned 40 years ago yesterday.   The amateur theater group’s longevity could prompt you to imagine fabulous founding stories – but no. Writer Álamo Oliveira, who was linked to its creation, is peremptory: “There was nothing poetic about the creation of Alpendre.”   The truth is that Alpendre, one of the most important groups in the Azores, arose out of a need: it was necessary to find work for an elementary school Drama teacher, Leonardo Melo, so his friends joined together to bring to the stage Guerras do Alecrim e da Manjerona [Wars between the Rosemary and the Marjoram] by António José da Silva. The play, which premiered on December 27, 1976, was performed at the Teatro Angrense three times, until the end of that year. The house was always full, Álamo Oliveira recalls.   “The work wound up running successfully, despite all sorts of setbacks. We rehearsed beneath a porch – that’s where the name Alpendre [porch] comes from – and we certainly didn’t have anything we could call our own, so we did a very simple play, a comic operetta. But we did it at the best possible time; today that couldn’t happen,” he recounts.   At that time, when television was still in its infancy and was broadcasting only a few hours a day, theater was a good diversion. And the fact is that the public wanted to see the new things we presented on stage. Since then, Alpendre has not stopped, having mounted 98 plays.   These plays were never intended for a big-city audience. For a long time the amateur group’s actors appeared in towns and neighborhoods, and it was from this experience that they realized it would be worthwhile to continue – even presenting unfamiliar texts.  For Álamo Oliveira, who today is President of Alpendre’s board, there was in the early years of its life “a certain ingenuity,” which was also responsible for the group’s success and longevity.    “Politically, things were not easy in Angra do Heroísmo. At first we had people of every political stripe, from far left to far right, who at the theater were all friends: they would drop off their posters at the door, and it was only when they left that they would go stick them up – sometimes lending one another the glue,” he says.   Over 40 years the group – which began with some young, inexperienced actors – has changed greatly. Alpendre was no longer just a space where friends who wanted to do more than only talk got together.   “Things are very different nowadays – people are in Alpendre more for theatrical reasons than for mere socializing. For us the theater was our meeting place, it was a gathering place for a group of people who wanted to get out of the house to do something more than just talk,” he says.   Alpendre’s acceptance, not only by the public but also by official entities, has helped keep the group going for four decades. Participation in important events, such as the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Salga or the centennial of Alexandre Herculano’s death, were fundamental to the affirmation of the Terceiran amateur theater put on by the Angrense group.   The group’s fate could have gone another way, because its route was not always linear. Alpendre also faced crises, even political ones related to work it presented on stage.   The group’s founder recalls, for example, an emergency meeting of members of the Azores Regional Government, motivated by a criticism published in [Angra’s diocesan newspaper] A União of a play based on O berço do herói [The Cradle of the Hero], by Dias Gomes.   At that time, says Álamo Oliveira, the theater was a diversion, but the group knew when to take risks.   “We thought of the risks we could run into. We wanted our plays to have a message. This was the case with Auto da justiça, which we ended up presenting in several towns. We thought we would not draw a public, because it was soon after the [catastrophic] 1980 earthquake. Houses had fallen down, everything in the towns and in the city had fallen down, but people turned out to see the play,” he recalls. QUALITY THEATER    It is amateur theater, to be sure – but for the writer, a native of Raminho, the theater that is done by the Terceiran group that is now turning 40 does not, in any way, lag behind what is done in Lisbon, for example.   “Theater that I’ve seen in Lisbon is no better than what’s done at Alpendre. It’s true that they have problems, too – like here, there are groups with two or three actors because they have no money to do big things. But the quality and technical evolution that Alpendre has experienced is obvious,” Álamo Oliveira says.   For Alpendre’s current president, Valter Peres, the secret lies in the place that the group occupied in the lives of those involved in it.   “When life is made in the theater, it becomes its own skin and we feel it is, as Federico García Lorca put it, ‘poetry that comes from the book to make itself human.’ That is why Alpendre still remains alive today, precisely because it was the priority for all those who passed through it,” he wrote in a text published in yesterday’s [27 December 2016] edition of Diário Insular.   In his text, Valter Peres also reminds us of the importance of Alpendre in Terceira’s cultural education.   “In addition to making people laugh and cry, theater is fundamental for a people’s cultural education; it is entertainment but also a form of social and political expression. Alpendre has done this over the years, and will continue to, every time someone takes the stage. Contemporary life cannot afford to dispense with theater; to the contrary, it is enough for us to observe the conformity of society, its accommodation, selfishness and passivity in order to realize that we need more theater, not less,” he said.

From the wonderful site, I No Longer Like Chocolates.