A Possible Theatrical Language: A Study on Foreignness in Contemporary Brazilian Playwriting

Abstract

This article offers a reflection on the meaning effects produced by the use of foreign languages in contemporary playwriting, taking as a starting point Henri Meschonnic’s notion of rhythm, which displaces language beyond signification and code. In dialogue with Marion Chénetier-Alev, who identifies the use of other languages as a critical and political tool in the European stage context, the text turns to the work of Brazilian playwrights who mobilize foreignness as a poetic operation. The focus then shifts to the contemporary Brazilian stage, observing experiences in which the foreign—through language, through rhythm—crosses the text. These practices challenge the hegemony of linguistic norms and activate Brazilian Portuguese as a sensitive matter, embedded in histories, violence, and translation. Playwriting is thus conceived as an operation that constructs new meanings in the passage between languages, establishing a zone of contagion where language no longer recognizes itself in a stabilized form. The article ultimately proposes the idea of a theatrical language—unstable, rhythmic, continuous, ephemeral—that invents and reconfigures the relations between language, body, and world.