The world's a stage

Marcos Barbosa is ruing the fact that, in his native Brazil, people just aren't as passionate about theatre as they are about football. 'It's a shame because theatre and football are very similar: a celebration of people coming together, a sense of carnival...' he trails off. The analogy isn't working. He shrugs. 'Maybe one day.'

Twenty-six-year-old Barbosa is a rare and lonely creature - a passionate playwright in a country which, due partly to the impact of censorship during the 1964 to 1985 dictatorship, has very little tradition of modern, text-based theatre. 'I can't survive on my earnings at all, I supplement them by teaching,' he says. 'Although I believe not many people can survive just by writing plays in England either. But, then you do have this.' He stretches his arm out to indicate the Royal Court, a theatre committed to new writing and in whose bar we are sitting having a chat.

Barbosa is here because two of his plays - both set in contemporary Brazil, one about a boys camp, the other about a couple who have killed a young boy - are kicking off the Royal Court's International Season.

Since 1989, the Court has been nurturing relationships with tiny theatre communities across the world, developing new plays, and bringing the results to London. Recent successes have included Al-Kasaba Theatre's Alive From Palestine, a semi-documentary piece about the terrors of life under curfew, and Vassily Sigarev's Plasticine, a nightmarish vision of modern urban Russia. Sigarev, incidentally, who promptly followed that debut with Black Milk, won Most Promising Playwright and a bursary at the Evening Standard's 2002 Theatre Awards and is back this season with his new play, Ladybird.

Barbosa is probably hoping for similar success. His involvement with the International Department, run since 1993 by the formidable Elyse Dodgson, began with a workshop in S"o Paulo, after which a ten-minute play was given a reading at the Royal Court. For him, the most valuable thing has simply been the chance to talk to experienced directors and producers.

'Meeting these people has allowed me to realise what I'm trying to do, if only by contrast,' he says in his not-quite-perfect English.

For someone so young, Barbosa already has clear ideas about what he wants to achieve as a playwright, even if he also resists defining his work. He quotes Peter Brook in saying that he chases the 'sparkle of life', but then admits he has to keep going in order to find whatever that is for him. He dislikes the notion that his work should reflect Brazil in some specific way, and believes that plays shouldn't feel an obligation to be socially responsible. 'If I lived under a dictatorship, then, of course, I would want to write about what that felt like, but I'm very glad I don't.'

Barbosa has nothing but praise for Dodgson's department. 'It should be seen as a model example of international cooperation,' he jokes. This year that same department has also brought over, for the first time, five short plays from Cuba, presented as readings. But Barbosa won't be around to hear them, nor for that matter, his own play. 'I go home just before,' he says. 'I don't fancy the vain adulation of press nights.' Barbosa may have learned a lot about theatre but, on the basis of that remark, he still has some way to go.

At The Table and Almost Nothing, previews from Thu, Feb 9 until Feb 28, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, Sloane Square SW1, Mon to Sat 7.45pm (except Feb 9 and 10 Feb 7pm), Sat mats 4pm, £12.50 to £16. Tel: 020 7565 5000. www.royalcourttheatre.com Tube: Sloane Square