Sala Preta is a journal published quarterly by the Postgraduate Programme in Performing Arts at the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo. The journal was founded in 2001 and it is one of the first Brazilian journals to specialise in the Performing Arts. It is also currently one of the journals in the field to be ranked "A1" by QUALIS/CAPES. After publishing in paper for 10 years, the journal inaugurated its electronic version in 2011. Since the issue number 11 from 2011, the journal has only been published digitally.
Universidade de São Paulo, Escola de Comunicações e Artes
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Copyright (c) 2025 Daniele Avila Small, Marcos Antônio Alexandre, Sofia Boito https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
O Brasil como problema no teatro, o teatro brasileiro como problema histórico
Copyright (c) 2025 Luiz Paulo Pimentel de Souza, Mariana Soutto Mayor, Paulo Bio Toledo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Stage lighting engendering bricolages in children’s theatre
This study reflects on the role of stage lighting in children’s theatre as a poetic language that can develop imagination and foster multiple interpretations. Grounded in Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of the bricoleur and Gaston Bachelard’s studies on the poetic image as a variational phenomenon, spectators—especially children—are understood as active agents in the construction of meaning, articulating visual fragments based on their subjectivities. Supported also by Lev Vygotsky’s theories on the mechanisms of creative imagination, this study investigates how lighting design activates the inherent processes of child development, attributing to young spectators a bricoleur’s gaze upon the scene.
Copyright (c) 2025 Fernanda Guimarães Mattos Souza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Dance in pandemic times: experiences and meanings in the virtual space from a phenomenological perspective
This study phenomenologically analyzes the lived experience of young members of the Laboratory of Body Studies during the COVID-19 pandemic, specially the effects of social isolation on the practice of dance in virtual environments. This investigation included in-depth interviews, visual records, and class journals to understand how its nine participants resignified their domestic spaces and their own bodies and developed new forms of expression and bodily resistance. Data analysis was based on a phenomenological approach to grasp the meanings attributed by the participants to their experiences. Results show that dance emerged as a strategy for emotional coping, reinvention of affective bonds, and strengthening of corporeality, even in the face of the technical and spatial limitations due to the pandemic. Despite physical distancing, artistic practice remained, reaffirming the power of moving body as a form of resilience and overcoming.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kaio César Cellli Mota, Michele Viviene Carbinatto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Henrique Rochelle, José Veríssimo, Marilia Velardi, Suzana Schmidt Viganó https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Stretching of Dramaturgical Forms in Propositions for a Participatory Audience: A Study of the Plays Manifesto Transpofágico, Azira’i – um musical de memórias and Hoje não saio daqui
This study aims to investigate dramaturgical forms that include in their structures performative games (openings of the scenic experience to chance) considering the relationship with a participatory audience who is co-responsible for the scene. These propositions will be analyzed based on three contemporary Brazilian plays: Manifesto Transpofágico (2021) by Renata Carvalho, Azira’i – um musical de memórias (2024) by Zahy Tentehar and Duda Rios, and Hoje não saio daqui (2020) by Cia Marginal and Jô Bilac. All plays were written mostly by actor-authors for their own bodies, considering their dissident identities. Based on autofictional assumptions and critical fabulation, these voices access larger social structures, contributing to the decolonial scene.
Copyright (c) 2025 Juliana Pamplona https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Dramaturgy of the encounter: lesson planning as a dramaturgical practice
This study proposes understanding theater lesson planning as a dramaturgical practice. Drawing from contemporary notions of dramaturgy as a composition of the sensible, it introduces the idea of “dramaturgy of the encounter” to shift planning from a prescriptive and normative function to a creative, sensitive, and collective gesture. Based on a critical reading of curricular reforms and the emphasis on skills and competencies, this study investigates how to inhabit contradictions without giving up creation. This research deems planning as an aesthetic construction of atmospheres, fields of presence, and zones of latency in which the class becomes a provisional writing of possible worlds.
