Physiognomies of Performance: The Corollary of Representation in the Work of Abdias do Nascimento (original) (raw)

Rufino dos Santos, Joel. A história do negro no teatro brasileiro. Novas Direções, 2015

Journal of Lusophone Studies

Joel Rufino dos Santos here provides a much-anticipated contribution to the study of the presence of Afro-Brazilians in the national theater. The author investigates the ways in which Afro-Brazilians are authors, characters, objects, and types—both onstage and off. In addition to offering an overview of the role of race in the history of Afro-Brazilian theater and drama, the book also contains many invaluable images that serve to illustrate as well as add insight to the written pages, filling a much-needed gap in critical studies of Brazilian theater.

THEATRE, NÉGRITUDE AND THE PERFORMATIVE UNMASKING OF BRAZIL'S "BLACKFACE MODERNISM"

Santa Barbar Portuguese Studies, 2022

This article examines the project and production history of the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), founded by Abdias do Nascimento in 1944, in the light of the conspicuous lack of theatrical innovation and an almost complete absence of direct participation and intervention of Afro-Brazilian artists in the Brazilian modernist movement. My central argument is twofold. On the one hand, I propose that the representation or performance of Black identity and subjectivity that defines the bulk of the TEN's productions, and has often been criticized for its elitism and essentialism, was both the product of and a strategic response to a modality of aggressively disavowed racism prevalent in Brazil. Thus, among the specific targets of the TEN's interrogation of the representation of Blackness in Brazilian theatre and drama were the multiple and often unacknowledged effects of branqueamento on cultural and artistic representations of Blackness as well as the aesthetic claim to embody Afro-Brazilian subjectivity and sensibilities by white authors. The second part of my thesis explores the particular ways in which the contradictions arising from the TEN's working definition of Afro-Brazilian identity risked hampering the efficacy of the company's struggles against racial discrimination.

The Art and Times of ABDIAS NASCIMENTO: QUILOMBOLA EXTRAORDINAIRE

Journal of Black Studies, 2021

This paper explores the aesthetic trajectory of Abdias Nascimento in the context of his life's work, arguing that he has to be apprehended as a Quilombola warrior figure, through his entwinement of political and artistic agency. More specifically, it explores how Nascimento harnesses the creative matrix found in the lived history, myth and figuration from candomblé as a dramatist and as a painter. First, it delves into his creation of the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), the first black theater in Brazil and his use of candomblé as a template of dramaturgy in his play, Sortilégio. However, the main analysis centers on his paintings, which combines candomblé symbology, along with other African cultural forms, to create culturally meaningful aesthetic forms that affirmed Afro-Brazilian subjectivity and their historical belonging in the nation and connection to the larger Africana world.

Performance and Aesthetics in the Brazilian Black Movement Struggles to Re-Educate the Society

Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença, 2019

ABSTRACT: With the results of the 2018 research project entitled Black Movement in the Present Time as our main source, in this article we discuss aspects of performative and aesthetic practices used in the anti-racist struggle in Brazil in the 1970s and today. We developed the article in dialogue with the concept of the culture of anti-racist struggle, from which we understand that the struggle of the black movement generates new codes and cultural meanings and, therefore, is able to affect the subjectivities of different subjects, assuming a potential for re-education and enabling new practices in terms of race relations in Brazil. Keywords: Black Movement. Black Aesthetic. Antiracist Struggle Culture. Education. RESUMO: Utilizando como fontes, principalmente, os resultados produzidos em 2018, por meio do projeto de pesquisa intitulado Movimento Negro na Atualidade, neste artigo são discutidos aspectos de práticas performativas e estéticas utilizadas na luta antirracista no Brasil nos anos 1970 e na atualidade. O trabalho é desenvolvido em diálogo com o conceito de cultura de luta antirracista, a partir do qual compreende-se que a luta protagonizada pelo movimento negro gera novos códigos e significados culturais e, por isso, possui a capacidade de afetar as subjetividades de diferentes sujeitos, assumindo um potencial reeducador e possibilitando novas práticas diante do quadro das relações raciais no Brasil. Palavras-chave: Movimento Negro. Estética Negra. Cultura de Luta Antirracista. Educação.

ABDIAS NASCIMENTO: ROUTES AND CROSSINGS

Catalogue Abdias a Panamefrican Artist, 2022

Tulio Custódio Abdias Nascimento's political trajectory was founded on a multitude of initiatives and spaces of intervention. As an economist by training, he worked in different fields of practice: as a playwright, actor, writer, journalist, poet, cultural promoter, political activist, visual artist, university professor, and politician (first as congressman, later as senator). These are some of the roles played by Nascimento that demonstrate the range of routes he took as a way of defending his causes. To look at Nascimento's trajectory is to look at the processes of re-interpretation, re-signification, and metabolic and metamorphic transformation that mark his fight against racism. This essay consists of a concise overview of Nascimento's political trajectory, considering how the transformations in his practice have contributed to social thought in Brazil.

