The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance

Volume Two – Brazil, West Africa, South and South East Asia, United Kingdom, and the Arab World

Tim Prentki, Ananda Breed, Tim Prentki, Ananda Breed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000177077
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Arti performative

The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance provides an in-depth, far-reaching and provocative consideration of how scholars and artists negotiate the theoretical, historical and practical politics of applied performance, both in the academy and beyond.

These volumes offer insights from within and beyond the sphere of English-speaking scholarship, curated by regional experts in applied performance. The reader will gain an understanding of some of the dominant preoccupations of performance in specified regions, enhanced by contextual framing. From the dis(h)arming of the human body through dance in Colombia to clowning with dementia in Australia, via challenges to violent nationalism in the Balkans, transgender performance in Pakistan and resistance rap in Kashmir, the essays, interviews and scripts are eloquent testimony to the courage and hope of people who believe in the power of art to renew the human spirit.

Students, academics, practitioners, policy-makers, cultural anthropologists and activists will benefit from the opportunities to forge new networks and develop in-depth comparative research offered by this bold, global project.

Part I

Brazil

Introduction to Brazil and West Africa¹

Marina Henriques and Taiwo Afolabi

In these two sections, the chapters are case studies from West Africa and Brazil. The authors ­present each project in detail and the remarkable resilience of the artists in addressing deep-rooted systemic issues from racism to social/community development, thus redefining identity, politics and the aesthetics of performance. The chapters demonstrate the commitment of the artists and the functionality of their works in society and their relevance to the past, present and future.

Also, some of the case studies gained a longevity that reiterates applied performance relevance across time, space and place; for instance, the Cameroonian video documentation of participatory theatre titled Kam No Go and Gowen Na We produced in 1989 and 2004, respectively, the Brazilian Nóis de Teatro appraising Brazilian society through community theatre for over 15 years, the Burkinabé’s applied performance over two decades as evident in their festivals, and the Crown Troupe of Nigeria staging of 100 productions in two decades. Additionally, the praxis in the chapters is conceived, embodied and staged in unconventional spaces.

Furthermore, there are at least three languages represented in these works (English, French and Portuguese). The chapters in this section present us with fresh ideas around the role of language in applied performance. They reveal some connections in history, ancestry and possibly social issues between both regions, Brazil and West Africa.

Brazil

One of the most striking aspects highlighted in the chapters produced in Brazil, the largest country in South America, pertains to the fact that the artistic practices that they address are engaged in prominent social struggles present in Brazilian society. Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world, dominated by narratives that have always assured the interests of landowning oligarchies, racist political elites and a media aligned with the most powerful economic actors. These selected works expose, in different yet converging ways, the wounds caused by the historical injustices of colonialism that coexist with the social injustices inherent in capitalism. The chapters in this volume illustrate only a small part of a large universe of artistic and cultural practices of resistance within a dying democracy, where welfare rights increasingly become privileges of the few. In the examples discussed here, art entangles itself with politics to allow the emergence of voices from struggles that expose the perverse logic that operates in urban centres and land disputes in rural areas. These reflections examine actions that, with critical thought, poetry and creativity, denounce the undemocratic barbarity that, especially in the recent past, has plagued the country.

In the chapter “Paraíso do Tuiuti: ‘I am not a slave of no master’”, Fátima Costa de Lima addresses the plot of the parade Meu Deus, meu Deus, está extinta a escravidão? (My God, my God, is slavery extinct?) by the carnival samba school, Paraíso do Tuiuti (Paradise of Tuiuti). The plot criticized Brazil’s slave-owning past and condemned the current racism. The author argues that the story in question strengthens the sense of an ancestral African community through which sambistas and residents alike become warriors in defence of their rights. The violence and misery produced by the enslavement of Africans, which are still present today, were the themes in Brazil’s most popular cultural festivity.

The anticolonial and antiracist struggles evoked in the streets by the samba school also resonated in various theatre productions by groups from poorer regions of the country, such as the favelas and peripheries of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza. From the experience of Nóis de Teatro, a group active on the outskirts of Fortaleza for 15 years, the chapter “Every patrol car has a little of the slave ship: the emergence of the listening place”, by Altemar Di Monteiro, seeks to reflect on the political and aesthetic achievements of a performance (which shares the chapter’s title), by the group in 2014 and has been circulating in peripheral communities of the city ever since. Nóis de Teatro’s performance seeks to stress the discourses surrounding the extermination of black youth in the Brazilian peripheries.

The chapter “The power of subtle learning – directions and achievements of the Heliópolis Theatre Company” by Maria Fernanda Vomero, reflects on the follow-up to the creative process of the show Sutil Violento (Subtle Violent), by a theatre company from the favela of Heliópolis, in São Paulo, whose artistic research has always been guided by the experience of being on the side-lines and by the search for visibility and expression of the community’s voice.

