Eluding the Censor: From Script to Improvisation in Patetica

Abstract

With the 1985 restoration of a civilian government in Brazil, cultural historians and art critics have undertaken an assessment of the consequences for artistic expression of the widespread censorship practices characterizing the country's twenty-one year military rule. Brazilian theatre — which in the 1950S and early 1960s had for the first time achieved a sustained level of excellence in the work of accomplished playwrights such as Jorge Andrade, Alfredo Dias Gomes, Ariana Suassuna and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri and in the initial activities of Sao Paulo's experimental Teatro de Arena — was the performative activity most vulnerable to the notorious Institutional Act NO.5, which abolished safeguards on freedom of expression from December 1968 until January 1979. During these years, countless dramatic works submitted for approval to federal censorship authorities were rejected outright, while others were withheld from publication, staging, and/or performance for months on end, outlawed on opening nights after substantial investments of hard work and money, or, in some cases, violently interrupted by authorities in the middle of a performance.