MA Access Assignment
We have a natural right to make use of our pens as our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.” - Voltaire
According to Wikipedia, censorship is the suppression of a speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body. It can be done by governments and private organizations or by individuals who engage in a self censorship. It occurs in a variety of different contexts including speech, books, music, films and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet. This happens for a variety of reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, hate speech, to protect children, to promote or restrict political or religious views, to prevent slander and libel, and to protect intellectual property. Many countries provide strong protections against censorship by law, but none of these protections are absolute and it is frequently necessary to balance conflicting rights in order to determine what can and cannot be censored.
Brazil, the biggest country in Latin America and probably the most influential country in economical, social and artistic matters, was under a dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. During this period, a law called AI-5 decreed that every book including theatre plays should be read by a censor before being published. The work of theatre practitioners such as Augusto Boal (Theatre of the Oppressed), Plinio Marcos, Oswald de Andrade, Nelson Rodrigues and Bertolt Brecht were banned. However, Brazil experienced the most creative time of not only its theatre, but its art in general. Artists were writing pieces that challenged the censorship, yet talking about the difficult conditions of living. As producers almost vanished due to the insecurity of censorship imposed them, amateur theatre companies grew throughout the country.
From the 40s to the 60s, theatre in Brazil suffered terrible criticism due to the low compromise to society and art and for being only extremely focused on profits. In reality this criticism came already form the 19th century where Machado de Assis published articles about the poverty and the decadency of material created by national Theatre.
With the foundation of the first university in Sao Paulo in the beginning of the 20th century, a new elite of intellectuals with a special interest in bringing some critical thoughts to the theatre scenario was created. Many international directors and practitioners were invited to work in Brazil, especially during and after World War II, with the idea of copying, imitating or getting inspired by European Theatre.
As society changed, so changed its necessity of fighting for owning its future that was overtaking by military coup d’etat. At that moment it became clear that was a time to use our tongue at our peril, risk and hazard. As political repression became stronger, so did the risk, but also the creativity as an attempt to survive and still
accomplish the goal of communication. The following names are some of the most representative national artists of dictatorship period that took the hazard of never giving up their natural right of expression.
Teatro Arena (round format theatre) was founded by Jose Renato Pecora in 1953 in Sao Paulo and became the work place of Augusto Boal. The most famous play was “Arena conta Zumbi”,1965 (Arena tells the story of Zumbi), a plot that talks about Quilombo dos Palmares, a battle in between the slaves and the Portuguese government using a metaphor to express their oppression during the dictatorship at that time. But it was not just an innovation of the way the text was treated, it was also the first Musical Theatre performance in Brazil, absolutely authentic and very different from American musicals, due not only to the authenticity of the music but also the concept of the play that amongst other things, had all actors playing all the characters at different moments. “Arena conta Zumbi”, changed the history of Brazilian Theatre and it is mentioned as the biggest innovation in performing arts of the country, followed by “Arena conta Tiradentes (Arena tells the story of Tiradentes) that was based on another episode of the Portuguese repression alluding the time of the representation, creating popular confrontations with political repression.
Teatro Oficina was founded in 1958 by the theatre director José Celso Martinez Correa, and it is until nowadays a reference of Brazilian theatre. In 1967 the play “O rei da vela” (The king of Candles) by Oswald de Andrade was performed arising a new artistic movement that embraced different art forms called Tropicalia. It is important to mention that the text was the first modernist dramaturgy of Brazilian literature, written thirty years previous to its premiere, but never represented before since artists as well as the society in general were not ready to understand Oswald de Andrade. Although Tropicalia was a movement of many art forms, it became more famous by its music, led by two very important names: Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
Another important name in Brazilian culture is the composer, writer, singer Chico Buarque de Holanda. For theatre, besides the songs composed for several shows, he wrote “Roda Viva, “Calabar”, “Gota d’água” and “Opera do Malandro”.
Roda Viva (Living wheel) was directed by Jose Celso in the beginning of 1968 and became the symbol of the resistance against the military government. In July 1968, in the middle of the performance, a group of 110 people called “the Communist´s hunters” invaded the theatre and attacked all the audience and the artists.
In 1970 Teatro de Rua (street theatre) arose as this great theatre movement that challenged censorship using different performances strategies “to speak without talking”, but still addressing the current political situations. The death of the word was decreed and the cult of the body was born.
Antunes Filho, creator of the CPT - Centro de Pesquisa Teatral (Research Theatre Center) directed the plot “Macunaima” by Mario de Andrade in 1978 and it is considered the most important and influential play of Latin America in 1980s.
