Cláudio Fontana leads ‘A Raiz’ in a lyrical solo performance at Sérgio Cardoso - Music

Newton Moreno’s play follows an androgynous child’s journey of self-discovery through a fable rooted in Andean agricultural mythology. Cláudio Fontana performs alone in a restrained staging directed by Elias Andreato.

In “A Raiz,” playwright Newton Moreno draws on Andean cosmologies in which women alone cultivated and tended crops, linking the fertility of the earth with the creation of life. The play uses this mythic framework to tell the story of an androgynous child discovering their identity, with rural soil serving as a symbol of memory, belonging and renewal.

The fable depicts family conflict, community judgment and pressure to conform, but approaches gender difference through an affirming lens rather than focusing on violence or victimhood. Its central idea is captured in the line: “There are truths the earth cannot bury.”

Directed by Elias Andreato in the Sala Paschoal Carlos Magno at the Sérgio Cardoso Theatre, the production uses a sparse set and places the audience close to the performance. Lighting by Cleber Eli shifts between stark beams for moments of social constraint and warmer tones for scenes of affection and discovery. Andreato’s music supports the pace of the narration and its silences.

Fontana carries the performance alone, moving between a detached storyteller and the child’s experiences with restrained gestures. Gabriel Villela’s costume design combines fabrics, textures and colors without relying on binary categories. A dressmaking mannequin dressed in feminine clothing serves at different moments as the child’s mother and as a reflection of the child in transition.

The production also uses AI-generated images at the beginning and end. The review of the staging describes them as its main weakness, arguing that they make literal what the text and performance already leave to the audience’s imagination.

Fontana said he chose to tell the story in an epic, narrated style rather than adapt it into realistic or psychologically focused theatre. He described the solo performance as an opportunity to discover the power of spoken storytelling and the exchange of emotion with the audience. The play runs for 50 minutes and is recommended for audiences aged 12 and older.

“A Raiz” is scheduled at the Teatro Sérgio Cardoso’s Sala Paschoal Carlos Magno, at Rua Rui Barbosa, 153, Bela Vista, on Saturdays and Sundays at 6:30 p.m., through November 20. Tickets start at R$25 for half-price admission and are available through Sympla.

Sources: Folha Ilustrada.