It all goes back to 2005.
At the time, I was a regular subscriber to the Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris. I would go to see every production the theatre presented throughout the year.
That year, when the theatre reopened after the summer holidays, the first production was staged in its smaller auditorium. It was called Caeiro!
I knew nothing about the play or its author.
That hour in the theatre was filled with a profound sense of calm. I listened as two actors spoke words so simple and unadorned that they seemed almost like truths. I could almost see every word dancing in the air alongside the notes coming from the violin in the actors’ hands.
It was a wonderful evening.
Who was this poet, Caeiro?
I knew I had to read his work, to experience again those verses whose language was so utterly simple, yet so deeply moving.
I went to a bookshop in search of the poet Caeiro. And that was how I discovered Fernando Pessoa.
Pessoa described discovering his master, Caeiro, in a state of almost ecstatic inspiration. It happened one day in 1914. Pessoa was twenty-five years old, still a melancholic, shy young man who lacked confidence in himself.
His personal history had shaped his character, but it would also become the source of his future inner richness.
His father died when he was five. In a sense, he lost his mother that same year, too, as she remarried the Portuguese consul in Durban.
Pessoa often said that he had lived through at least two different childhoods, three adolescences, two periods of “exile”, and two languages — Portuguese and English.
Amid all this, he became lost and withdrawn. He feared losing his mind, as his grandmother had.
Before Caeiro appeared, his life seemed constrained.
The era in which he lived, his personal history and the circumstances of his life had led him into an inner world filled with darkness and emptiness.
But Caeiro showed him a path towards reality, a path leading out into the world. There was light there, colour, and shape.
Yes, Caeiro was simple, playful, full of sunshine.
He allowed Pessoa to see the sun outside his window.
I love Caeiro.
Caeiro’s poetry has accompanied me through life and through my work.
There are many poems from The Keeper of Sheep that I love reading aloud to my actors before rehearsals.
Caeiro has little formal knowledge. Caeiro does not think. What he possesses is intuition — an extraordinary intuition that comes precisely from not thinking, from not trying to understand;
Caeiro’s language is extremely simple, because to say more would be to explain, and nothing needs to be explained;
Caeiro does not know what life is. He simply lives it.
Isn’t this precisely what every actor should strive to achieve in their work?
And perhaps, even, something each of us should try.
The poet Fernando Pessoa created the poet Caeiro.
The poet Fernando Pessoa is not the poet Caeiro.
Caeiro is a complete and independent individual. Although he never existed in reality, he has his own background, his own thoughts, his own story.
As a complete and independent individual, he breathes, lives, thinks, and observes the world.
If you love theatre, you will surely recognise the theatricality in all this.
Sifan Shao
Beijing, October 2016