palácio santa catarina (org. culturgest) | duration 1h30 | tickets 10 € / 5 € 
friday _ 23 may | saturday _ 24 may |
sunday _ 25 may | monday _ 26 may
starting at 19h, 19h30, 20h, 21h e 21h30

Why does someone decide to be a policeman: to defend democracy, because they like danger, because they can’t find other work, idealism, because they want to walk around with a revolver in their belt?
Chácara Paraíso (Paradise Farm), in the Pirituba district of São Paulo, is where the largest training centre of military police soldiers in Latin America can be found. Everyday, in this place, more than 2000 policemen learn marches, approaches and attacks.
In Chácara Paraíso, the young 18-year-olds train for reality through simulations that are forms of theatre. There’s even a scenic slum for the policemen to shoot cardboard targets painted as people: a bearded man with a pistol (shoot!), a photographer with a camera (don’t shoot!), a pretty woman with a revolver (shoot!), a man with a hostage (don’t shoot!). The policemen stand up to cardboard dolls. Fiction converts itself into a form of training.
At the invitation of the Goethe Institute of São Paulo, the directors Lola Arias and Stefan Kaegi (author of Mnemopark – a miniature train world, at Culturgest 2007), visited training and practice centres, graduation ceremonies, psychological help centres, cavalries, the Musical Corps, even the Military Police Chapel of São Paulo. Along this route, a surprising and heterogeneous image of the police institution emerges, a society within society.
Chácara Paraíso is a type of installation that mixes the documental and fictional, displaying biographies of policemen, ex-policemen and their family members.
The performers/ policemen are the guides of the museum of their own lives. The public travels through the rooms in small groups.

concept and direction lola arias, stefan kaegi | with isabel cristina amaro, thiago de paula santos alves, marcel lima, pedro amorim, sebastião teixeira dos santos, terezinha teixeira dos santos, ellana gomes viana pires, luis carlos tokunaga, cleber rodrigues campos | artistic collaboration and direction assistant cristiane zuan esteves | second direction assistant manuela afonso | video editing marilla halla | production interior produções artísticas internacionais / matthias pees, ricardo muniz fernandes   | achievement goethe institut são paulo in partnership with sesc são paulo | supportfundação federal de cultura da alemanha (kulturstiftung des bundes), ministério da cultura do brasil

 PERFORMANCES | CALENDAR