Brazzil
November 2001
Culture
Continued from our last issue
MILESTONES OF BRAZILIAN THEATER IN THE XX CENTURY
1927
The Teatro do Brinquedo opens in Rio de Janeiro with the play Adão, Eva e Outros Membros da Família, Adam, Eve, and Other Members of the Family, by Alvaro Moreira, leader of the group. Founded by amateurs, the group proposes an elite theater. It is the beginning of the insurrection against the commercial theater considered "low level."
1938
The Teatro do Estudante do Brasil, Student Theater of Brazil, is launched in Rio de Janeiro conceived and directed by Paschoal Carlos Magno and with a cast consisting of academics. The first production was Romeo and Juliet, protagonized by Paulo Porto and Sônia Oiticica under the direction of Itália Fausta.
1943
Vestido de Noiva by Nelson Rodrigues has its début, produced by the amateur group Os Comediantes, of Rio de Janeiro. The direction of Zibgniew Ziembinski and the scenery of Santa Rosa marked the emergence of the artistic treatment of a play.
1948
The Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (TBC) is inaugurated in São Paulo; initially, it was a theater created to house the works of amateur groups. Two of those groups are in the forefront of the renovation of Brazilian theater: The Grupo de Teatro Experimental (GTE), by Alfredo Mesquita, and the Grupo Universitário de Teatro (GUT), by Décio de Almeida Prado. In the following year, the TBC became professional contracting actors and Italian director Adolfo Celi. An eclectic repertoire consisting of great classical and modern texts, in addition to comedy at a high level, became the key for this company, which, under the leadership of Franco Zampari in his golden period, marks one of the most important phases of Brazilian theater. The TBC ended its activities in 1964. Other companies were founded in its molds: The Teatro Popular de Arte by Maria Della Costa, the Companhia Nydia Lícia-Sérgio, the Teatro Cacilda Becker, and the Companhia Tônia-Celi-Autran.
1953
The Teatro de Arena de São Paulo by José Renato was founded. In the beginning it was merely an attempt at spatial innovation, but it ended up being responsible for the introduction of innovative elements in Brazilian drama and stage production. The montage of Eles Não Usam Black-Tie, They Don't Use Black-Tie, by Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, in 1958, introduces the class struggle as a theme. Under the direction of Augusto Boal, the Arena "gives birth" to new actors and adapts classic texts in order to show Brazilian reality. It achieves the introduction of the wild card system in which the notion of the protagonist disappears in works such as Arena Conta Zumbi(1965) and Arena Conta Tiradentes (1967), which create a historic national revision. The Arena closed its doors in 1970.
1958
Zé Celso Martinez Corrêa, Renato Borghi, Carlos Queiroz Telles, and Amir Haddad, among others, founded a group called Teatro Oficina, Workshop Theater, at the Faculty of Law at Largo São Francisco, in São Paulo. Its members go through a "Stanislavskian" phase (realistic interpretation created by the Russian dramatist Stanislavski), orientated by Eugênio Kusnet. The most important play of this period is Os Pequenos Burgueses, The Petty Bourgeois (1963) by Maxim Gorki. Soon after, an anthological montage of O Rei da Vela, The King of the Candle (1967) by Oswald de Andrade, the group evolved to a "Brechtian" phase (set-apart interpretation developed by German Bertolt Brecht) with Galileu Galilei (1968) and Na Selva das Cidades, In the City Jungle (1969), always under the artistic direction of Zé Celso. With the collective work Gracias Señor, Thank you, Sir, begins the so-called irrationalist phase of the Oficina. A new relation with space and with the public reflects the deep changes the group went through. That phase ends with As Três Irmãs, The Three Sisters, by Chekov.
1964
The group Opinião starts its acitivity in Rio de Janeiro, adapting shows and musicals for the stage and developing a theatrical work of political character. Responsible for the launching of Zé Keti and Maria Bethânia is the production of the play Se Correr o Bicho Pega, Se Ficar o Bicho Come, If You Run the Beast Catches You, If You Stay the Beast Eats You, by Oduvaldo Vianna Filho and Ferreira Gullar.
1968
Début of Cemitério de Automóveis, Automobile Cemetery, by Arrabal. This show and O Balcão, The Balcony, by Genet and both directed by Victor Garcia and produced by Ruth Escobar, mark the entry of Brazilian theater into a phase of daring stage productions, as much spatially as thematically.