Using the right to speak at their risk, Augusto Boal was in prison, tortured and exiled from Brazil from 1971 to 1980. Caetano Veloso was exiled in Madrid, London and Tel Aviv during the end of 1960s. Gilberto Gil after being persecuted by the Brazilian militaries was then exiled in Europe and USA from 1969 to 1975. After being in prison Chico Buarque was exiled in Italy from 1968 to 1970. Jose Celso was also exiled from 1974 to 1978. During exile, Chico Buarque wrote in homage to Augusto Boal, who was the last one to return to Brazil, one of the most representative songs of the dictatorship time, “Meu caro amigo” (my dear friend) basically sending news about the current situation in Brazil as well as family and friends in a song. Another symbol of this time written by Chico Buarque is the ingenious song “Calice” (chalice), in Portuguese the pronunciation of the word “calice” is the same as “cale-se” (shut up) and the one used for the plot “Roda Viva”, with the same title is full of metaphors that if you don’t know the historic contest you can only appreciate the beautiful poetry. And thanks to the fact that some of those artists used their pens as their tongues, these materials will always be available to humanity as a conduit of living memory.
When the dictatorship was over, little by little the censorship was also over, leading Brazil to an extraordinary abuse of expression. People started to confuse the freedom to speak with lack of respect. Sexual contents became easily accessible for children and social problems still existed but were treated with little sensibility. Poetry and art, which was so vibrant during the period of censorship became literal and grounded, and soon society became lazy on thinking. Censorship created a more refined way of expression that was no longer needed when the risk was over. Theatre stopped being a necessary social expression and became pure entertainment. With that, theatre audiences just expected one thing when choosing a play to watch: “make me laugh”. Political contents almost disappeared, and only very few companies survived the invasion of American Musical Theatre and Stand up Shows. Besides that another style of censorship was created in a much more powerful way, and I say powerful because it is the type of censorship that is not clear, yet profoundly glued to society. The social censorship imposed by the manipulation of masses. The gap in between dictatorship and democracy was extremely important to establish this new censorship form. With insight and skill, the discretionary government realized the need of having the hegemony of the information to control the thoughts of the people, and to avoid further expressions of opposition. Therefore that encouraged the creation of a Brazilian Telecommunications Company and a national television networks. From this point some damage to the national theatre was caused by television, for example, the immediate success and huge salaries coming from the advertising budgets easily stole many of theatre actors, directors and authors. With the force of entering millions of Brazilian homes every night, a country with a large contingent of illiterate and semi illiterate inhabitants, television created a new aesthetic and a new dramaturgy for producers and consumers of drama. Theatre had to adjust to the necessity created by the TV soap operas, and the “Besteirol” genre was created (theatre of nonsense, theatre of stupidity or rubbish theatre), plays with no or very low content. Venues had then to adapt to a new reality changing the schedule of the shows to adjust to the schedule of the Tv soap operas, going from having eight performances a week from Tuesday to Sunday to only 4 a week, Thursday to Sunday. With such a framework, it is not a surprise that the quality of productions decreased considerably. The actor and director Regis Santos said: “The censorship in Brazil had three phases, before dictatorship it was easily manageable, during dictatorship is was terrible as theatre was seeing as a political tool, and after the dictatorship, which is our moment now, censorship is the worst of all times, it is imposed by money.”
“Dramaturgy that do not dare, do not investigate, do not denounce” - Sabato Magaldi (theatre critic)
“It came to a moment where theatre writers got tired of seeing their work mutilated and trying to find new solutions to dribble censorship. Many of the good ones went to work for television and didn’t leave many good followers to continue their work. The number of theatre artists were under one thousand in Sao Paulo, my registration number is 593, now we are about forty thousand. So, we were not enough to keep things going! So when censorship was finally over, we were lost already, we did not know what to produce for an audience that was blind, deaf and speechless for thirty years. After the 90s, new blood came, and the union of generations produced some good contemporary material, yet very experimental, still looking for an identity. After twenty years of silence, our theatre is an old teenager.”
Helcio Vidal - actor, director and producer.
My conclusion is that, as Anne Bogard says referring to blocking or staging a play, “It is the restriction which is a way of violence that allows the possibility of freedom”. I take this statement to censorship. By no means, I believe that we should not have the right of speaking or expressing our thoughts, but on other hand the impossibility of doing so, or the limitation of format and context experienced during dictatorship in Brazil allowed the rise of rich, creative, sensible, respectful and very genuine art projects, specially theatre. If the goal of censorship is to control the people, even though today in Brazil, there is right of speech, the submerged censorship has silenced people in a much more profound way, because it has killed the inner necessity of fighting for freedom by creating an illusion reality of liberty.
