After the Long Silence

The Theater of Brazil's Post-Dictatorship Generation

Claudia Tatinge Nascimento

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429881886
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

After the Long Silence offers a ground-breaking, meticulously researched criticism of Brazilian contemporary performance created by its post-dictatorship generation, whose work expresses the consequences of decades of state-imposed censorship.

By offering an in-depth examination of key artists and their works, Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento highlights Brazil's political trajectory while never allowing the weight of historical events to offset key aesthetic trends. Brazilian theater artists born around the time of the nation's 1964 military coup experienced the oppressive rule of dictatorship throughout their formative years, but came of age as Brazil re-entered democracy some two decades later. This book showcases how the post-dictatorship generation developed performances that mapped the uncharted territories of Brazil's political trauma with new dramaturgies, site-specific and street productions, and aesthetic experimentation. The author's in-depth research into a wide array of archival materials and publications in both Portuguese and English demonstrates how the artistic practices of significant post-dictatorship artists such as Cia. dos Atores, Teatro da Vertigem, Grupo Galpão, Os Fofos Encenam, and Newton Moreno were driven by critical thinking and a postcolonial sentiment, proving symptomatic of the nation's shift from an ethos of half-truth telling into a transitional justice that fell short in affirming citizenship.

Ideal for scholars of the intersection of theatre and politics, After the Long Silence: The Theater of Brazil's Post-Dictatorship Generation offers insight into the function of theater in times of political turmoil and artmaking practices that emerge in response to oppressive regimes.

Chapter 1

The theatricalities of the post-dictatorship generation

Brazil’s post-dictatorship generation is fundamentally marked by the nervous silence that surrounded their upbringing. A cohort born in the years around the 1964 military coup and who came of age as the authoritarian regime neared its end, this generation experienced the consequences of the oppressive rule throughout their formative years. Starting in the late 1970s, the country went through a measured process of loosening military control, known as the Abertura or “Opening.” While they were still in school, the post-dictatorship generation saw the end of Institutional Act Number 5 (AI-5) in 1978, the amnesty of political exiles in 1979, the Electoral College’s decision to usher to power the first post-coup civilian president in 1985, and the end of censorship in 1988.¹ Though many already attended theater afterschool programs and several actually joined the professional métier in their teens, the artists of the post-dictatorship generation only reached young adulthood in the mid- to late 1980s.² As such, their most representative theatrical contributions appeared onstage after the country’s 1989 presidential election—the first time Brazilian citizens were able to exercise the right to vote for the nation’s leader since 1960.³ Brazil’s gradual return to democracy slowly built on the political victories of the Abertura and concluded in the early 1990s. It was in that decade that those raised during the military dictatorship firmed up their theatrical careers— the reason why this study considers these artists to belong to the post-dictatorship generation and examines their contributions to the emergence of contemporary theater in Brazil through the lens of this central socio-political transition.

This chapter focuses on the post-dictatorship generation’s training years, also a time of major shifts in theater education in Brazil; their transition to the professional métier; and the earlier period of their careers. This early history informs the aesthetic contributions of their professional maturity, which I examine in subsequent chapters. I theorize that the political environment of their foundational period shaped the post-dictatorship generation’s embrace of research-driven creative processes within stable theater groups, which in turn led to a brand of contemporary theater that simultaneously followed major international trends in performance and responded to the experience of coming of age in a postcolonial nation after 21 years of military rule.