DECADE OF THE 1970'S
With the toughening of the actions of the censors, the dramatic community takes to expressing itself with metaphors. In spite of this, Fauzi Arap writes plays that reflect on the theater, alternative options for life, and homosexuality. There emerge several theatrical groups formed by young actors and directors. In Rio de Janeiro Asdrúbal Trouxe o Trombone stands out. His production Trate-me Leão, portrays a whole generation of the middle class, and Pessoal do Despertar, The Awakening People, a name adopted after the production of O Despertar da Primavera, The Awakening of Spring, by Wedekind.
In São Paulo appears the Royal Bexiga's Company with the collective creation O Que Você Vai Ser Quando Crescer, What do You Want to be When You Grow Up, The Vítor Group, with the play Vítor, ou As Crianças no Poder, Vítor or the Children in Power, by Roger Vitrac; The Pod Minoga, consisting of alumni of Naum Alves de Souza, who launch themselves professionally with the collective montage Folias Bíblicas, Biblical Celebrations, in 1977; Mambembe, born under the leadership of Carlos Alberto Soffredini, by whom they produce Vem Buscar-me Que Ainda Sou Teu, Come Take Me, That I'm Still Yours; and the Teatro do Ornitorrinco, Platypus Theater, by Cacá Rosset and Luís Roberto Galizia, who begins his career in the basements of the Oficina in plays like Os Mais Fortes, The Strongest Ones and Ornitorrinco Canta Brecht-Weill, Ornitorrinco Sings Brecht-Weill, of 1977.
1974
Début of Macunaíma by the group Pau Brasil, with direction of Antunes Filho. It is the start of a new stage lingo of Brazil, in which the images have the same strength as the narrative. With that show, Antunes Filho begins another stage in his career, at the front of the Centro de Pesquisas Teatrais (CPT), where an intense study of the work of the actor is developed. Great productions of the CPT make for international careers: Nelson Rodrigues, O Eterno Retorno, The Eternal Return, Romeo and Juliet, by Shakespeare; Xica da Silva, by Luís Alberto de Abreu; A Hora e a Vez de Augusto Matraga, The Life and Times of Augusto Matraga, adapted from the Guimarães Rosa short story of same name; Nova Velha História, New Old Story; Gilgamesh; Vereda da Salvação, Path of Salvation, by Jorge Andrade.
1979
The censorship fails to be an opinion poll and again takes on the character of classification. The play Rasga Coração, Torn Heart, by Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, is freed and produced in Rio de Janeiro. It is awarded a prize in a competition of Serviço Nacional de Teatro and, subsequently, prohibited.
Decade of the 1980's
Diversity is the principal aspect of the theater in the 80's. The period is characterized by the influence of the post-modernism, movement marked by the union of the traditional esthetic with the modern. The exponent of this line of theater is the director and playwright Gerald Thomas. Productions like Carmen, Electra com Creta, and Quartett presents a technical refinement not seen before. His productions give great importance to set design and choreography. New theatrical groups, such as Ponkã, the Boi Voador, and XPTO, also have as priority visual and sound expression.
The director Ulysses Cruz, of the company Boi Voador, stands out with the play Fragmentos de um Discurso Amoroso, Fragments of an Amorous Discourse, based on a text by Roland Barthes. Other young dramatists like José Posi Neto, De Braços Abertos, With Open Arms; Roberto Lage, Meu Tio, o Iauaretê, My Uncle, the Iauaretê (extinct people of the rain forest), and Márcio Aurélio, Lua de Cetim, Satin Moon, have their works recognized. Cacá Rosset, director of Ornitorrinco, Platypus, becomes a phenomenon of the public with Ubu, by Alfred Jarry.
In the world of drama, slapstick dominates—situation comedies, which explore absurd situations. The movement grows in Rio de Janeiro and has as its principal representatives Miguel Falabella and Vicente Pereira. In São Paulo names like Maria Adelaide Amaral, Flávio de Souza, Alcides Nogueira, Naum Alves de Souza, and Mauro Rasi emerge. Trair e Coçar É Só Começar by Marcos Caruso and Jandira Martini, becomes one of the great commercial successes of the decade. Luís Alberto de Abreu—who writes plays like Bella, Ciao, and Xica da Silva—is one of the authors whose work has staying power that transcends into the 90's.
1987
The improvisational actress Denise Stoklos emerges internationally in a solo career. The play Mary Stuart, produced in New York, is totally conceptualized by her. Her work is called essential theater because she utilizes a minimum of material resources and a maximum of the actor's own means, which are the body, the voice, and the thought.