Copyright (c) 2025 Filipe Brancalião Alves de Moraes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Os Ossos do Barão from 1963: memories of the meeting between Jorge Andrade and Maurice Vaneau
Via traces of text and theatrical scenes, this study aims to propose a return to the early 1960s, looking at the creators of one of the most successful theatrical productions of the period: Os Ossos do Barão, from 1963. Written by Jorge Andrade, the play was staged by Maurice Vaneau at the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia. The encounter resulted in a production that ran for a few years, attracting spectators and critics. It currently helps us understand the presence of foreign directors in Brazil and a way of producing theater that consolidated the presence of directors/directors in the following decades.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luiz Humberto Martins Arantes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Black dramaturgies: or on writing color and body as text
This study, based on PhD research, aims to analyze Black dramaturgies — a term used in the plural to designate the written and the performed text — as pulsating writings engaged in establishing other realities via the po[ethic] apprehension of Brazilian socio-racial processes; aesthetically reworking Black experiences; and revealing epistemologies of the scene that make Blackness visible in its difference, creativity, and relevance. Drawing on the dramaturgy of Grace Passô and Anderson Feliciano, we seek to reflect on how these artists inscribe color and body as text, producing language effects that, by a process of formal conception, encompass the contradictions of society and the theatrical experience, weaving multiple and fabular layers of the Black subject.
Copyright (c) 2025 Soraya Martins Patrocinio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Violence and raciality in contemporary playwriting
This study is grounded in the concept of “necronarrative” developed by Aldri Anunciação to examine how contemporary Brazilian playwriting articulates violence and raciality. Its analysis focuses on plays that address the genocide and mass incarceration of Black and marginalized youths, such as Buraquinhos ou o vento é inimigo do picumã (Jhonny Salaberg), Cárcere ou porque as mulheres viram búfalos (Dione Carlos), and Cavalos pretos são imensos (Bárbara Esmenia). These works broaden racial and gender perspectives by subverting stereotypes and proposing new poetics that challenge an imaginary white playwrights have historically shaped. This study stems from the PhD thesis “Tuesday without theater: blackface, agency, and black representations in contemporary dramaturgy,” which I defended with the support of a CAPES scholarship.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marcos Nogueira Gomes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Modern Brazilian theatre: interpretative traditions and vectors of conceptual diffusion
This study theoretically overviews the main interpretations on the idea of modern theater and points some issues related to its dissemination. For this, it analyzes perspectives that address the phenomenon by the emergence of stage directing and dramaturgical innovations. It then examines the incorporation of these developments into the Brazilian context and the key vectors of their conceptual dissemination. This study aims to understand the historical and intellectual processes that enabled the construction and appropriation of the idea of modern theatre.
DOSSIÊ: TEATRO BRASILEIRO COMO PROBLEMA HISTÓRICO, O BRASIL COMO PROBLEMA NO TEATRO
Copyright (c) 2025 Henrique Brener Vertchenko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Contextual dance and cultural mediation in the “Pele” project: actions between Theatro Municipal de São Paulo and the streets of the city
Aiming to problematize how the architecture and operational rules of traditional theaters can perpetuate colonialist values and generate violent power relations based on segregation, this research intersects contextual dance, Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, and the streets surrounding it. Drawing from the history of Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, this study discusses the artistic creations and cultural mediation actions developed in “Skin: between the body, the street and the Theater”, pondering how the actions of infiltrating, tensioning, turning inside out, and bordering could act on the cracks in the solid walls of its building, widening the points of contact between the interior of the theater and the streets around it.
Copyright (c) 2025 Laila Renardini Padovan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
From decline to crisis: the Brazilian theater within the context of modernity (1910s and 1920s)
This study examines the discourse surrounding the “theater crisis” in Brazil in the 1910s and 1920s. It analyzes how these discussions reflect broader changes in society and transformations in the urban entertainment market, particularly with the rise of cinema and other modern forms of leisure. This study has three parts, the first of which contextualizes the “theater crisis” as a global phenomenon, examining how cinema and urbanization have affected the social and symbolic role of theater. The second section discusses responses to this crisis, highlighting efforts to maintain the symbolic power of theater, such as productions aimed at the elite, and adaptations to a more accessible model of “theater by sessions” inspired by cinema. The third section explores attempts to integrate elements of modern culture and forge a national identity in theater, with influences from modernism, Argentine theater, and Afro-Brazilian culture. This study argues that the modernization of Brazilian theater showed no abrupt ruptures, evincing gradual adaptations that reveal a complex interaction between tradition and innovation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Polleti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The artistic-pedagogical process of Memorada: reflections on theater and intraculturality
This study analyzes the play Memorada, relating it to the search for critical and counter-hegemonic historical perspectives in Brazilian theater. Created as a final course project at the Teatro Universitário of UFMG in 2023, the play fosters a dialogue between history, memory, and forgetting in Brazil. What sustains the preservation of certain memories while silencing others? Who benefits from the saying: ‘Brazilians have a short memory?’ By revisiting moments of the artistic-pedagogical process and excerpts from the production, this study investigates the relationship between theater and intraculturality as a methodological, ethical, and aesthetic strategy within theater education, addressing themes that intersect multiple realities and diversities in the country.
