theatre research international · vol. 42 | no. 2 | pp209–211
C© International Federation for Theatre Research 2017 · doi:10.1017/S030788331700030X

Dossier

Introduction to Snapshot: Brazil

c l á u d i a t a t i n g e n a s c i m e n t o

This short dossier on contemporary Brazilian theatre offers the reader a snapshot of
how artists have responded to the ongoing political crisis. The massive protests that
erupted across the nation in June 2013 paved the way for the impeachment of President
Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and left the economy in a shambles. Though flawed, the leftist
political projects of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–10) and of Rousseff,
his successor in the presidency (2011–16), privileged social inclusion. A great part of
the Brazilian middle and upper classes resented the resulting socio-economic ascension
of historically underserved populations. Much like the reactions sparked by the spike
in popularity of conservative leaders in Europe and the United States, the Brazilian
opposition’s political manoeuvre to oust Rousseff in 2016 has divided the nation. A solid
majority of the artistic class has sided with compatriots who call the impeachment a coup,
albeit not a military one. Historian Sydney Chalhoub has observed that Brazil is no longer
a democracy, and scholar James Green noted that ‘Dilma Rousseff’s ouster raises concerns
that the many social gains the Brazilian left has achieved over the last two decades could be
quickly reversed’.1 Nearly a year on from Rousseff’s impeachment, corruption scandals
abound, and the government of Michel Temer has effectively crippled the country’s
health, education and judicial systems. The Brazilian artistic métier has sustained its
political activism during and beyond the impeachment process. For example, artists
occupied the offices of the Ministry of Culture across the country – in Rio de Janeiro, the
sit-in lasted 111 days – when, soon after being sworn in as the acting president in August
2016, Michel Temer moved to shut down this ministry.

The two essays commissioned for this dossier introduce the reader to some of the
ramifications of the crisis, as well as to how Brazilian artists have taken a political stance.
I note that the professional profiles of their authors demonstrate that the boundaries
between the roles of artist, scholar, critic and activist are quite porous in Brazil. Adriana
Schneider Alcure is a professor of theatre at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro,
an activist with the organization Reage, Artista!, and a director – the reader will find
a review of her Cidade Correria in this dossier. Aimar Labaki is a playwright, director,
translator and essayist living and working in São Paulo. He is the co-author, with Elena
Vássina, of Stanislávski: vida, obra, sistema (Stanislavsky: Life, Work, System (2015)) and
with Antonio Candengue of Nelson Rodrigues: A Esfinge Investigada (Nelson Rodrigues:
A Sphinx Investigated (2006)). While Schneider Alcure’s essay focuses on the roots of
present-day activism and the use of carnaval practices in protests, Labaki’s details the
re-emergence of a Brazilian political theatre at this juncture.

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210 n a s c i m e n t o Introduction to Snapshot: Brazil

Creatively, the political crisis has prompted Brazilian theatre to find new ways
to denounce social injustices and stimulate important conversations. The reviews
collected here – all of them previously published in major Brazilian periodicals – discuss
performances principally from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the two main theatre
hubs in Brazil, but also include examples from the country’s North East and South
regions. These productions approach an array of politically relevant themes, from Brazil’s
starved public schools to its shameful record as the leading nation in hate crimes against
transpersons in the world. Conselho de Classe (Faculty Meeting) by Rio de Janeiro’s Cia.
dos Atores and playwright Jô Bilac exposes the government’s profound neglect of the
Brazilian public education system, while using the numerous protests of June 2013 as a
backdrop. Created by Silvero Pereira, BR-Trans is a solo documentary theatre piece based
on his interviews with transpersons living in the north-eastern state of Ceará, where
Pereira is originally from, and the southern Rio Grande do Sul. The prefix ‘trans’ in the
performance’s title shows us how in Brazil the term serves as an umbrella for a gamut
of gender identities – not just transgender and transsexual people, but also travestis and
transformistas.2 The country’s colonial past is at the heart of Aquela Cia.’s Caranguejo
Overdrive, a production that links geographer Josué de Castro’s fictional story about
a man-crab living in the mangrove at Rio de Janeiro’s Cidade Nova neighbourhood
in the late 1800s, and the gentrification of the city during preparations for the 2014
FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Cidade Correria (City Rat Race), by
Rio de Janeiro’s Coletivo Bonobando, explores class relationships and discrimination
in large urban centres. São Paulo theatre group Club Noir’s staging of the novel Spilt
Milk (Leite Derramado) by Chico Buarque connects the military dictatorship to today’s
political disarray. Adassa Martins’s solo performance Iracema reflects the recent rise of
public concern with the rights of indigenous peoples in light of José de Alencar’s 1865
eponymous novel. PROJETO bRASIL, a devised piece by director Marcio Abreu and
Cia. Brasileira de Teatro of Curitiba, responds to the many different national realities
experienced by the creative team as it travelled across Brazil’s expansive territory.

This collection of writings does not attempt to provide a comprehensive grasp
of contemporary Brazilian theatre; rather, and alongside a selection of performance
photographs, it hopes to awaken the reader’s interest in the aesthetic trends and plural
political voices coming from that Latin American nation.

n ote s

1 Sydney Chalhoub, ‘Brazilian Democracy and the Aftermath of the Impeachment’, talk at the Watson

Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, held on 28 September 2016. James

Green, ‘Brazil: The Impeachment of a President and the Future of a Country’, North American

Congress on Latin America (NACLA), at http://nacla.org/news/2016/09/07/brazil-impeachment-

president-and-future-country, accessed 11 September 2016.

2 Though these definitions are quite fluid, in Brazil both travestis and transformistas are individuals

assigned male identity at birth who construct a female identity, but the former group does so primarily

in a performance context.

cláudia tatinge nascimento (cnascimento@wesleyan.edu) is a scholar and artist with a special interest in

experimental theatre. The author of Crossing Cultural Borders through the Actor’s Work: Foreign Bodies of

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mailto:cnascimento@wesleyan.edu
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n a s c i m e n t o Introduction to Snapshot: Brazil 211

Knowledge (2008), her current scholarly project examines the performances of the Brazilian post-dictatorship

generation.

Dossier translator elizabeth jackson is Adjunct Associate Professor of Portuguese at Wesleyan and at Yale,

where she teaches summer study abroad in Brazil. She is a translator of Brazilian fiction and theatre and most

recently translated four contemporary plays for the special issue on Brazil of Yale’s performance journal Theater,

co-edited by Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento and Thomas Sellar.

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