DECADE OF THE 1990'S
In the field of stage direction, the tendency for visualization lives side by side with a gradual return to the word through the production of classics. This genre is highlighted by the group Tapa, with Vestido de Noiva, by Nelson Rodrigues, and The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare. The experimentalist theater continues and attains popular and critical success with the plays Paraíso Perdido, Paradise Lost, 1992 and O Livro de Jó, Job's Books, 1995, by Antonio Araújo.
The director puts together a ritualized stage production and makes use of non-conventional sets—a church and a hospital, respectively. The circus technique is also adopted by several groups. The group Parlapatões, Patifes e Paspalhões (Swindlers, Scoundrels, and Suckers). The figure of the clown is used side by side with the good tempered drama of Hugo Passolo, one of the members of the group. Also, the comedic art of Pernambucano (from Pernambuco) Antônio Nóbrega, gains projection. The actor, musician, and dancer explores the playful side of stage direction employing regional songs and dances.
Other names that stand out are Bia Lessa, Viagem ao Centro da Terra, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Gabriel Villela, A Vida É Sonho, Life is a Dream. At the end of the decade, director Sérgio de Carvalho of Companhia do Latão (Brass Company) gains importance. His group produces a work of research on the dialectic theater by Bertolt Brecht, which results in the plays Ensaio Sobre o Latão, Essay on Brass—based on Brecht's Der Messingkauf (The Buying of Brass), the author's first theoretical work on theatre— and Santa Joana dos Matadouros, St Johanne of the Slaughterhouses.
1993
Director Zé Celso re-opens the Teatro Oficina with a production of Hamlet, the Shakespeare classic. He opts for an adaptation, which focuses on the political, economical, and social situation in Brazil.
1998
Doméstica, Domestic, by Renata Melo débuts. It is a show with strong influence of dance. This production is a sequel to the work initiated in 1994, with Bonita Lampião. Her work is based on the elaboration of play-writing by the actors through the study of the body language of the characters.
1999
Antunes Filho, Fragmentos Troianos, Trojan Fragments, based on The Trojans by Euripides. For the first time, the director produces a Greek play. The production is the result of the re-formulation of his method of interpretation, consolidated in studies of delivery of voice and body posture of the actors.
DIFFERENT STYLES AND COMPANIES OF BRAZILIAN THEATER
Over the years the Brazilian national theater has and still continues to invent new ways of theatrical expression. Whereas theatrical expressiveness thrives in a free society, adversity can often be an incentive, not only to invent and re-invent but also express opinions in such a way that, in the case of Brazil, the censors of a military dictatorship do not "get it," while the rest of the population does. That requires great imagination, and for 21 years it was the way theater, as well as other artistic expressions, were realized. These are a few of the theatrical companies that shaped the theater of Brazil.
Teatro de Revista, Magazine Theater or Musicals.
Trianon Generation
Teatro do Comediante (Comedy Theater)
Teatro de Arena (Arena Theater)
Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia—TBC
Teatro Dulcina
Grupo Macunaíma
Grupo Tá na Rua
Grupo Macunaíma
From Centro de Pesquisa Teatral comes the following: Opening night of Macunaíma in September, 1978, marked a start to activities of Grupo Pau Brasil, later Grupo de Teatro Macunaíma. With the opening performance as an emblem, the group gained international renown under this name. Macunaíma: O Herói Sem Nenhum Caráter, Macunaíma: A Hero of No Character, was the work of Mário de Andrade in a literary rhapsody soon to become one of the central masterpieces of the Brazilian Modernist Movement. It tells the adventures of a mythical hero, his travels, and his life experiences between the jungle and the big city, between a primitive era and a torrent of Modernity. Scenic transcription directed by Antunes Filho not only opened new prospects to dramatic narrative, but it brought the trespassing and critical meanings of the original up to date, to result in one of the most important masterpieces in the history of Brazilian theater.
In far away travels, in countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, invariably with the applause of critics and public, Macunaíma proved to be one of the greatest artistic successes in international theater in the last decades. It paved the way for later productions by the group in over 20 countries. And it opened the international market to Brazilian theater on a permanent basis.
The second production by Grupo de Teatro Macunaíma, Nelson Rodrigues—o Eterno Retorno, 1980, included four plays by the most important Brazilian playwright (later synthesized down to two plays under the name Nelson 2 Rodrigues, 1984, consolidated the group's international prestige, and lent continuity to the aesthetic studies characteristic thereof. The group broadened activities to include training actors, technicians and other scenic artists, invariably under Antunes Filho.
