ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Abdias do Nascimento, one of Brazil’s most influential black activists and intellectuals, and concentrates on his development of black theatre in Brazil through the Teatro Experimental Negro (TEN). It examines the theatre and his newspaper Quilombo to focus on what became an exchange of black internationalism and its significance in combating racism in an Afro-diasporic manner. Vargas also helped TEN by allowing them to perform in the municipal theatre. A new generation of critical intellectuals and black activists in Brazil would emerge during the time when Brazilian politics was controlled by the authoritarian politician Vargas, who had suspended democracy with the Estado Novo. Many of the theatre’s members and students were people who lived in Rio’s favelas and held the lowest positions in society such as maids and domestics, while others were unemployed, students, or civil servants.