Entre camisas e fantasias: a arte de fazer o chão afro-brasileiro do Salgueiro

Antropolitica - Revista Contemporanea de Antropologia, 2020

Neste trabalho, busco pensar estética e politicamente a performance do chão afrobrasileiro nos ensaios e desfiles da escola de samba Acadêmicos do Salgueiro na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, a partir da cultura material, principalmente das camisas e fantasias dos componentes. O chão da escola corresponde à comunidade do Salgueiro, ou seja, um grande grupo de corpos, que se subdividem nas diversas alas que compõem a agremiação da escola e são responsáveis por seu assentamento. A comunidade é formada pelos três casais de mestre-sala e porta-bandeira, pelas alas das baianas, da Velha Guarda, dos(as) passistas, da bateria e dos compositores, além das alas que contam o enredo da escola, dos/as componentes das alegorias, e, ainda, da equipe do carro de som, composta por instrumentistas, intérpretes e diretores de harmonia. Assim, partindo de uma observação participante e dançante e da utilização de entrevista semiestruturada, o objetivo é refletir sobre a comunidade que faz o carnaval na sua d...

MUTATING MENINOS DA RUA: TEATRO RELIGARE, DON QUIJOTE AND THE THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED

Brasil/Brazil; Revista de Literatura Brasileira / A Journal of Brazilian Literature, 2018

Abstract: The following article analyzes two pieces by the collective theatrical troupe Teatro Religare (a contemporary staging of Don Quijote and Mutatis) in the tradition of Augusto Boal´s Theater of the oppressed and Paulo Freire´s Pedagogy of the oppressed. The pieces capture the conscience of actors, technical personnel and public in order to train them critically and to make them enter the imaginary of power. These plays are intimately linked with notions of popular theater, the theater of agitation and propaganda, and psychodrama. They utilize the classic for the projection the contemporary situation: Don Quijote allows the boys to present instances of transformation and knowledge: a man can transform into another one by following his own dream. In Mutatis, the boys instantiate simultaneously a revolutionary and a pedagogic and social goal. Keywords: Teatro Religare; Augusto Boal; Paulo Freire; Collective Theater; Don Quijote. Resumo: O artigo seguinte analisa duas representações pela trupe teatral coletiva Teatro Religare (Don Quijote e Mutatis) na tradição do Teatro do oprimido de Augusto Boal e Pedagogia do oprimido de Paulo Freire. As peças capturam a consciência dos atores, pessoal técnico e público a fim de treiná-los criticamente e fazê-los ingressar no imaginário de poder. Estas peças são intimamente ligadas a noções do teatro popular, do teatro de agitação e propaganda, e do psicodrama. A trupe utiliza o clássico para projetar a situação contemporânea: Don Quijote permite que os meninos apresentem exemplos de transformação e conhecimento: um homem pode se transformar em outro ao seguir seu sonho. Em Mutatis, os meninos perseguem uma meta revolucionária, pedagógica e social, simultaneamente.

Rio and São Paulo Theatres in 1970: National Dramaturgy

1972

Despite the large number of productions dedicated to the foreign playwrights in the theatre season in Rio and Sao Paulo, it is essential to recognize that a majority of the plays produced in Brazil in 1970 were of national authorship. 1 Furthermore, students of Brazilian dramaturgy will undoubtedly be struck by the plethora of new names to emerge in the last year or two. Plínio Marcos was a key figure in the evolution of the theatre. His background is unusual for a playwright. He is truly a "popular"-a man of the people who is still close to his origins. The burst of interest in his plays starting with the Dois Perdidos numa Noite Suja, can at least in part be attributed to the stir he created with the censors with Navalha na Carne? In his theatre, language has been revolutionized. Through the use of gíria and palavrões Marcos employs language not for communication, but as a weapon of degradation and aggression. His characters are marginais on the fringes of society, not the proletarian heroes of Guarnieri's theatre. And unlike the latter Marcos does not offer the Marxist solution of class revolution. He portrays his characters as turning on each other rather than working together for constructive change. He had five plays written before his first was seen, but Marcos had been totally unable to interest a producer. It was the late director Alberto D'Aversa who wrote a series of articles on his Dois Perdidos (which Plínio himself put on in a cafe-"O Ponto de Encontro") that caused the thaw. Fauzi Arap and Jairo Arco e Flexa then rushed to direct his works. 3 His purpose is to reveal the injustices as a reporter of a bad time. "Posso pensar numa solução ideal, minha, mas talvez não esteja certa, e por isso me limito a mostrar como o homem se amesquinha diante da vida, porque não tem condições de desenvolver seu potencial humano." 4 In the manner of the two dramatists that may have influenced him the most, Nelson Rodrigues and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, he is a moralist. The choice of seedy situations and power