By Thierry Deronne / Brasil de Fato / Latin American Summary, August 6, 2023.
Photo: The Theater of the Oppressed, created by Augusto Boal, is an ideal tool for participatory democracy – Augusto Boal Institute
Little practiced in Venezuela, Theater of the Oppressed is an ideal tool for its participatory democracy
“I make myself want to be part of this!”, exclaims an emotional Carmen Navas, when leaving the National Theater of Caracas where, thanks to her Cuban friends and the International Festival of Progressive Theater of Venezuela, Companhia do Latão presented the work O Pão e The Stone . In the Bolivarian nation – where theater and cinema are still struggling to represent the revolution – Sérgio De Carvalho brings the bomb of epic theater with his subtle, contradictory and, therefore, transformable characters. The work studies the political moment in which workers in the metallurgical sector -mostly from the Northeast recruited by multinationals- organized a strike in 1979.
Carvalho writes and shows this popular story from the point of view of the workers: the assembly of 70,000 workers, the police repression, the struggles between the old and the new unionism (with the voice-over of the young Lula as negotiator), the left student progressive churches capable of organizing the world of work.
Three exciting hours in which the songs, the chorus commenting on the action, the rotation of the scenery, the metamorphosis of the worker João into the worker Joana, the asides and the revolutionary quotes help us reflect on the “different possible directions of the river ” (Brecht). A theater of “intelligent laughter”, a collective learning where each “part of life” is linked to history.
For Sérgio, “the theater belongs to the people and I believe that the strength of a dialectical action lies in its ability to be alive and mobilizing”. The hands that seek a way out of the “American dream” of the dictatorship, the docile, impertinent, distrustful and rebellious hands, the hands that submerge themselves in the bodywork of the assembly line, the hand of the lonely mother who takes her son at home, the wounded hand of the new employee or the hand that washes work clothes, the hand that flips through Playboy or turns on the finally bought television, the shy hands of newlyweds perched on the Ferris wheel trying to see the world: all these hands are also “our hands, elsewhere.”
“As a construction company, I represented women victims of violence, together with my friends, because some are silent, while others have the strength to overcome it.” “This workshop changed everything for me, I understood how to move from the individual level to the social process,” say Claudia and Yusgleidys, members of a collective of self-builders, one of the many grassroots organizations of the Bolivarian revolution.
Julián Boal, invited by the Venezuelan festival to give a workshop on the Theater of the Oppressed, talks about the importance of “breaking the barrier between those who can speak from a stage and those who only have the right to listen.” Little practiced in Venezuela, the Theater of the Oppressed is an ideal tool for its participatory democracy. “Good political theater is always interesting in its artistic form. It offers the possibility of criticizing existing powers and reconfiguring them. Its function is to use the most critical theatrical techniques possible to help organize popular power”, explains Julián.
This fruitful and necessary relationship between the Brazilian political theater and a revolution in search of images does not stop there. In March 2023, the self-builders participated in a workshop given by Douglas Estevam, from the Culture Collective of the Landless Rural Workers Movement. Douglas proposed that they use their own tools and materials to create images, music, and characters.
Like Ursulina, who took her time to open her late husband’s toolbox and one day picked up her pliers to go back to work. Or Cláudia, the street vendor, who preferred to continue selling her necklaces on the street until Ursulina convinced her to join the builders. Or Maira, the make-up artist, who arrived with her own kit: “My hands no longer only serve to illuminate the beauty of the Venezuelan woman, but also to help her build her home.” Or Miguel, the soldier, whose wife demands that he leave her – “I’m sure you have a lover at work” – and who calls out to the women’s choir for help. “Let her come work with us!” they reply.
“From a street vendor to a builder and now an actress, yes, I have changed a lot”, explains Claudia at the end of the workshop. And Ircedia insists: “we will never stop training”. An invitation that Sérgio de Carvalho, Douglas Estevam and Julian Boal have already accepted, with the support of the Landless Movement and the School of Communication for Social Movements Hugo Chávez . Julián proposes to alternate training, practice, reflection and accompaniment between the different training periods. And starting to work, for example, with a couple of political clowns born out of the occupation movements, to then build small forms around the theater of the oppressed, before moving on to more elaborate forms of epic theatre.
* Thierry Deronne: filmmaker, educator and political-pedagogical coordinator of the Hugo Chávez School of Communication for Social Movements.
Edition: Rodrigo Chagas
2023-08-06 16:18:26
#Culture #Brazilian #political #theater #meets #Venezuelans #Resumen #Latinoamericano
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