Tupã Teatro
Based in Salvador, Bahia, this fairly young theater company, a few days from this writing, sets sails for Denmark, far away from Brazilian shores. Though Denmark is best known for its fairy tales (Hans Christian Andersen), the story this time is about a change of reality for 12 adults and adolescents, inhabitants of Itinga, in the periphery of Salvador. Created two years ago, this company represents "philosophy of life," and activity and source of income unique for them. The group will show Yaba, a show whose name in Tupi-Guarani, signifies origin and symbolizes the synthesis of the proposal of "investigation of the cultural roots of Brazil," says the director of Tupã, Hirton Fernandes, Jr. Texts by Euclides da Cunha, Gilberto Freire, Castro Alves, and Darcy Ribeiro serve as sources for the actors who "have as point of departure for their research, the legends of the Indians of Xingu, who speak of the origin of the world and the formation of the tribes," says Hirton. This tour is the result of a collaboration between the Odin Theater (Odin being a god in the Nordic mythology) and Hirton Fernandes, Jr.
CRITICAL COMMENTARY
Dr. André Carreira, who writes and teaches about Latin American theater movements in addition to being a theater director, has kindly given his permission to use the following piece about Brazilian theater. He presently teaches at the Department of Performing Arts at the University of Santa Catarina (UDESC). He can be reached at carreira@udesc.br
The Hybrid Identities of Brazilian Popular Theater
Cannibalism and Hybridity
Latin American popular or folk cultures appear when oppressed groups deliberately appropriate aspects of the hegemonic culture in a process that Brazilian scholar and poet Mario de Andrade called "antropofagia." The term can be translated as "anthropophagy," and was used by Brazilian modernist artists to celebrate their "cannibalistic" appropriation of European influences.
With this understanding, I propose that Brazilian popular theater is a process where diverse cultural elements are "devoured and vomited" to create a hybrid product. The product is a new popular theatricality that is distinct from the folklore traditions, but that cannot, on the other hand, be strictly labeled as "popular theater."
To talk about popular theater as a category is not an easy task, since the very act of attempting a definition of "the popular" already entails a series of conceptual difficulties. However, and without the pretense of exhausting the field in this brief essay, I propose to approach the subject based on the concept of hybrid cultures as defined by the Mexican theorist Nestor García Canclini. The postmodern concept of cultural hybridization draws from the older process of "mestizaje," that is, a mixture that produces a culture based on diverse sources and references. Thus, the popular is not a purely preserved cultural object, but the result of fusions from diverse cultural elements.
Popular Theater
As in other Latin American countries, the gap between rich and poor in Brazil is very wide. Brazilian society also presents a very diverse cultural spectrum where we can find sophisticated European-style theater coexisting with subaltern (grassroots) cultural expressions.
In talking about popular theater, we could start by addressing the many staged spectacles of village festivities. There are a great number of "ox festivities" (a kind of performance staged by peasants that tells the sorry life of oxen under evil ranchers), carnivals, and other highly theatrical celebrations. These could be considered as the roots of Brazilian popular theater.
On the other hand, it's interesting to note how these modes of performance are somehow related with the ecumenical mysticism that characterizes a vast segment of Brazilian popular culture. From music, to staged performances and social ceremonies, we can see a strong presence of syncretic religiosity. Catholic ceremonies are mixed with Afro-Brazilian cults, both in sacred spaces (churches or the Umbanda terreiros) and in everyday life. Researcher Armindo Bião has noted the proximity of performance genres and possession cults in Brazilian culture.
Popular theater also derives from diverse medieval traditions that reached Brazil in fragmentary form during the colonial period. Examples are the very popular puppet theater of the north-east, known as "mamulengo," the ox performances (that span the country from south to north), diverse carnival celebrations, as well as para-religious performances that serve as a model for contemporary theater.
Political Theater
Many specialists in Brazilian theater hold that the work of Augusto Boal was an example of popular theater. (Boal was one of the most influential practitioners of political theater in Latin America. He created the "Theater of the Oppressed" based on Paulo Freire's theories of education and Bertolt Brecht's drama manifestoes, while he worked with grassroots communities in Brazil, Argentina and Peru during the sixties and seventies—ed.) However, it would be impossible to find any connections with Brazilian popular performances in the Theater of the Oppressed, since what Boal's experiments attempted was to apply to the Latin American context traditions of political theater developed in Russia and Germany early in the century.
