International Women Stage Directors

Brazil

Brazil Alessandra Vannucci translated by Massimiliano Giorgini Women directors conquered Brazilian theatre starting in the 1980s, dealing with both cultural and logistical obstacles, such as the clearing of time for artistic activity from the day’s domestic work and earning a living wage. The rigid social morality, the reason for most women’s withdrawal from the arts during the twentieth century, persisted even after the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, yet in the twenty-first century the same driving force seems to heighten the creativity, charisma, and diversity that are characteristic of the women who stand out in the field of theatre direction. One common factor that seems to be an advantage for women directors is either foreign nationality or training abroad, either in Europe during the 1970s or in the United States for those who emerged later. In addition, the public recognition of early women directors was influenced by the fact that many were wives and daughters of recognized male artists, in contrast to the modern situation, in which success arises from several different and highly individual paths. While the beginning of the twenty-first century is characterized by a strong policy of equal opportunity in all public and private spaces, the theatre seems to continue to present a traditional resistance to equal opportunity, much more so than in the other arts. Women’s Rights: Historical Context In the evolutionary framework of women’s emancipation, Brazil offers some provocative surprises. Census data indicates that in 1872 women represented almost half of the working population, falling to less than 20 percent during the 1920s, and then maintaining this incidence of inclusion in the national workforce until the 1970s.1 To understand these data, one must take into account the state of slavery, which was considered “full employment” for women, and the predominance of agricultural work for the majority of the workforce until abolition in 1888. The massive industrial development at the turn of the twentieth century employed an almost exclusively male workforce for some fifty years. In the 1970s the unskilled female workforce began to fill the service sector, doing domestic chores outside of their own homes, thus giving women few opportunities to complete their studies and succeed in their own careers. Especially for those with low incomes, partially or completely illiterate, extra work undertaken in the public sector ensures the minimum conditions for family survival. Gender discrimination can be traced through the changing laws of Brazil. The Civil Code of 1916 considered women “relatively incapable” and therefore, when married, legally subject to conjugal guardianship. Unmarried or widowed women were effectively obliged to be dependent on their families, rather than to find independent employment for self-sustenance. Any nondomestic employment was barely tolerated, unless it was for activities considered “feminine” inasmuch as they were compatible with daytime domestic, maternal, and filial chores. Gender discrimination has been prohibited by law in Brazil since the 1930s, but the same law restricts nighttime female employment as a form of social “protection,” a noose that the feminist movement only loosened in 1969. The rhetoric of “family values” continued to be applied during the military dictatorship, from 1964–1985, as a strategy of restraint that made any employment of women at night—as is the case with the dramatic arts—seem incompatible with good morals. These working practices in theatre—unlike in the fine arts, whose practice has always been allowed in the upper classes—tend to be associated with the introduction of foreign customs or with foreign artists and sometimes with prostitution. With regard to women’s education, illiteracy prevailed among all classes in the midnineteenth century. A woman was considered “educated enough when she could properly read her prayers and knew how to follow the recipe for marmalade” (Expilly 269). Books were not recommended for women because it was believed that excessive intellectual activity for an “undeveloped brain” could cause respiratory difficulties and “congestion of the optic nerve.”2 With the exception of foreigners, the social life of wealthy women was limited to morning Mass and to appearances at the opera, seated in private boxes reserved for them and their “mulatto” women servants. Brazilian women who wished to engage in artistic activities endured the obligatory accompaniment of their husbands. Biographical dictionaries reveal many women artists who for one reason or another had to set aside their professional dreams by interrupting their careers, remaining unpublished, or continuing as amateurs. Things did not go any better during the regime of Getulio Vargas, from...