ABSTRACT
The post-dictatorship generation pieced together Brazil’s fragmented past in site-specific performances in spaces that held and hid the country’s traumatic history. The political transition allowed them to occupy theater buildings poorly managed by city, state, or federal governments and make them their companies’ headquarters. In Rio de Janeiro, Centro de Construção e Demolição do Espetáculo moved into Copacabana’s then decaying Teatro Glaucio Gill, where they rehearsed and presented performances and hosted festivals and out-of-town artists, effectively revitalizing the city’s arts scene in close conversation with its community. Teatro da Vertigem invites audiences to enter sites of national trauma, including churches, defunct hospitals, and disused penitentiaries, as well as São Paulo’s Tietê River and Bom Retiro neighborhood. This chapter looks at Teatro da Vertigem’s trajectory from Biblical Trilogy (2000) to Bom Retiro 958 metros (2012) to discuss how, metaphorically speaking, Brazilian theater has engaged in contemporary versions of the country’s sixteenth-century entradas—a historical term referring to independently funded colonial expeditions into the country’s unexplored heartland—and frames Grupo Galpão’s staging of popular, free performances for large and diverse audiences in streets, parks, and other outdoor venues as acts of reclamation of public space.