Boal's ideas were associated with the Popular Culture Centers (CPCs), organized by the National Students' Union (UNE). The CPC's objective was to link intellectual theories with social movements in order to create a propaganda (agit-prop) theater. The results were widely imitated by Latin American grassroots movements of the seventies. However, the CPCs ultimately failed, due to lack of organization, political repression, and lack of social support. (García, 1992)
Many groups that attempted to create a popular theater during the '60s and '70s used forms of agit-prop and Brechtian didactic theater, in order to establish dialogues with the disempowered sectors of the population. To this end, various themes and visual elements from the popular cultures were put into practice. The trend was particularly felt in the industrial city of São Paulo, where several labor movements appeared during the '70s.
(These groups worked under extremely dangerous conditions. Ruthless dictatorships were taking power across the region, and unleashed the persecution of all social workers. Boal was imprisoned and tortured in 1971, and fled Brazil that year—ed.)
The Political in Search of the Popular
Also during this decade, a movement of theater groups appeared which sought audiences at the periphery of the great cities. Historian Silvana Garcia has identified dozens of groups that held in common their rejection of the professional market circuits catering to the middle and upper classes. These groups strived to take theater to sectors of the population that normally had no access to theater houses, and thus insisted that their work belonged to the category of "popular theater." Unfortunately, popular response was not strong enough to ensure the long-term survival of these groups.
There are, however, exceptions, such as the Teatro União e Olho Vivo (Union and Live Eye Theater), directed by Cesar Vieira during the past 20 years. Throughout, this group has maintained its activity in the poor slums at the edges of the city. Their concept of popular theater is based on their work with popular narratives and their direct contact with the subaltern sectors of the population. União e Olho Vivo holds that the path to popular theater lies in providing opportunities for the workers themselves to create their own performances. Thus, the group has permanent members from the working class who join them during the neighborhood workshops.
Another group is Tá na Rua (It's in the Street), based in Rio de Janeiro and founded in 1980 by director Amir Haddad. This group seeks the popular through a radical approach to street life. They try to discover elements within the behavior of street dwellers (beggars, vendors, bums) for the construction of spectacles that can establish a dialogue with all of their audience. For Amir Haddad and his troupe, popular theater is where no barriers exist between the stage and the audience, a theater that does not seek to "educate" in a pragmatic sense, but to provoke an encounter with what the director calls "the magic of Dionysian spectacle." Haddad believes that his work is "much more that simple entertainment, it's an intervention into people's everyday life, awakening their senses in spite of the suffocating city life." (Haddad, 1983)
An aspect of Brazilian popular theater worth mentioning is the movement of rapprochement with the circus. Many groups have taken to the use of circus techniques as a way to create spectacles with popular character. Some groups that work in this vein are Teatro do Anônimo (Rio), the Doutores da Alegria (São Paulo), the Tonheta clowns (Antônio Nóbrega), Xuxu (Luiz Carlos Vasconcellos).
Beyond the metropolitan Rio de Janeiro São Paulo axis, it's important to note that a great number of popular forms originate in the country's Northeast region. The Northeast is Brazil's poorest region, subjected to severe droughts and to oppressive forms of rural exploitation. The region is dominated by reactionary oligarchies that control the population by maintaining it in conditions of abject misery and illiteracy. In spite of this, the Northeast boasts a strong movement of amateur theater with close links to popular culture. Their productions can be followed in the innumerable theater festivals around the country, where plays by Northeastern groups employ elements of popular culture as an essential component of their mise en scène. It can be said that Northeastern theater exemplifies the fusion of "high culture" theatrical traditions with traces of popular theater, as has been developing for centuries in the Brazilian streets.
Several groups and playwrights have turned to traditional street performances and carnivals, as an essential practice that aims to reconstruct the cultural references that deliberately draw "high" and "popular" cultures together.
This exercise in hybridity taking place in the Northeast is clear in the work of João Cabral de Melo Neto, Antonio Suassuna and Hermilo Borba Filho, as well as in the spectacles of Teatro Piollin of Recife, or the Teatro Brincante of Antônio Nóbrega, among others. Thus, for example, the Cordel literature (stories printed in cheap magazines sold during popular fairs) is present in dramaturgy and in the creation of characters.
The fusion of religiosity and humor, the use of street satire and the popular hero result in a theater that directly feeds into national theater practices, and thus aims to insert itself within the larger discourse of national identity.
Identity as Resistance
It's important to note that this "popular" theater, while not overtly political in the militant sense, does demonstrate a practice of cultural resistance. Its main feature is to affirm itself as an alternative to mass-mediated culture, basing itself in a purported national identity. Indeed, this quest for identity is a main concern for those who attempt to build Brazilian popular theater today. This trend is not particular to the '90s, since already in the '60s groups like Oficina and Opinião had proposed the quest of a theater both national and popular.