Copyright (c) 2025 Júlia Camargos de Paula, Raysner de Paula Silva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Funding mechanisms, circuits of theatrical production, and the financial sustainability of theater artists
This study aims to outline the characteristics of theatrical production modes, systems, and circuits in Latin America. Based on definitions, this research aims to find sources of funding and sustainability strategies for theater artists living in Brazil. This research was based on a literature review on the subject, using researchers in cultural economy, politics, production, and management as references. This study found the need to diversify sources of income for theatrical activity and the personal sustainability of artistic careers.
DOSSIÊ: POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS E ECONOMIA DAS ARTES CÊNICAS
Copyright (c) 2025 Heloisa Marina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
In favor of “decent theater”: transformations in theater work in the Brazil-Rio vice-kingdom capital
This study investigates the change in the theatre organization in Rio de Janeiro due to the arrival of the Portuguese royal family in 1808. Up to then, the only existing theater in the capital of the vice-kingdom Manuel Luiz Ferreira’s Casa da Ópera followed the architectural, repertoire, scenery, costumes and organizational patterns of the Portuguese public theatres of the 18th century with a peculiar characteristic: most of its artists were free and enslaved Portuguese-Brazilian, Blacks, and mestizos individuals. This reality gradually changed with the arrival of the Bragança court in Rio de Janeiro as the monarch ordered the construction of the Real Theatro São João — the ‘decent theater’ in the words of the prince regent in 1813 — and favored the hiring of European actors and actresses. By exploring this ongoing change in the organization of the theater, this research seeks to constitute the colonial scene up to the arrival of the royal family in 1808 to question the whereabouts of local artists and to look for traces of their presence on the 19th-century scene.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mariana Soutto Mayor https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The Two or the English Machinist (c. 1840-1843) by Martins Penna: a case study on theater and the slave trade
Based on the case study of the comedy The Two or the English Machinist by Martins Penna (1815-1848), this study relates theater and slavery in Brazil in the first half of the 19th century. Printed, handwritten, digital, and newspaper sources are used to address the issue of illegal slave trafficking, with the main examples being the Portuguese trafficker José Bernardino de Sá and the ship Espadarte mentioned in the comedy. This study evinces dangerous relationships between government authorities, traffickers, and the slave trade. It offers information on the types of vessels to smuggle slaves and fight it, exemplifying the inhumane conditions of sea voyages during the legality and illegality of the transoceanic trade of enslaved Africans.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luiz Costa-Lima Neto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Theater of street singing: Cecílio Sá and the popular and religious amateur theater in São Luís in the first half of the 20th century
This study investigates the trajectory of Cecílio Sá and his contribution to popular and religious amateur theater in São Luís do Maranhão in the first half of the 20th century. Based on documentary research, bibliographic review, and case study, it examines the influence of local cultural manifestations in his productions, highlighting the interaction between religiosity, popular culture, and theatrical practice. This study is mainly based on sources such as Sá, Leite, Borralho, and the newspapers O Imparcial, Diário de São Luiz, O Pacotilha, and O Combate. Analysis emphasizes the relevance of his work to the history of the theater in São Luís do Maranhão and highlights his role in shaping a dramaturgical repertoire linked to regional identity and expanding access to the performing arts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gilberto Martins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
From Machado to Vianinha: commitment to consolidating national theater
This study compares the measures by Machado de Assis to consolidate the national literary system and the measures by Vianinha, Augusto Boal, and others to form the Brazilian theatrical system. This research analyzes the process of construction and consolidation of the Brazilian theatrical system from historical and aesthetic points of view, stressing the dramatic production of the period, which dialectically overcomes the limits of dramatic realism by critical realism via the strong influence of Bertolt Brecht. This research shows how they acted with outstanding commitment to consolidating Brazilian artistic traditions and its critical expression of local reality and the counterpoint with the cosmopolitan norm. One of the main pieces of evidence for the argument is Vianinha’s essay Moment of Brazilian Theater (1958).
