“I discovered the joy of being another person and for this reason it is easier to confront the reality of our own life. If I wasn’t an actor, I would live depressed and have difficulties to overcome personal crisises,” Gustavo Gasparani,55, in an interview about his four decades as an actor.

Ironically located near the Sao Batista cemetery in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro´s small but artistically big Teatro Poeira, or literally “Dirt Theater,” is a local Renaissance or re-birth of new theatrical activities.
Celebrating its 16th year of existence, the theater is a meeting place for the elite of the local theater world.
And due to its limited seating capacity it is often difficult to obtain a ticket to see its intriguing season of old and new plays.
Invited by its production for my first –and hopefully not last opening night –at this theatrical icon, I was seated among local celebrities (most of whom seemed to be thespians) giving a standing ovation to veteran actor Gustavo Gasparini’s virtuoso monologue performance as the troubled, homosexual- pretending- to- be- a- male- chauvinist- actor Montgomery Clift.
The play is a biting and poignant portrait of how success, fame, money and excessive media exposure in Hollywood and other American spheres has led to celebrities turning for comfort to alcohol and drugs resulting in their suicides or in Clift´s case “slow death.” (He died at 57 of a heart attack.)
Born in America´s so-called bread basket, famous for insurance companies and currently the resident city of Warren Buffet–one of the richest men in the world –or Omaha, Nebraska, Clift discovered his acting talents early in life leading him to roles on Broadway and eventually stardom in Hollywood, especially as the romantic partner of Elizabeth Taylor.
As homosexuality was a no-no in America during his lifetime, Clift(-like James Dean-) had to hide his sexual preferences pretending to be a Playboy.
There is no curtain at the Poeira theater and as the audience enters the only scenery is an empty bathtub and innumerous liquor bottles thrown about the floor.
A gigantic acoustic shell line the theater’s walls and Clift´s preferred music of gay composer Cole Porter including Ella Fitzgerald singing “It´s all right with me “(It´s the wrong time, it’s the wrong place …) blare away.
Actor Gasparini-Montgomery Clift enters the bathtub and from this theatrical perch begins a monologue about his tragic saga of being disfigured from a recent auto accident which disfigured his million-dollar face.
The ensuing dialogue could well have been one which Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Amy Winehouse or others who suffered or died from drug or alcohol abuse could have uttered.
In Clift´s case” the play takes place during a moment when exhausted from the harassment and pressure from the media and Hollywood, Clift decides to abandon the cinema to realize his dream of producing Chekhov´s “The Seagull.”
“Monty,” as he is best known, confronts not only the physical consequence of a n auto accident which disfigured his face but conflicts of homosexuality, a troubled family life life and relations with colleagues in his profession.”
Chekov´s “Seagull,” (1895) about the life and fate of theatrical characters beginning with shooting of a seagull and ending with the suicide of a playwright-director is a fitting counterpoint.
Seeking an artistic outlet as an escape from his empty life as a Hollywood star,rich and famous Cift never realized his dream of staging Chekov’s classic masterpiece, a fitting insight on Spanish playwright Alberto Lopez’ s monologue.