With the absence of the strong ideological drive common during the '60s and '70s, theater groups today have resorted to "identity building." To this end, they try to balance the ideas about "Brazilian-ness" that circulate in the social imagination (Bazcko, 1984) with the aspects of the dominant culture that exert pressure through the mass media.
While it can be said that popular theater in Brazil is articulated as a site of resistance, this is not done in a programatic way. The social role that these theater practitioners play has not yet been articulated, nor has it been clearly identified by the specialists. Theater researchers strive to theorize the political and aesthetic meanings of these performances as they exist around the country. Indeed, this has been the subject of an increasingly large number of studies and graduate programs in the universities. This trend has put Brazilian popular theater under an unprecedented scrutiny, and suggests that contemporary theater productions will be studied from a previously disregarded perspective: that of popular/folk culture.
References
Bazcko, Bronislau, Los Imaginarios Sociales, Editora Nueva Visión, Buenos Aires, 1991.
Bião, Armindo. "Um mesmo estado de graça - O Teatro e o Candoblé da Bahia", in Urdimento, No. 2, August 1998
Borba Filho, Hermilo, Espetáculos Populares no Nordeste, São Paulo, São Paulo, 1966
Garcia, Silvana, Teatro da Militância, Editora Perspectiva/EDUSP, São Paulo, 1990
"Vamos fazer a festa juntos, cada um no seu lugar", in Revista USP, No. 14, São Paulo, 1992
García Canclini, Nestor. Culturas Híbridas. Grijalbo. México, 1990
Haddad, Amir, Tá na Rua, RioArte, Rio de Janeiro, 1983
Rabetti, Beti (Ed.), Um Estudo Sobre o Cômico: O Teatro Popular no Brasil Entre Ritos e Festas, UNI-RIO-PPG, Rio de Janeiro, 1997
Translated and edited by Antonio Prieto, ISLA
Seven Minds and One Conclusion: Theater must be Socially Important
(from Rio's newspaper, O Globo)Seven important and very different Brazilian theater directors were joined by O Globo (one of the most important Brazilian newspapers) to talk about theater nowadays: Brazilian Theater Today. The meeting took place in the auditorium of O Globo's building and brought to the public one conclusion: the stages must conquer a new place in a work "linked" by the technology and dominated by the images of cinema and TV.
The directors were: Aderbal Freire Filho, Domingos Oliveira, Eduardo Tolentino, José Celso Martinez Corrêa, Sábato Magaldi, Moacyr Goes, and Ulysses Cruz. The discussion took hours but didn't disappoint the attending 500 people. What happened was just the other way around: people didn't want to stop asking questions. And this audience could see, by the answers, that the seven think in a complete different way, but that all of them agree that theater must be socially important. Below are just a few of the thoughts of these prominent Brazilian theater people.
Aderbal Freire Filho: "Theater represents a return to what is human, but my fear is that society doesn't give an answer to this `magic.' In a time of developing culture as something commercial, the theater loses its audience. Cinema substitutes in various ways the `flowing' of theater, and this turns out to be only one part of the drama. Nowadays, philosophers mention more films than plays as examples. But, paradoxically, after being restricted to an accessory part, theater grew and discovered its specialties."
Ulysses Cruz: "There are lots of reasons for the loss of audience. We sometimes forget this marvelous being called audience. I regret that sometimes we are irresponsible with our public, doing theater for ourselves and not sharing this pleasure with the audience. Our difficulty of communication passes through the problem of quality. Everybody who didn't function in other areas, like dance and music, ends up going to the theater. The quality must be excellent in order for the communication to always improve."
Eduardo Tolentino: "We ended up believing when people say that theater loses space, that it is excluded from industrial society for not getting to be `independent,' like other forms of art. This is a lie. What happens is that Brazilian theater is turned to a specific public but doesn't satisfy even this public. It is a vicious circle; not even the plays that intend to be commercial, please. In Brazil, everything is fashion; in the 50's it was Tennessee Williams, in the 60's Plínio Marcos, and today comedy is en vogue."
Moacyr Goes: "There is a unanimity about the diversity of our positions, but theater is also João Bethencourt, Mauro Rasi, Atílio Rico, Miguel Falabella, and Gugu Olimecha. I defend a large diversity. In the moment that theater is thinking of itself as a place, the questions of the word, of the actor and of the scene are the ones that move. It is not true that people don't want to go to the theater, what is true is that there's no access."
