Theatre of the Oppressed

In 1964, President João Goulart of Brazil was pushed out in a coup d’état, and the event ignited a military rebellion that would last for 21 years. Senior commanders of the Brazilian Army acted with the support of the Catholic Church to remove Goulart and establish a new militant regime. The period was marked by human rights violations and dictatorship-style control. As often occurs during periods of repression and unrest, artists emerged as political rebels, finding unique ways to bypass censorship laws and express dissent. During the 1960s and 1970s, Brazil’s artists challenged the status quo by questioning the social and political norms of their time, deconstructing them, and creating lasting and meaningful discourse with the shards. By subverting the norms of art, music, education, and literature, individuals like Augusto Boal and Lygia Pape decentered authority during a time when those with power wielded it with impunity.

One of these expressions of rebellion came in the form of music. The Tropicália movement merged popular and avant-garde styles of music to celebrate Brazilian culture while subtly critiquing Brazilian politics. The movement drew from the concept of “antropofagia,” an idea developed by Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade, who asserted that Brazil’s greatest strength was its ability to draw from many cultures. In line with this inclusive ideology, the Tropicália movement blurred the lines between various disciplines of art, merging visual, performance, and body art with other forms to create something unique.

Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis, the 1968 album by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil and many other contributors, is considered the foundational work of the movement. The record exhibits an all-inclusive approach that helped to define the expansive and collectivist philosophies of artists and thinkers in Brazil during this period. In the first song’s first few measures, the musicians push the lines of genre by opening with an organ, a bicycle bell, and a verse in Latin in quick succession. While challenging musical conventions, the artists’ lyrics and performances pushed back against the censorship of the Brazilian government. Veloso and Gil were arrested more than once for their artistic activism.

While musicians were pushing the boundaries with sound, visual artists and writers were pushing back against the military regime in Brazil. For example, sculptor and filmmaker Lygia Pape blended techniques to push the limits of her art, expanding her geometric work into the political realm. Educator Paulo Freire reimagined education in Pedagogy of the Oppressed by decentering the teacher and moving students from passive to active creators of meaning and knowledge in the classroom.

Like these revolutionaries, Augusto Boal was a controversial figure who dared to confront the hierarchical nature of Western ideologies and their manifestation in performance. Boal saw theater as a chance to involve the audience in making art and engaging in political discourse. Also like his contemporaries, Boal knew the consequences of his political action. In 1971, he was arrested and tortured, and many of his books were banned. Because Boal and others bravely pushed the boundaries of their disciplines and sought to dismantle hierarchical structures, they helped to reshape the future of their country, politics, and art.