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Cláudia Alencar
MyStory
-I am from São Paulo, daughter of intellectual parents: Mauro and Cilda, two beings faithful to their souls. They influenced my life to embrace love and face pain. My mother, Cilda, for example, was born in the 1930s. As soon as she graduated in Campinas, she went alone to live in São Paulo then alone again to the USA to study biology! Graduated, she came back to Brazil and at the age of 33. It was the year 1947. She got married to my would-be father who was a year younger. Three years later, she gave birth to my brother Gilberto then to myself, another two years later.
-In 1964, at the age of 14, I won a national short story competition promoted by the newspaper Correio Folha da Manhã. I became interested in writing since that time and passionate about Rio de Janeiro, bossa nova, the carioca style of being… Interest in acting, dancing and create arts started few years later when I finished high school. There was a high school, not a university, for acting Escola de Arte Dramática. My father didn’t let me go… He said: It’s a technical course! Besides, the actress is a whore and has no personality! I argued that it was my dream, but he gave me two slaps on the face and said: “You are going to do sociology, because you are not a whore and you have personality”. That year I took an entrance exam for Social Sciences, History and Communications. I passed these three colleges. For six months I studied: one in the morning, another in the afternoon, and History at night. The following semester take it. Next semester. I only continued Communications (where there was theater, Cinema and TV) and Social Sciences.
-During the lunch break I did theater and performances across the squares of the city’s neighborhoods, denouncing the torture that was in Brazil. We were studying the great philosophers: Gramsci, Hegel, Engels and Marx. I was struggling for Brazil to have social equality, education, basic sanitation, so that there would be social equality for all of us Brazilians. I believed in the theories I learned, but he did not know that the human being with power and fame would become greedy, corrupt hypocrite. Whoever experiences political power becomes the People’s Enemy … the majority … the majority. At that time, I joined ALN to be able to denounce on theater the torture by the regime.
-After that hell I resumed my career, I got married at the age of twenty-four. With the passion of a seventeen years-old, I went to resume my acting career and also classes until doctorate, with Sábato Magaldi, who was the biggest critic in Brazil, my supervisor in graduate school, in the master’s degree. I took photos with my neighbor who was a photographer and took them to TV Cultura. Antunes Filho, also one of the greatest directors in Brazil, was directing the TV Cultura Teleteatro. When he saw my curriculum and photos, he was enchanted and gave me the Domingo de Oliveira play, “Somos Todos do Jardim da Infância” opposite Antonio Fagundes, who already was a great actor in São Paulo. This was the great beginning of career.
In 1972 , under the rule of General Emílio Garrastazu Médici , I was arrested while teaching at Colégio Oswaldo Aranha, and remained in the hands of Operation Bandeirantes (OBAN) for twenty days, where I was tortured with my fellow activists. I unknowingly became afraid of authorit of someone with more power than me. I always knocked on the doors of Globo, for every soap opera that I knew was choosing cast but I received thousands of noes. That’s why it is always good to have healthy relationships with our bosses. I don’t talk about flattery, but a normal relationship … But as for me, I couldn’t do so. On the personal level, I dated at twenty-seven a man who beat me a lot. I felt better at thirty-eight when I had my son Yann and three years later my daughter Crystal. I managed to return to being Claudinha that I was before… Amazing that the Maria da Penha law was only approved in 2006. It is very difficult for women to report abuse. I have seen my interviews since my early career, when I fight for women, so that they are no longer silent. We have to be united! It was seven years ago that I gave my lecture: The 21st Century Woman in Brazil, and I formed a collective of women, with emails, WhatsApps so I found a way to gradually plant a little seed in women’s hearts.
-I still write every day, and when I turned sixty-nine, I didn’t even believe it. I already say that I am seventy years- old and it is easier to say. since the 1990s I started meditating, eating healthy only organics. The reflection of my energy, my health comes from this desire, to only eat what is good for me, to exercise, and to control stress. I haven’t known the taste of meat and stopped smoking since I was forty-years old. I love to create … paintings, books, dancing and also dating, having friends, but I love being alone too, loneliness nurtures me. My children are my treasure- proof that God exists, Yann is 30 years old, a beautiful man, an American citizen, he fought hard to be an American citizen, to have a Green Card., he is a singer, composer, artist, does marketing in a large company in New York, Crystal, aged 27, is in marketing for Som Livre. A beautiful woman, who travels the world with her friends. The two are much better than me. My mission is done, The purpose of life is the perpetuation of love.
-I wouldn’t let myself be abused, either physically or morally. I would forgive everyone and me much sooner. I would understand that we are all brothers! We live in the same house as our planet earth. But I would never give up being my deep SELF, honest, upright and that respects your soul! I DON’T WANT EMPOWERMENT … I WANT LOVINGLY to be side by side with Man: not above! Not even below! Together! I believe in true love…