In the chapter “Pombas Urbanas: sowing wings in a banished city” the authors Adailtom Alves Teixeira and Alexandre Falcão de Araújo present a record of the theatre group Pombas Urbanas’ 30-year history, discussing, mainly, its most recent performance, Cidade Desterrada (Exiled City), which recounts their neighbourhood’s past. The authors’ reflections reveal the group’s interests in community development and an awareness of the issues raised by local youth – race, gender and sexuality. This group’s artistic productions reflect a new way of giving visibility to communities from favelas or peripheries in various cities in Brazil. From the 20th century to today, the territories occupied by the poorer strata of the population are frequently defined as spaces of deprivation and violence. Counter to hegemonic narratives that have created historically negative representations of the favelas, these actions unveil these populations’ critical and creative potential. Just as seen in São Paulo and Fortaleza, other examples of theatre practices aligned with this perspective can be found in Rio de Janeiro.

The chapter “On fantastical journeys: who would save the adolescents from Maré?” by Marina Henriques Coutinho, investigates processes adopted by facilitators in two performances: the first addressed the teen universe, bringing important issues of this time of life and relationships with parents, the school, social networks and sexual identity to the scene. The second section, “Complain in the boca” (a reference to drug selling points), talks about the life of the youth of the Favela da Maré, where the project takes place and where its participants live in a context of military occupation. The chapter “Theatre crossed by the territory in the work of Grupo Código”, by Jorge Braga Junior, focuses on the artistic work developed by the Grupo Código (Code Group), a company founded in 2005, based in the city of Japeri, the municipality with the lowest human development index (HDI) in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro.

This group of Brazilian works also features an interview with members of the Canto da Lagoa Community Theatre Group and the chapter “The Memory of The Contestado in the musical theatre of youth from rural settlements in the south of Brazil” by Elaine Cristina da Silva and Tereza Mara Franzoni, both from the south of Brazil. In the interview carried out by Marcia Pompeo Nogueira, Juliano Borba, Julionir Andreghetti (Red) and Marilde Juçara da Fonseca narrate the group’s history and discuss the collective creative process that produced the performance Se eu Fosse um Camarão (and if I were a shrimp) created in dialogue with Adhemar Bianchi, director of the community theatre group Catalinas Sur in Buenos Aires. The play discusses the threats to the environment from land speculation interests. In turn, the chapter by Elaine and Tereza tells the experience of creating the musical, The Contestado (2017), which tackles the struggle for land in the state of Santa Catarina. Based on the War of Contestado, a conflict that occurred from 1912 to 1916, a group of young actors, part of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), one of Brazil’s most prominent social movements in defence of agrarian reform, created a play that transits between past and present situations to create a discussion about land disputes in the region.

The West African context: Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Cameroon

West Africa comprises 16 of the 54 countries on the African continent. Countries in the western region had European contact and experienced slavery just like others from the French, to the British, the Spanish, Danish and Dutch. There are many lingua franca in the region – English, French, Portuguese and Arabic. This points to many cultural divisions and diversities in the region.

Perhaps due to its colonial history, West Africa is one of the regions on the African continent that has gained the most attention from Western theatre scholarship. Such scholarship has exposed the rich culture and theatre traditions to the world. However, there is a need to move beyond the countries that are prevalent in theatre scholarship traditions to other countries that have not enjoyed such global attention. Therefore, the chapters on the West African region are from Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Cameroon – a compilation of chapters from both Anglophone and Francophone countries.

Apart from the varied linguistic references that enrich the collection, which also reflects on colonization, a common thread in the chapters is the functionality of the arts, especially applied performance and the commitment of the artist to the arts. The chapters reflect on the artist’s capacity to imagine a world that does not exist and then trying to re/create it. Such praxis reveals the intentionality and commitment of artists to engage performance in addressing social issues and the quality of performance to serve diverse purposes.

Alex Asigbo and Tochukwu Okeke’s “In geographies of conflict: resolving farmer–herdsmen conflict through street theatre”, articulates the instrumentalization of theatre as a tool for resolving conflicts. With a focus on the bloody dispute between farmers and herdsmen (Fulanis) in Nigeria, the authors’ case study is an ongoing theatre project to investigate how a street theatre project at the Theatre and Film Studies Department of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria has become an avenue to sensitize the people. According to the authors, the purpose of this project was to broker peace in Fulani settlements at Agu-Awka and Amansea and end avoidable conflicts between farmers and herdsmen. Street theatre serves as a medium to discuss a sensitive matter in a non-threatening way for the purpose of peacebuilding.

In “A folktale-based community play as a model for stimulating community development in Nigeria: an exploration of Conversation”, Isi Agboaye explores the application of traditional notions and images in his play Conversation. Through identifying folktale notions in the text, the historical past and prevailing present of a dysfunctional nation are x-rayed to imagine a new nation that is free of social decay. Agbaoye draws on postcolonial thinking to investigate folktales as a form of literature embedded with meaning capable of challenging communal and contemporary perceptions. The notion of an imagined nation in the chapter is the commitment of the artist to imagine a new society that is transformed for the cit...