Jerry Seinfeld e a criação de "Intervalo"

 One weekend in 2004, I was watching Saturday Night Live. The guest that night was comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who had become very rich with the immense success of his series. I wasn't even that big of a Seinfeld fan. But his opening monologue on SNL enlightened me with its inspiration.

Using a lot of irony, Jerry said that when Seinfeld ended filming, he had sold his house in Los Angeles and moved back to New York. And then he described his "exciting" life as a superstar in Manhattan. He said that he would wake up at 8 in the morning and turn on the TV. He would watch a bunch of series. And he would anxiously wait until early afternoon when Days of Your Lives, the soap opera that has been on the air since 1965, would start.

When dinner time came, Seinfeld would finally take off his pajamas and go outside. His “glamorous life” continued at the stall where he ate six or seven skewered barbecues. He would run back to bed and continue watching TV until he fell asleep.

Durante alguns meses canal Sony transmitiu Days of Our Lives no Brasil. E eu fiquei viciado naquela novela com personagens de maquiagem carregada e cabelos sempre perfeitos. “Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives” era a frase de abertura. Como a areia caindo pela ampulheta, assim são os dias de nossas vidas. 

Por alguns meses acompanhei a história desses personagens irreais, incluindo um vilão chamado Stefano DiMera, que sequestrou a amada Marlena e a prendeu num gaiolão de ouro. Aquela era uma novela de décadas, com mais de 10 mil capítulos. Tinha seu próprio ritmo. Eu ficava meio letárgico e hipnotizado nas minhas madrugadas de Days of Our Lives. 

E de repente a Sony tirou a novela do ar. Aquele monte de personagens com quem eu me envolvi por meses desapareceu para sempre. Pelo menos para mim.

Quando Jerry Seinfeld fez o seu monólogo no Saturday Night Live, me veio na cabeça uma questão pop-existencial. Onde estavam os personagens de Days of Our Lives agora que eu não podia mais saber de suas vidas? O que havia acontecido com Stefano, Marlena, John Black, Hope, Kristen, Maggie, Billie e Sami nos anos em que eu não os acompanhei? 

Percebi que essa gente toda estava numa curva da minha memória. Personagens inconclusos, suspensos, sem começo nem fim, apenas num curto “meio”. Como se a areia tivesse parado de cair pela ampulheta. Nasceu esse conceito de personagens perdidos no limbo da memória de um espectador. A ideia de uma peça de teatro sobre a relação entre os personagens de uma telenovela e seus espectadores começou a rondar minha cabeça.

O livro com o texto da peça Intervalo está à venda pela Amazon.

Jerry Seinfeld and the Creation of Break

One weekend in 2004, I was watching Saturday Night Live. The guest that night was comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who had become very rich with the immense success of his series. I wasn't even that big of a Seinfeld fan. But his opening monologue on SNL enlightened me with its inspiration.

Using a lot of irony, Jerry said that when Seinfeld ended filming, he had sold his house in Los Angeles and moved back to New York. And then he described his "exciting" life as a superstar in Manhattan. He said that he would wake up at 8 in the morning and turn on the TV. He would watch a bunch of series. And he would anxiously wait until early afternoon when Days of Your Lives, the soap opera that has been on the air since 1965, would start.

When dinner time came, Seinfeld would finally take off his pajamas and go outside. His “glamorous life” continued at the stall where he ate six or seven skewered barbecues. He would run back to bed and continue watching TV until he fell asleep.

For a few months, Sony broadcast Days of Our Lives in Brazil. And I became addicted to that soap opera with characters wearing heavy makeup and always having perfect hair. “Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives” was the opening line.

For a few months I followed the story of these unreal characters, including a villain named Stefano DiMera, who kidnapped his beloved Marlena and locked her in a golden cage. That was a soap opera that had been running for decades, with over 10 thousand episodes. It had its own rhythm. I would get kind of lethargic and hypnotized during my late nights watching Days of Our Lives.

And suddenly Sony took the soap opera off the air. That bunch of characters I had been involved with for months disappeared forever. At least for me. When Jerry Seinfeld did his monologue on Saturday Night Live, a pop-existential question came to mind. Where were the characters from Days of Our Lives now that I could no longer know about their lives? What had happened to Stefano, Marlena, John Black, Hope, Kristen, Maggie, Billie and Sami in the years I had not followed them?

I realized that all these people were in a loop in my memory. Unfinished characters, suspended, with no beginning or end, only a short “middle”. As if the sand had stopped falling through the hourglass. This concept of characters lost in the limbo of a viewer’s memory was born. The idea of ​​a play about the relationship between the characters of a soap opera and its viewers began to haunt my head.

The book with the text of the play Intervalo is for sale on Amazon. (In Portuguese)