This time period—from growing up under state-imposed censorship through coming of age amidst a faulty transitional process—shaped both the post-dictatorship’s professional ethos and its aesthetics. Broadly speaking, post-dictatorship companies pursued a collaborative and transversal approach to creation that destabilized the director’s usual role as principal author, and were interested in the body as central to performance. Whether consciously or not, these leanings emerged in reaction to Brazil’s recent legacies of authoritarianism and physical torture. In terms of aesthetics, the post-dictatorship generation: gave rise to a theatricality that incorporated national postcolonial theories and cultural sources, as is the case with Cia. dos Atores (Chapter 2), as well as Os Fofos Encenam and Grupo Galpão (Chapter 3); rejected the realist aesthetic in favor of performative frames that accentuated agency in spectatorship, an investigation pursued differently by Cia. Dos Atores (Chapter 2), Centro de Construção e Demolição do Espetáculo, and Teatro da Vertigem (Chapter 4); and explored performance spaces other than the traditional theater building, as is true in Os Fofos Encenam’s (Chapter 3) and Teatro da Vertigem’s site-specific pieces, and Grupo Galpão’s street theater (Chapter 4). Ultimately, I detail why and how the post-dictatorship generation developed a political voice that reflected the ominous presence of censors until 1988 and their secondhand relationship with political trauma. Even as I provide examples of the unequivocal presence of the legacy of the dictatorship in Brazil’s contemporary theater, I highlight that the post-dictatorship’s political voice is by necessity very distinct from that of their predecessors.

Children of censorship

As I note in the Preface, Brazil’s post-dictatorship generation grew up trying to put together the puzzle pieces of conflicting national narratives. They were raised in the midst of the undemocratic silence of government-imposed censorship, and listening to civilian narratives about the government’s ongoing violence against left-leaning citizens and organizations. As children, they were bombarded by the military government’s propaganda machine—jingoistic television ads and popular trading card albums disseminated the image of a young and promising country whose future was bright, its citizens unfailingly happy.⁴ At school they heard no mention of a military coup d’état: history textbooks rather briefly and very positively described the coup as the “Revolução de Março” (“March Revolution”), and the military’s seizing of power as an unquestionably justified intervention to halt the political and economic crisis “threatening” the nation’s stability during socialist João Goulart’s presidency. Rather than discuss the popular political movements of the late 1950s and the 1960s, these books instead featured the inauguration of the country’s new capital Brasília on April 21, 1960 as the highlight of Brazil’s shift toward modernity.⁵ Starting in the mid-1980s, textbooks’ final chapters would emphasize Brazil’s 1969–73 “Milagre Econômico” (“Economic Miracle”) and projects of national integration such as the soon-to-fail construction of the Transamazônica (Trans-Amazonian Highway), a 4,000-kilometer road system intended to connect the country’s north and northeast to the more populous southern region. At home, whether their families favored the left or the right, the post-dictatorship generation heard only partial accounts of the underground resistance and the military’s repressive actions. On television, they watched news broadcasts that would only add to their confusion, as was the case with the attempted bombing of the exhibition and convention center Rio-Centro on April 30, 1981, during a crowded Labor Day celebration. One of the bombs exploded in a car in the parking lot, in the lap of Sargeant Guilherme Pereira do Rosário and then-Captain Wilson Dias Machado, nowadays a Colonel; in spite of it being obvious that the military was responsible for the failed attack, the news blamed “left-wing radicals” for it.

Members of the post-dictatorship generation reached early adulthood in the transition between the late 1980s and early 1990s, and witnessed the official end of the dictatorship in 1985. They joined in the widespread excitement that overcame Brazil in the final push to end the military regime. Masses of young people participated in the 1983–4 popular campaign for democracy Diretas Já (Direct [Elections] Now) and voted in the long-awaited presidential election of 1989.⁶ But if defiance against the regime colored those days, Brazil entered the 1990s in a different mood. As Rebecca Atencio remarks, the risk of a political setback was not out of the question.⁷ Moreover, after two decades of tireless militancy, underground resistance, and public protests, it was time to celebrate the return of democracy—in theater, artists and audiences alike looked for plays about love rather than political struggle.⁸ After all, Brazilians had just earned the right to vote for their president for the first time in 29 years.

