Arena tells Tiradentes: aesthetic and ideological dilemmas of Teatro de Arena post-1964 coup

Abstract

Arena conta Tiradentes, by Augusto Boal and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, uses a political upheaval of the Brazilian colonial period to talk about the moment of 1967, reflecting on the failure of the democratic expectations concerning popular inclusion that was experienced in Brazil in the 1950s and the 1960s, and interrupted by the 1964-coup which set up a dictatorship. For Teatro de Arena, a group that had been closely linked to the national-popular issues and that had been central in the cultural production of the previous years (dealing precisely with themes related to
the inclusion of the people in the debate about the future of the country), the coup represented a fundamental rupture and demanded a significant review of their ideological and aesthetic horizons. From 1965 on, Arena produced a series of musicals employing a new technique, The Joker System (Sistema Coringa), in which they sought to synthesize their aesthetic trajectory and propose directions for the new political situation of the country. Among these musicals is Arena conta Tiradentes, object of this study. Through a reading of our own and the reading of the main
studies on the play, we aim to reflect on the aesthetic and ideological dilemmas of the group in this troubled post-64 period.