A hammock for Yemanja

A Network for Yemanja is a moving Afro-Brazilian Christmas play that captures the power of Black culture, through the words of Antônio Callado. This edition also features a performance by the renowned actress Zezé Motta.

In the opening of "A Rede Para Yemanjá ," a play written by the celebrated author Antônio Callado in 1961, Juca's father sits on a beach bench, gazing out to sea in prayer. Yemanjá has taken his son, and with him, perhaps, his sense. As the figure of an old black man, Juca's father can be considered a guide, present throughout the play's action and responsible for blending reality and fantasy. Through his eyes appear Manuel Seringueiro, Lili, and Jacira—the latter pregnant and with an immense desire to answer the call of the sea.

The only play by Callado's Black Theater set in an open space, "A Rede para Iemanjá" can be read as a representation of Brazil's condition at the time. In the city of Rio de Janeiro, which serves as its setting, there is the encounter of the sea with urban progress, verticalization, the presence of northeastern migration, religious syncretism, and the mixing of Black and white people. Abandonment, hope, and faith are also on stage. The hammock is the symbolic artifact that allows all the dimensions presented by Callado to be embraced and cradled, and that drives Jacira's will; it represents her bond with her family, a place of belonging. Her child, therefore, can only be born there.

Professor and literary critic Ligia Chiappini observes that, despite a certain melancholy, there is a strong sense of hope in this performance: “The play, which parodies the birth of Christ, has him reborn in the open air [...] and can be read as an Afro-Brazilian version of a Christmas play.” A Rede Para Iemanjá contains the beauty, simplicity, and also the complexity of so many Brazils that only Antônio Callado could wrap and enchant in a single hammock.

This edition features an introduction by actress Zezé Motta, a foreword by João Cezar de Castro Rocha, professor of Comparative Literature at UERJ, and a profile of the author by Eric Nepomuceno.