It was in this climate that the post-dictatorship generation entered the professional métier. Their earliest performances in particular presented the symptoms of both their upbringing under censorship and their coming of age during a time of profound but faulty political change. In a jagged, discontinuous way, they recounted Brazil’s part in the history of Latin America, a continent that bears the lasting consequences of colonialism and at least 17 military coups in its postcolonial period.⁹ The ensemble of the post-dictatorship generation’s theatrical interventions contributed to a better understanding of twentieth-century Brazil’s fragmented social, historical, and political narratives, as well as to the nation’s artistic and intellectual canons. While enormously varied in spatial and textual treatment, style, and subject matter, the theatricalities of the post-dictatorship generation share traits that, viewed comparatively, to date distinguish them in the broader international contemporary performance scene; their body of work established the seed of what is Brazil’s particular brand of contemporary theater.

The significant shift in the structure of theater education in Brazil during the transition to democracy directly affected the kinds of performance the post-dictatorship generation would produce. Unlike their predecessors, who primarily apprenticed at amateur or professional theaters, members of this generation met as students in the university theater departments established in the 1980s, or at conservatories. Although making professional connections continued to hold its share of importance, they recognized that the success of their artistic future depended on their ability to organize themselves as collectives, where they could continue their education and hopefully transition into the profession. The steady flow of students at university theater departments and conservatories naturally helped the formation of young groups. Often, these artists first came together to form study groups; only later would those groups mature into theater companies. As Silvana Garcia explains, the group environment afforded participants a prime pedagogical experience. Faced with a lack of free spaces, some groups used university facilities and a few started to rehearse and perform in alternative spaces or theater buildings that had been practically abandoned by the government—as I detail in the discussion in Chapter 4 about Centro de Demolição e Construção Espetáculo, which pushed for the first de facto arts residency in the country with its occupation of Teatro Glaucio Gill in Rio de Janeiro. To this day, this cohort places great emphasis on learning and experimentation, and is committed to both artistic and intellectual training. As a result, they commonly engage in lengthy rehearsal processes that welcome practice-as-research.¹⁰

From the early stages of their careers, this generation of artists possessed particular aesthetic and stylistic leanings that, in combination, amounted to a rejection of theatrical realism. The preference for experimental theater turned the post-dictatorship generation toward non-traditional approaches to acting, as well as to spatial and textual treatment. Their acting interests favored vigorous physical and vocal training that included an especial devotion to acquiring a variety of performance techniques ranging from clown and bel canto to kathakali, stilt-walking, and dance, for example. Their spatial explorations manifested themselves in multiple forms, including devised site-specific performances in disused buildings, and the creation of outdoor productions of great popular appeal and for large audiences. This generation’s approach to textual treatment was, from the start, quite distinct from that of their predecessors in both theme and style. Instead of the openly socialist stories explored by those working during the military rule, many post-dictatorship artists continue to this day to explore texts that tend to be highly poetic, fragmented, and non-linear, even when clearly political.

The truth is that the brand of political theater of those working under military rule did not suit their generation’s experiences, and neither did the countercultural edge of the performances created by artists working in the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as the companies Asdrúbal Trouxe o Trombone (Rio de Janeiro) and Pod Minoga (São Paulo).¹¹

The respective accomplishments of the generations that comprise Brazil’s twentieth-century artistic lineage—namely late 1920s Modernism, the early modern theater of the late 1940s and the 1950s, the group theater of the dictatorship years, and the post-dictatorship cohort—are radically different from one another because each generation lived through very distinct moments in Brazil’s political history. Those involved in the 1922 Modern Art Week undermined Eurocentric views of culture and thus redirected attention toward a sovereign national artistic pro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• The year is 1964: April Fools’, or a historical preface
• 1 The theatricalities of the post-dictatorship generation
• 2 To rehearse is to devour: cannibalizing the canon
• 3 Remembering in green and yellow, or the handiwork of telling
• 4 Theatrical entradas: expeditions into the territories of history
• A postface, or the secret science of forgetting
• Index