Copyright (c) 2025 Rafael Litvin Villas Bôas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Opera Café by Mário de Andrade: a political theater essay on the imaginary stage of São Paulo’s modernism
This study aims to interpret one of the earliest experimentations concerning the Brazilian political theater, the opera Café, by Mário de Andrade. It argues that this opera is shaped by a convergence of two creative impulses: on the one hand, the aesthetic embodiment of the people’s perspective to attract popular audience and intervene in it and, on the other, the idea that the artist should adopt an ethos to be responsible for leading the public toward a libertarian and transformative path against oppressive social forces. This study seeks to present the structural role of the sacrificial rite of death and resurrection for the opera.
Copyright (c) 2025 Philippe Curimbaba Freitas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The emergence of Grand-Guignol in Brazil: a study on Dominó Negro (1916)
This study aims to describe the incursion of Grand-Guignol into Brazilian theater from the 20th century onward by tours from foreign theater companies and the diffusion of the term to classify national plays that share structural elements with the French style. Using the play Dominó Negro (1916) by Guilhermina Rocha (1884–1938) as a case study, this study seeks to shed light on a genre that remains largely underexplored in academia to understand how Grand-Guignol can be viewed within the pre-modernist period as an attempt to modernize drama.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sofia Fransolin Pires de Almeida, Larissa de Oliveira Neves https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
What can we carry in our baggage after the rains? The curatorial process of the 31st edition of Porto Alegre em Cena
This study revisits the curatorial experience of the 31st edition of the Porto Alegre em Cena Festival, which, in response to the climate catastrophe that struck the state of Rio Grande do Sul in April and May 2024, dedicated its edition to artists from Rio Grande do Sul. This study aims to ponder art and curatorship regarding climate and environmental issues by this case study. With the title-question: What can we carry in our baggage after the rain? the authors engage with Malcom Ferdinand’s (2022) concept of world-ship, considering it as a possible way of inhabiting the world from the perspective of a politics of encounter.
Copyright (c) 2025 Virgínia Maria Schabbach, Bruno Segura Mros https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Of freedom as a benefit and staged as féerie: a critique of the emancipatory technology staged by the abolitionist movement in theaters (1880-1888)
Throughout the 1880s, Brazilian theaters became arenas for abolitionist militancy. These spaces held various emancipatory conferences featuring a diverse program in which speeches alternated with musical performances, theatrical scenes, poetry declamations, and other forms of artistic and political expression. One of the most striking aspects of these conferences was the public distribution of manumission letters to enslaved people, turning their liberation into a spectacle infused with mystery and cathartic effects. This study analyzes this performative technology, which intertwined theatrical practices with ideals of freedom and citizenship, questioning its connection to the logic of slavery and the mechanisms of freedom guardianship even after manumission.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luiz Paulo Pimentel de Souza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Public Policies and Performing Arts in the Land Of Poets: implementation of the Laws Aldir Blanc I, Paulo Gustavo and PNAB in Capivari (SP)
This study analyzes the implementation of the Aldir Blanc I Law, the Paulo Gustavo Law, and the National Aldir Blanc Policy in the municipality of Capivari, in inner São Paulo, focusing on the performing arts sector and the impact of these cultural funding policies on Cia Ui de Teatro, a theater company that has been active in the municipality for nearly two decades. This qualitative and documentary research investigates how these cultural public policies were appropriated, managed, and executed in a municipality known as the “Land of Poets.” This study seeks to understand, through the lens of authors such as Tolila (2007), Rolim; Massa (2023), and Costa (2007), the impacts of these emergency legislations on local cultural agents, highlighting challenges, mechanisms of social participation, and their practical effects on the performing arts production chain. This analysis also proposes reflections on the effectiveness of these policies in municipal contexts and their contribution to decentralizing access to cultural resources.
