Eluding the Censor: From Script to Improvisation in Patética

Eluding the Censor: From Script to Improvisation in Patetica VICKY UNRUH With the 1985 restoration of a civilian government in Brazil, cultural historians and art critics have undertaken an assessment of the consequences for artistic expression of the widespread censorship practices characterizing the country's twenty-one year military rule. Brazilian theatre - which in the 1950S and early 1960s had for the first time achieved a sustained level ofexcellence in the work of accomplished playwrights such as Jorge Andrade, Alfredo Dias Gomes, Ariana Suassuna and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri and in the initial activities ofSao Paulo's experimental Teatro de Arena - was the performative activity most vulnerable to the notorious Institutional Act NO.5, which abolished safeguards on freedom of expression from December 1968 until January 1979. During these years, countless dramatic works submitted for approval to federal censorship authorities were rejected outright, while others were withheld from publication, staging, andlor performance for months on end, outlawed on opening nights after substantial investments of hard work and money, or, in some cases, violently interrupted by authorities in the middle of a performance. This process has been meticulously documented by Yan Michalski, awardwinning drama critic for Rio de Janeiro's Jomal do Brasil from 1963 to 1982, in 0 palco amordat;ado: 15 anas de censura teatral no Brasil (The Muzzled Stage: 15 Years of Theatre Censorship.in Brazil).' Despite highly adverse conditions, however, the story of Brazil's theatre under dictatorship is ODe of extraordinary and resourceful resistance to this silencing process as both playwrights and theatre groups continued to produce works, to submit them to national dramaturgy contests sponsored by the Servi Notwithstanding the circus ambiance, Bolota explains, this is to be a different kind of spectacle in which the main attraction is the actors themselves whom he introduces one by one: Joana da Crimeia, who will play the mother Ana Horowitz, Valter Rosado, representing the father Hans, Pedro Navarro as Glauco's brother-in-law Valdeir, lara Rosa in the role of Glauco's wife Clara, and Bolota himself who will portray the protagonist Glauco and direct the performance. The most familiar passage from Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, the PatMtique, gently rises in the background and culminates explosively as Bolota announces: "Senhoras e Senhores ... A Verdadeira Histaria de Glauco Horowitz, subentitulada ... (Em um berro derradeiro) 'P ATE TIC A'" ("Ladies and Gentlemen ... The True Story of Glauco Horowitz, subtitled ... (In afinal outburst) 'P ATE TIC A' !") (p. 26). In the following eight scenes, the five performers enact Horowitz's story in an interweaving of scenic knots and narrative summaries which juxtapose past and current events: his parents' Holocaust era flight from Yugoslavia to the hope of a better life in the New World, their good fortune as Sao Paulo clothing merchants, Glauco's VICKY UNRUH journalistic success, countered by the rising and familiar sense of menace as fellow journalists are interrogated about activism in their student days. As the family's anxiety mounts in the face of imminent danger to Glauco, his brother-in-law urges them to flee, advice which the journalist summarily rejects. Following a brief scene ofinterrogation and torture and futile protests to authorities by Glauco's wife and mother, the official version of his fate is projected on a screen: (Caida do alto neste instante, urna corda enla~ada na ponta passa a pender, afrente da tela de fundo. Apaga-se a luz sabre a 20 Homem, que se retira. De imediato projeta-se urn spot sabre a corda e a tela. A corda evagarosamente suspensa, erguenda 0 enforcado. Que passa a oscilar no ar. E sobre a tela, exatamente em cima do corpe, projeta-sc em slide uma folha de jornal.) (Falling from above at this moment, a rope looped at the end hangs in front of the background screen. The light goes out over the second man who withdraws. Immediately a spotlight is projected over the rope and the screen. The rope is slowly suspended, lifting a hanged man. Who begins to swing in the air. And against the screen, precisely over the body, the slide of a newspaper page is projected.) (p. 93) As the mother despairs that the New World is repeating...