Sábato Magaldi: "I see the history of theater review as a history of mistakes, I recognize this fragility. The critic must learn to dialogue and to make the right projection to discover the ways through which theater is going to walk. When I used to write daily, I felt like a part of theater, but in fact I was in solidarity to the movement and to the process of creation. But all of us have our limitations."
Domingos Oliveira: "The artist is who tells the future of the world, and theater is the art of the future. The theater is doing well despite all the "facts:" we have problems with media, the TV forgets what it owes to theater, and the newspapers have radical and disrespectful critics. But the day that television will bother everybody is very close. The fashion now is what is not human, and the future will be human. And theater is like life. More than any other kind of spectacle."
José Celso Martinez Corrêa: "Theater has not been looked at with justice, it is a luxury in the cybernetic society, the vibration of the audience is a luxury. Theater is a kind of richness that is wasted in science's point of view, in the political parties, and in the capitalistic point of view, because the social mind is hostile to any group alive. Technology created something that is called reality, but I am completely out of it."
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História Concisa do Teatro Brasileiro: 1570-1908 by Décio de Almeida Prado. Concise History of Brazilian Theater: 1570-1908.
Abundantly illustrated with photographs and caricatures of the era, the História Concisa is a reliable panorama of the stage art of the country. From the religious plays of Father José de Anchieta to the theater of Rio de Janeiro of the beginning of the 20th century, the author analyzes the manifestations of the baroque 18th century, the romantic theater, the birth of comedy in the middle of the 19th century, the historic drama in the second half of that century, and the realism, which came to replace it, the three types of musical theater (the operetta, the year in review, and the magic) and, finally, the burleta, a light comedy of Italian origin, at the coming of the new century. With an exact dosage of formal reading of the plays, theatrical genres, and styles of interpretation, on one side, and insertion of theater in the society of the time on the other, thus, with the vision of totality and attention to detail, this will be henceforth a book of obligatory consult to those, who study the theater of Brazil.
About the Author: Décio de Almeida Prado, born in 1917, wrote about theater since the 40's, initially on the pages of the famous magazine, Clima and, from 1946 to 1968 at the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo where he was in charge of the equally famous "Suplemento Literário" for ten years. In addition to this, he was head of the Grupo Universitário de Teatro, as director, and taught the material successively at the Escola de Arte Dramática and in the Universidade de São Paulo. Sadly, on February 4, 2000, a heart attack took his life. He was 82.
Recognized as one of the great intellectuals of the country, he left an unequalled body of work on the subject of Brazilian Theater. Décio was always in the cultural and political vanguard. He approached modernism, according to J. Toledo, in 1935, participating in the founding of the modernist group "Quarteirão," in São Paulo, in which took part—among others—Flávio de Carvalho, Oswald de Andrade and Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes. Furthermore, he was active in the Partido Socialista Brasileiro, Brazilian Socialist Party, next to his friend Antonio Cândido.
Educated at USP, University of São Paulo, he graduated at the faculty of philosophy and social sciences in 1938, after joining amateur theater as actor and director, and at the faculty of law in 1941—same year in which he founded, along with Antonio Cândido and Paulo Emílio, the magazine Clima specializing in cultural criticism. Also part of the group were Alfredo Mesquita (author of the idea), Lourival Gomes Machado and Marcelo Damy, among others. He then led the Suplemento Literário at Estado de S Paulo, where he worked all together more than 20 years. His last book, the above mentioned, was issued the year before his death, which represented an immense loss for the dramatic art and Brazilian culture.
A Lighthouse to always Illuminate Brazilian Theater—Sábato Magaldi
By Beth Néspoli from O Estado de S Paulo
Rare are the theater critics who manage—without softening their reviews—to accumulate intellectual prestige and the affectionate admiration of the theatrical class. On the eve of completing 74 years of life, in May 2001, Mineiro (from Minas Gerais) Sábato Magaldi can be proud of that fact. Awarded the Prêmio Multicultural Estadão 2001 for his contribution to dramatic art, as critic, essayist, and historian, he has 17 other awards to his credit, many of them coming from the world of theater.
Member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras, The Brazilian Academy of Letters, with eight books published, some of them indispensable reading like O Panorama do Teatro Brasileiro and O Texto no Teatro, without counting the diverse participations in publications in Brazil and abroad, Sábato receives this indication in very special recognition, almost familiar. After all, he was connected to the Grupo Estado for 35 years.
