After the Long Silence: The Theater of Brazil's Post-Dictatorship Generation by Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento

Abstract

Reviewed by: After the Long Silence: The Theater of Brazil's Post-Dictatorship Generation by Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento Marcos Davi Silva Steuernagel After the Long Silence: The Theater of Brazil's Post-Dictatorship Generation Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento. Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies series. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019; pp. 256. On the surface, After the Long Silence appears to address a niche topic for an academic monograph published in the United States: the theatre of Brazil's post-dictatorship generation. Yet Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento's book does so much more. In her preface, she remarks on how overlooked Brazilian theatre remains within Latin American performance scholarship (20). In fact, an exhaustive literature review of Brazilian theatre history published in the United States would reveal only a small number of chapters in monographs and edited volumes, and even monographs that present themselves as overviews only cover a handful of groups. After the Long Silence is the only academic monograph published in the United States to provide a comprehensive survey of a broad period of Brazilian theatre, a significant feat. The extensive preface of the book provides a succinct summary of the politics of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Brazil, focusing on the conditions that allowed for the military dictatorship (1964–85) and on the transition to [End Page 157] democracy thereafter. While a reader with deep knowledge of Brazilian history might skip this section, most US-based readers will be unfamiliar with the details of this story. Nascimento's apt summary lays out the foundation for her subsequent arguments. In chapter 1, she presents a history of Brazilian twentieth-century theatre, organized into four broad generations (46). The first generation was formed by members of the Modernism movement of the 1920s, particularly Oswald de Andrade, whose "Cannibalist Manifesto" generated one of the most foundational concepts in subsequent Brazilian art. The second generation was that of the 1940s and '50s, including Os Comediantes's production of Nelson Rodrigues's The Wedding Dress, widely referred to by theatre historians as the play that founded Brazilian modern theatre. The third generation is comprised of the groups who created theatre in response to the censorship and violence of the military dictatorship, most famously Augusto Boal and Zé Celso Martinez Corrêa. Finally, the post-dictatorship cohort are the artists who grew up during the final years of the regime, yet began their professional careers in a democratic country. Chapter 1 also presents the main argument of the book—namely, that the post-dictatorship generation of theatre-makers can only be understood in relationship to that traumatic period; and that a close reading of their practices allows us to better understand key aspects not only of Brazilian theatre, but of Brazilian history and society as well. Nascimento attributes the peculiarities of this group to their path to professionalization, the ways in which they reclaimed the body in performance, their novel relationship to the university system, and their exposure to international aesthetics. The combination of these factors produced what Nascimento calls an "aesthetics of melancholia." The preface and chapter 1, which altogether add up to a third of the book, provide the reader with a general grasp of key events in Brazilian history, and of how they shaped the theatre that was produced in the country. In chapters 2 through 4, Nascimento then presents close readings of key productions by five of the most representative Brazilian theatre companies: Cia dos Atores and Centro de Demolição e Construção do Espetáculo from Rio de Janeiro; Grupo Galpão from Belo Horizonte; and Teatro da Vertigem and Os Fofos Encenam from São Paulo. Nascimento clearly lays out her selection criteria and explains that the continental dimensions of the country, combined with her own personal trajectory, are responsible for the limits of her scope. Yet, the combination of the historical overview offered in the preface and chapter 1 and the detailed case studies presented in chapters 2–4 as well as brief discussions of several other theatre groups interspersed throughout provide the reader with a thorough understanding of Brazilian theatre. In addition to the breadth of the project, the most important contribution this...