Wallenstein and Medrado: the descendant and the pioneer

Rafael Medrado arrived in Lisbon at 5pm on a Monday and at 7pm sharp he was at ACT (School of Actors) to start an acting course. “Manuel [Pureza] was also there and, during the break, asked me if I wanted to smoke a cigarette,” he told Observador. Rafael Medrado lit up and offered another to the director. “He said: 'Oh, no, I don't smoke. I just came out here so you could tell me your story.'”

The connection was instantaneous, as was the mutual admiration, with Manuel Pureza immediately giving a huge list of theatre and film suggestions and names that the Brazilian actor really had to know. Nine years later, the former directs the latter in O Zé Faz 25 — the fictional podcast that follows the investigation into the disappearance of José Valbom, a young man of — there it is — 25 years old who was last seen at his own birthday party, with new episodes every Tuesday.

For Rafael Medrado, O Zé Faz 25 is the perfect example of the work of Manuel Pureza, the director. “He always has a very fresh perspective on the times and on the trends that make sense to follow. It’s a choice to re-savour a story through images created in our heads.”

In the story, he is Guedes, the best friend of the missing protagonist. “There is a part of Guedes’ past that Zé doesn’t know about and this also makes him a suspect. Because he is as crazy as Zé, he also becomes a dangerous being because we don’t know what he is capable of.”

The actor describes the experience as a kind of “team game”. “At various times I looked at my colleagues and we were all enjoying it as if we were 13 or 14 years old.” Vicente Wallenstein also experienced this work — in which he plays Delgado, Zé’s sister’s boyfriend — with a different enthusiasm than in previous ones.

“Manuel Pureza] had this idea of ​​developing a series almost in the Cluedo format with the narrative of a crime. Each episode would focus on one of the characters suspected of that crime. We even had some rehearsals before the pandemic to develop part of the writing so that the actors could give some input, but, in my opinion, it's a good thing it didn't go ahead because we ended up recapturing a format that we would have called radio theater in the past,” he explains to Observador.

The concept was not unfamiliar to him, as his grandfather, Carlos Wallenstein, was not only an actor, but also a playwright. “In the 70s, 80s and 90s he wrote several plays for RDP to be performed on the radio.”

During the pandemic, Vicente Wallenstein became part of a group — Transmissão — that developed a radio theatre series, a partnership between Wallenstein’s association, As Crianças Loucas, and Um Coletivo, an association led by Cátia Terrinca. “With them in Elvas and us in Lisbon, we ended up developing this programme, a kind of radio theatre festival.”

[the trailer for “Joe Turns 25”:]

Vicente Wallenstein was born in Lisbon in July 1995 and has very vivid memories of his early school years. “When my grandmother would pick me up, we would catch a bus to her house in Estefânia. I was always crazy about public transport, I was really fascinated by it because my mother would always pick me up by car. And it was a moment of connection with my grandmother, who was a very important person to me.”

At that time, I spent most of my journeys making up stories. “I was very introverted, withdrawn into my own world, and one of the things I did was imagine the stories of the people I saw on the bus. I was very curious about the figures of older people, who seemed enormous to me at that time, of course.”

Maria do Bom Sucesso, that was the name of the grandmother who is present in all these memories, was a Portuguese and French teacher, and was also linked to the theater through her husband — of the four children they had, one of them is the actor José Wallenstein and another the musician Pedro Wallenstein.

When he was four or five years old, Vicente made his television debut on RTP1, in the series Gente Feliz Com Lágrimas , directed by Zeca Medeiros. He played one of the children of the couple Miguel Guilherme and Ana Padrão. “My grandmother ended up taking me to some of the recordings. For me, it was just fun, especially since I lived mostly in the family home, it wasn’t really a role with many lines.”

He grew up surrounded by artists, behind the scenes in theater and television. His fascination grew with age and being part of the industry was almost inevitable. At the age of 11, he took part in a short film by Cláudia Varejão and later took part in some workshops.

Unlike Wallenstein, Rafael Medrado is the first actor in his family. He was born in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, 39 years ago. At school, during a literacy ceremony — which celebrated the fact that children could now read and write — he had to choose what he saw as his future profession. “My classmates chose Formula 1 driver or football player, and I chose clown. I liked the character who was the most daring in the show. I chose clown because it was already an idea linked to theatre.”

With his brother Vinícius, two years younger, and friends from the condominium and the street, he would paint lines that delimited a field and goals on the tarmac so they could spend the day playing football. In the neighborhood there was an upholsterer's workshop that was a kind of Mecca for the children. “The owner was a very nice man who let us take whatever scraps he had. Wood, iron, nails, fabric, everything was used for our games.”