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Crises and Brazilian Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2017

AIMAR LABAKI
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Abstract

Brazil is going through a political and economic crisis of major proportions – an unprecedented recession and the rise of an illegitimate government following the impeachment of the elected president. Theatre responds to this crisis with a timely production of reflection and, eventually, militancy. It also responds to another crisis: that of the pertinence of language and of modes of theatrical production in the context of a society in which relationships take place in a virtual environment, to the detriment of real social and political action. The objective of this text is to identify the general lines of this kind of production.

Type
Dossier: Snapshot: Brazil
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 217 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2017 

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References

NOTES

1 Operation Car Wash is an investigation being carried out by the Federal Police of Brazil, Curitiba branch, since 17 March 2014, into accusations of money laundering and bribery and corruption at the state-controlled oil company Petrobras.

2 ‘IBGE confirma o pior desastre econômico da história do Brasil’ (Brazilian Government Agency Confirms the Worst Economic Disaster in the History of Brazil), Jornal da Globo, 3 March 2017, at http://g1.globo.com/jornal-da-globo/noticia/2017/03/ibge-confirma-o-pior-desastre-economico-da-historia-do-brasil.html, accessed 27 April 2017.

3 Public financing of culture in Brazil is controlled by the Lei Federal de Incentivo à Cultura (Federal Law for the Support of Culture) No. 8.313/91, which envisages fiscal incentives for corporations and individuals who can write off up to 100 per cent of the taxes they owe. The provision for the use of the Fundo Nacional de Cultura, which would draw on several funding sources to finance non-commercial productions, was never appropriately put into practice. That would involve regular, public calls for tenders and appropriations, and encompass all production types.

4 Roberto Schwarz (b. 1938) is a Marxist literary critic, retired from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas.

5 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (b. 1945), union leader in the 1970s, became the greatest leader of Brazil's left. President for two consecutive terms (2003–10), he was able to elect his successor Dilma Rousseff for two terms. However, she was removed from her position by impeachment. Currently he is at the centre of corruption investigations involving many of the building contractors working on public projects, as well as politicians from almost every party.

6 In the first two weeks of 2017, a total of 134 inmates were killed in Brazilian penitentiaries. See Da Redação, ‘Número de mortos em presídios brasileiros chega a 134 em 2017’, Correio, 16 January 2017, at www.correio24horas.com.br/detalhe/brasil/noticia/numero-de-mortos-em-presidios-brasileiros-chega-a-134-em-2017/?cHash=f9072cd60180fa310a2d75fd83f1cfc1, accessed 5 May 2017.

7 Song ‘O Cú do Mundo’ (The World's Arsehole), by Caetano Veloso (1991).

8 The democratic interregnum period goes from the end of the Estado Novo dictatorship (1937–45) until the start of the military dictatorship (1964–85). In the meantime, the first phase of the dictatorship that lasted until December 1968 was characterized by a relative possibility of skirting the limitations to freedom of expression. This period, from 1945 to 1968, saw the emergence of Cinema Novo, Bossa Nova, Tropicalism, Oscar Niemeyer's architecture, Hélio Oiticia and Lygia Clark's visual arts and modern Brazilian theatre.

9 [TN] Candle King was translated by Diana Taylor and published in Taylor, Diana and Townsend, Sarah J., eds., Stages of Conflict: A Critical Anthology of Latin American Theatre and Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), pp. 145–172 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.