It may be classified as a critically endangered language, but Patuá, a creole dialect unique to Macau, was once again heard at this year’s Macau Arts Festival.
For the past 20 years, Miguel de Senna Fernandes – playwright and director of theatre group Doci Papiacam di Macau (Sweet Speech of Macau) – has written and directed a play in the local dialect, which is performed during the festival each year.
“It’s a language that local people developed hundreds of years ago in order to communicate with each other,” says Miguel. “It wasn’t solely Chinese or Portuguese. Macau was a melting pot and that is how this language developed. It had endured for many centuries until the Portuguese adopted a centralised language for the colonies. Many creoles were sacrificed in order to preserve Portuguese, and sadly, Patuá was one of those.”
Although Patuá is no longer in common use, Miguel explains that you can still hear remnants of the language, mainly in homes around Macau.
“There are very few people that still speak it, but many understand it, so they come to the play and they understand and will laugh,” he says. “We rely on total communication, body language, everything, so that it can be completely understood.”
“The Patuá we use is very mild so that everyone can understand. It’s a comedy, so if the punch line is not understood then there goes the line and the joke! So for the punch lines I have to make it very mild and very close to Portuguese, so people get the joke 100 percent,” he explains.
This year’s play was entitled Amochai Divoto (A Vote for Love) and played at the Cultural Centre on May 25 and 26. It’s a love story set during the time of elections, and is a parody of Romeo and Juliet.
“This is an election year in Macau – I needed an excuse to talk about the elections, and I used a love story,” says Miguel.
The play revolves around the impossible love between two youngsters, each one belonging to rival families, each family supporting a different candidate.
“Traditionally, a Patuá play is always funny,” Miguel says. “We can make fun of what we have experienced in the past with Macau elections. We make fun of those clichéd behaviours from candidates in the Macau political scene that have been crystalised and iconised. I think the audience will recognise a lot of these situations and will see the funny side of it all.”
A Patuá play usually involves a fairly large cast, and Amochai Divoto is no exception. The cast of 12 helps to create a lot of energy, a lot of different characters, and contributes to the traditional festival feeling of the play.
“Its important that people hear Patuá – not to try and revive it, that would be impossible – I’m just aiming for awareness. We are Macanese, and sometimes that’s a hard thing to define, but something like this can help us. Knowing that our ancestors might have spoken this language, we are just making people aware of the history and helping to give Macanese an identity.”
“If I wrote a play in Cantonese, it would just be another play. We have different views on things, it’s different humour. It would be quite challenging to write the same thing in Chinese.”
The annual popularity of the plays goes to show that Miguel’s efforts are appreciated by the wider community.
“We have a full house every year – that’s a pretty strong sign that none of this is in vain!”