In 1953, recently arrived from Paris, bringing with him a sheepskin from the University of Sorbonne in Esthetics, he was hired as editor at Estado—at the invitation of Alfredo Mesquita—and, three years later joined the theater news at the recently created Suplemento Literário. With the creation of the Jornal da Tarde, he assumed the function of theater critic of the new vehicle, in 1966, a post at which he stayed until 1988. "Large parts of the texts of my books were originally published in Jornal da Tarde or in Estadão," says Sábato, in an interview conducted shortly before the award ceremony at his apartment in the neighborhood of Higienópolis.
Despite all the recognition, Sábato is far from resting on his laurels. The publishing house Senac recently finished editing Cem Anos de Teatro em São Paulo, A Hundred Years of Theater in São Paulo (1875-1974), another book with vocation for becoming obligatory reference reading, arriving shortly at the bookstores. Written in partnership with Maria Thereza Vargas, the volume reunites texts ordered on the occasion of the centennial of the founding of Estado in 1975, and published in four special issues of Suplemento Literário.
And, attention artists who, by chance, have perceived the presence of the critic in the audience of their shows. He was not there for mere delight. Officially "retired," Sábato writes reviews, in stylish writing, in notebooks that accumulate in his house. "There are 45 now, each one with 400 pages," he confesses.
He continues to attentively follow the theatrical productions of Brazil and, although he no longer publishes his work in the daily press, he critiques systematically—in writing!—everything that he sees on stage. "If people stop, they lose their touch," he argues. "I don't yet know what I'm going to do with this material, perhaps use it as part of an autobiography, perhaps I'll publish it later. At any rate, it will end up being an important documentation for me, a source of consulting, because what I write there, I know that it really happened."
Sábato is planning, shortly, to issue a complement to Cem Anos de Teatro Brasileiro em São Paulo, in which he analyzes the cultural production of the last 25 years—from 1975-2000. "I have already started editing. Initially, I planned to publish it as an appendix in this edition of Cem Anos…, but I soon realized that I was writing another book, because too many things had happened, and it would be ridiculous to publish as simply a complement."
At the beginning of this year, he was forced to take a rest, which he had always postponed. "I had two relatively grave operations for obstruction of my carotid arteries." The period of convalescence demanded a short absence from the theaters. "Now I'm already raring to return to my routine, there is much to see." But if the return to the theater requires time, Sábato has already returned to writing about the theater. "I wake up early, write a lot in the morning and a little in the afternoon. At night, I prefer doing other things such as receive friends or go to the theater."
He has a few books in progress. "I want to issue, shortly, probably with Perspectiva publishing house, a volume entitled Depois do Espetáculo, After the Show, the title provided by Edla (Van Steen, his wife and also a writer), and I thought that was very good." In the opening is a text with considerations on theatrical criticism.
"I speak of the requisites I consider necessary for a good review. And, afterwards, I even want to add articles, some of them unfortunately written as obituaries, published sparsely. I have a lot of material, I just have to organize it."
Another book has its origin in the doctoral theses defended at Universidade de São Paulo's Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, in 1972, about the Theater of Oswald de Andrade. "I wasn't satisfied with the text. I thought of redoing it, but I thought there had been so much published about Oswald. Today I see that there doesn't even exist the minutest examination of his theater. Therefore, if I have time, I want to re-write and publish it."
If the indication for the Prêmio Multicultural Estadão 2001, in the case of Sábato, makes one think of categories like "recognition of the established," the intense activity of the critic points to the present. "With the passing of the years, people end up, inevitably, being treated as a medallion," he comments, laughing. "But this indication obviously makes me very happy, to the point that this prize gives continuity to the philosophy of partnership with the artistic activity, which always oriented the journalistic effort at the Grupo Estado."
Sábato, who was already part of the commission of the Prêmio Saci and edited a diversity of articles denouncing the lack of resources for cultural production, as far as preparing a project for salvation of the theater at the request of actress Cacilda Becker, considers that partnership fundamental. "Obviously, if you're a theater critic, you want to see good theater. I don't want to see junk my whole life. Therefore, collaborating with the existence of good theater is an obligation," he argues. "A journalistic business will not sponsor art but can stimulate cultural production. Estado always did this. Awarding is one of those forms of stimulus."
To be continued on our next issue.
Kirsten Weinoldt was born in Denmark and came to the U.S. in 1969. She fell in love with Brazil after seeing Black Orpheus many years ago and has lived immersed in Brazilian culture ever since. Her e-mail: kwracing@erols.com