I arrive in the aftermath of an assassination. Actors are rehearsing the panic following Julius Caesar’s murder. Some stand aghast, while others scamper – and kneeling at their centre, cradling the dead emperor, is Brutus, his former ally who delivered the unkindest cut.
For the first time at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Brutus will be a young, Black woman – Thalissa Teixeira. “Hugging Caesar came from an improvisation where I basically rugby-tackled him,” she tells me. “You see these two lizard-like forms writhing around each other, and you’re not quite sure who died.”
With her warm intelligence and a unique crackle in her voice, Teixeira has struck sparks at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and, opposite Vanessa Kirby, in Julie at the National Theatre. On screen she played cops in both Two Weeks to Live and Ragdoll, and was part of a throuple in Trigonometry. Her own achingly tender short film, We Met Before, reflects her experience of anxiety, something she finds easier to manage on stage, where you know what happens next. “Life doesn’t give you that – it catches me out sometimes.”
Atri Banerjee, Julius Caesar’s director, first saw Teixeira in the Young Vic’s Yerma starring Billie Piper. “Sometimes you see an actor who’s lit by electricity in every moment,” he says. He was excited that Brutus was “an opportunity to give her a big leading role and make her shine”.
Banerjee points out a photo from a famed 1970s Julius Caesar hanging on the RSC’s walls, but says his is a very different take. “This isn’t the version of the play populated by older white men. This version is populated by people who are representative of the world we live in. Who holds power today, who gets to wield or challenge it? Thalissa has such presence: having a Black woman as Brutus brought intersectionality into the discourse around power.”
In rehearsal, Teixeira’s tactile, encouraging Brutus appears radiant with optimism, her irrepressible curls in a blue and gold scarf. “I’m still trying to figure out how you get your head into killing someone you love so much, for the people,” she says. She and Banerjee have discussed various responses to injustice. “Do you protest and walk with your brothers and sisters? Do you vote? Do you not vote? Do you chuck soup at a famous painting? Or do you murder someone? I don’t think Brutus wants to lead or be the next king. That’s the opposite to what she is aiming for.”
The youthful, diverse cast have researched revolutionaries from Mexican Zapatistas to militant Welsh nationalists, to give them different perspectives on Shakespeare’s “group of people deciding that violence is the only way out”. With her Brazilian heritage – “I constantly have half a brain over there” – Teixeira has been thinking about Lula, recently returned to the country’s presidency. “In some of his speeches, he’s just in a T-shirt with people waving flowers in his face, and he shouts the most incredible poetry. ‘Those in power can kill one, two, or three roses, but they will never be able to stop the coming of spring.’ I’m not gonna be able to act the whole white-man-in-a-toga, but what if you see a Brutus that is … me?”
Although Harriet Walter played Brutus in the Donmar’s all-female production, Teixeira’s casting has caused a stir. She says: “You can tell when people are shoehorned into parts just for the sake of diversity. You become the poster girl of progress.” In Julius Caesar, however, “we’re telling the story of now”. She describes Banerjee’s triangulated perspective on the play: part Roman history, part reflection of Shakespeare’s own anxious era. “And then you’ve got this young South Asian director, telling a story about what the world looks like right now.”
Teixeira was born in Bradford but grew up in Brazil. Although she and her mother returned to the UK when she was eight, she spent each summer in Salvador in north-east Brazil. “Salvador is the biggest Black city in the world outside Africa. There’s a lot of poverty and huge injustice – but you can’t get away from music, performance and theatre, especially at carnival. From huge points of distress comes incredible beauty.” Might she move back permanently? “I don’t know. I was in Brazil in the interim between the two presidential votes last year, and it was a really tense time. You heard horror stories about vengeance against people supporting opposing sides.”
She pours all of this experience into Julius Caesar. “Brutus has to be the emotional heart of this production,” Banerjee says. “The amazing thing about Thalissa is she’s both a total ensemble player but sets the tenor of the room, through generosity, playfulness, good humour. Lots of the actors see her as a role model. She’s a proper leading actor through and through.” Does this responsibility sit easily with Teixeira? “It’s definitely more anxiety-inducing! But I genuinely believe that whether you’ve got one line or half the text, each part has to be alive.”
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Julius Caesar is at the Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 18 March-8 April. Then touring 20 April-24 June