Copyright (c) 2025 Vivian Cristina Vieira Ui https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Financing frameworks and theatrical production during the 19th century: the impresario José de Almeida Cabral in São Paulo (1871-1874)
This study examines the later years of theatre impresario José de Almeida Cabral’s career (circa 1818–1886), focusing on the financial and production structures of his theatrical companies during the early 1870s. Using primary sources (including contemporary documents and periodicals) and the relevant secondary literature, this research explores the final phase of Cabral’s activities as a theatre impresario in São Paulo. Additionally, this study frames its analysis within the context of prior studies that find three predominant financing strategies of the period: lotteries, shareholder systems, and support networks. The findings underscore the critical role that support networks played in sustaining Cabral’s theatrical companies.
Copyright (c) 2025 Andrea Carvalho Stark https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Policies and markets of contemporary dance works: socioeconomic approach to the choreographic world
In France, policies from the Ministry of Culture and territorial collectivities have steadily increased contemporary dance since the 1970s. A mixed economy has been set up, which relies on both public funding for companies and venues and economic exchanges in a free market. This study shows the results of a comprehensive empirical study of the French professional dance world that focused on examining the various factors involved in allocating funding to the arts. This study also highlights the need for and the enriching nature of interdisciplinary artistic exchanges.
Copyright (c) 2025 Patrick Germain-Thomas; Henrique Rochelle https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Dance economy in São Paulo: producers, products, and consumption of art in a subsidized market
This study characterizes three fundamental elements of dance economy: its producers, products, and consumption, by a review of the literature on cultural economics, analysis of public documents and data, and interviews with sector agents. Focusing on the municipality of São Paulo, this study proposes an initial approach to the subsidized market economic model described for French contemporary dance, which serves as a reference for the research. In addition to evaluating the application of this model for São Paulo, this study investigates fundamental aspects of the nature of the producers, their labor demands, and their production processes; the specificities of the product in this sector understood from two distinct perspectives regarding its production and market processes; and the market and consumption structure in light of public policies and the interests of intermediary and final consumers in products.
Copyright (c) 2025 Henrique Rochelle https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Between access and participation: perspectives for the performing arts in a cultural democracy
This study explores the relationship between cultural policies and practices of democratization and cultural democracy in Brazil, focusing on the performing arts. It analyzes the fragility of public cultural policies in the country, management challenges, and the need for more inclusive and participatory models. It examines the concept of cultural democracy in contrast to the democratization of culture, highlighting the importance of actions that engage diverse communities and emphasize diversity. It shows as brief examples of participatory models the political and aesthetic challenges and resistances of Tribo de Atuadores Ói Nóis Aqui Traveiz and Terreira da Tribo in Porto Alegre. This study defends the need of cultural actions grounded in aesthetic, social, and political values that foster citizen empowerment and effective cultural transformation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rodrigo dos Santos Monteiro, Christine Greiner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Autonomous workers’ theater: Community Funding for an Independent Theater
This study provides a panoramic analysis of popular and workers’ theater experiences from the late 19th century onward, encompassing European experiences in the context of urban growth and the rise of naturalism and the autonomous or self-active workers’ theater movement linked to the growth of the labor and revolutionary movements. It also examines significant popular and workers’ theater experiences in Brazil. This study aims to ponder the funding mechanisms of these groups, such as subscription schemes, state funding, and support from workers’ organizations, such as unions and political parties. It also discusses the relationship between these funding methods and the goals of theater groups, as well as their connections with the communities in which they are integrated, including the dynamics between amateurism and professionalism within these collectives.
Copyright (c) 2025 Fernando Bustamante https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Theater under the Veil of Authoritarianism: interview with Edson Roberto Santana
In this interview conducted in 2019, actor, director, and playwright Edson Roberto Santana, a founder of Grupo Núcleo, shares stories from behind the scenes of Teatro de Arena in its final years and discusses the process of creating Teatro Jornal techniques in collaboration with Augusto Boal. He also talks about his participation in historical theatrical productions by Teatro São Pedro and Grupo Núcleo’s activism with the Student Movement and the peripheral communities of São Paulo during the 1970s.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ademir de Almeida, Edson Roberto Santana https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0