The colonial period

Although there may have been occasional representations for the entertainment of the colonists in the half-century that followed the Portuguese conquest of Brazil in 1500, no record of theatrical activity exists until the Jesuits, who came to the colony in 1549, resorted to the theatre as a tool in their effort to educate the settlers and convert the Indians to the Catholic faith. The kind of theatre the Jesuits practiced in Brazil profited from their previous experience with the art form in Portugal. The new environment, however, required an overall simplification of their performances. As a result, the colonial Jesuit theatre marked a departure from the scholarly texts and ponderous productions they were known to stage in Portugal.

The major figure of the Jesuit theatre in Brazil is José de Anchieta (1534–1597). Born in the Spanish Canary Islands but educated in Portugal, at the age of sixteen Anchieta joined the Society of Jesus, which in 1553 sent him to Brazil, where he was to stay for the rest of his life. In the forty-four years he spent in Brazil as a teacher, missionary, and advocate of Indian rights, Anchieta proved to be a prolific writer of chronicles, letters, sermons, poems, and plays; he is also the author of a Tupi grammar and dictionary. Whereas Anchieta wrote tragedies in Latin for the benefit of his fellow Jesuits, his more important legacy, the autos, are in Portuguese, Spanish, and Tupi, and sometimes a combination of two or three of those languages. From the beginning, Anchieta understood that if he was to succeed in his didactic effort to convert the Indians and propagate the faith, the natives’ language had to be used.