Fetishism As Structure, Image and Performance in the Theater of Nelson Rodrigues
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FETISHISM AS STRUCTURE, IMAGE AND PERFORMANCE IN THE THEATER OF NELSON RODRIGUES BY ISADORA GREVAN DE CARVALHO B.A., UC BERKELEY, 2001 M.A. SF STATE UNIVERSITY, 2007 M.A. BROWN UNIVERSITY, 2010 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PORTUGUESE AND BRAZILIAN STUDIES AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2013 © Copyright 2013 by Isadora Grevan de Carvalho This dissertation by Isadora Grevan de Carvalho is accepted in its present form by the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date _________________________ ____________________________________ Nelson H. Vieira Recommended to the Graduate Council Date _________________________ ____________________________________ Luiz Fernando Valente Date _________________________ ____________________________________ Patricia Sobral Approved by the Graduate Council Date _________________________ ____________________________________ Peter M. Webber, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA Isadora Grevan de Carvalho was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. As an undergraduate, she first attended the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, majoring in Philosophy for about 2 years. From her teens on, she studied at CAL (Casa de Artes de Laranjeiras) and with various prominent theater companies in the city. She has taken acting classes and performed with Augusto Boal, Moacyr Góes, Leon Góes, Daniel Herz, Suzanna Kruger, Ivan de Albuquerque, Rubens Corrêa, Floriano Peixoto and Antonio Nóbrega, among others. She then moved to San Francisco, graduating Cum Laude from UC Berkeley in 2001 with a major in Comparative Literature in English, French and Portuguese. At the same time, she continued to pursue her interests in both literature and the arts by becoming a member and student of Mary Sano and Her Duncan Dancers in San Francisco, which, over the course of about 10 years, involved performances in the USA, Hungary and Japan. She was subsequently awarded a M.A. from SFSU in Comparative Literature, whose final project consisted of a comprehensive examination on world literature and a final project and presentation on Emerson’s dialectics, American romanticism and Moby Dick. She then continued her graduate education in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University, earning a M.A. in 2011 and a Ph.D. in 2013. She has taught Portuguese language and Brazilian literature and culture at Brown University and received four teaching certificates from the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. At the moment, she has articles pending publication on Germano Almeida, Machado de Assis and Clarice Lispector. Beginning in the Fall of 2013, she will assume the position of Visiting Assistant Professor of Portuguese, Brazilian Culture and Society in the Hispanic Studies Department at Oberlin College. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing this dissertation has been a rewarding process of rediscovery of Nelson Rodrigues’ plays through the intersection of literature, performance studies, and theory. I would first like to acknowledge the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University for being an intellectually stimulating base for me in addition to providing a warm and welcoming environment. I will sincerely miss all the members of the department and have a deep appreciation for all of them for contributing to my growth and self-confidence as a scholar. I would especially like to thank the following people for enriching my dissertation in a variety of ways. My deepest gratitude is to my thesis advisor Nelson H. Vieira who has given me enormous support throughout this process, from the very beginning when my initial ideas started taking shape. He has consistently given me all the encouragement, advice and support I needed to actually start and keep on writing and researching a subject I am truly passionate about. I would like to thank Luiz Fernando Valente for his wisdom, suggestions, and clear guidance whenever I felt stuck, that is, in addition to his amazing classes – open forums for vivid and stimulating discussions. I am also most grateful to Patricia Sobral for teaching me how to become a better teacher. Thank you for stimulating us to be creative in the classroom, to think outside the box and for inspiring me. I thank Anani Dzidzienyo for helping me learn and helping me shift my whole perspective on Brazil, for his classes, conversations, and amazing wisdom. My thanks also go to Leonor Simas-Almeida for her constant inspiration and encouragement inside and outside the classroom; to Armanda Silva for always making me feel calm in the midst of constant pressure and for always welcoming us with a smile; to Laura Hess for guiding me to become a reflexive teacher and always v giving me a boost of self-confidence whenever I most needed it. And, finally, thank you to the whole community of graduate students and professors at the POBS Department for their camaraderie, lively class discussions, and moral support. I also must mention my gratitude to everyone that helped me with my research in Brazil, perhaps most importantly, Antunes Filho and CPT (Centro de Pesquisa Teatral) for providing me with DVDs of the performances of almost all of his productions of Nelson Rodrigues’ plays in addition to being one of my main sources of inspiration. Also encouraging were Luiz Arthur Nunes and Ana Kfouri for their great discussions on Nelson Rodrigues from their perspective as directors of his plays on stage and for providing me with DVDs of their own productions. Thanks are also in order to Angela Leite Lopes, Beatriz Resende and Victor Hugo Adler Pereira for giving me great advice and guidance about specific materials that proved invaluable. To my late grandmother Maria Júlia, who first showed me the magical world of books as well as patience; to my father Renato who has been a constant inspiration, guiding me toward important texts I was unaware of; to his wife Monique Cirilo for always giving me great advice and cheering me on; to my mother Judy for her editing advice and friendship throughout; to my husband Keizer for his love and support and for always believing in me; and, lastly, to Luca and Dylan, for being the apples of my eyes. vi Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 42 OS SETE GATINHOS [THE SEVEN KITTENS] 61 ANJO NEGRO [BLACK ANGEL] 71 CHAPTER 2 101 DOROTÉIA 117 A FALECIDA [THE DECEASED WOMAN] 141 CHAPTER 3 166 BONITINA, MAS ORDINÁRIA [OTTO LARA RESENDE OR CUTE, BUT A TRAMP] 182 TODA NUDEZ SERÁ CASTIGADA [ALL NUDITY SHALL BE PUNISHED] 194 BOCA DE OURO [GOLDEN MOUTH] 203 O BEIJO NO ASFALTO [THE ASPHALT KISS] 209 CONCLUSION 220 BIBLIOGRAPHY 226 vii INTRODUCTION Fetishism as Structure, Image and Performance in the Theatre of Nelson Rodrigues In this dissertation, I examine the plays of the Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues by investigating the structure, image and performance of fetish present in a variety of elements throughout his plays. The structure, image and performance of fetish are to become a locus capable of revealing profound psychological aspects of Rodrigues´ characters and body of work from which his commentary on Brazilian society and beyond are discussed. Almost single-handedly, Nelson Rodrigues was responsible for catapulting Brazilian national theatre into the 20th century. Before him, most of the theatre being performed in the country consisted of boulevard comedies, European plays put on by foreign acting companies, and chanchadas1. So much so that by writing and staging plays for the purpose of more than light-hearted entertainment, he literally reinvented Brazilian dramaturgy. Furthermore, he introduced novelties in stage-set design and the narrative style, in addition to deliberately incorporating colloquial language and characters representative of the different social classes, belonging to very specific but heretofore ignored milieus in Brazilian society. The changes he introduced into Brazilian theater can be compared in depth and scope to the modernist movement in literature and in the arts, which had started at least one decade earlier, spearheaded by writers and artists such as Oswald de Andrade, Tarsila do Amaral and Manuel Bandeira2. As a result of the historic performance of O Vestido de Noiva [The Wedding Dress] in 1943 by the amateur acting group Os Comediantes, for example, the emphasis 1 on developing serious, well-trained, professional theatre companies and promoting new Brazilian playwrights who would focus on subjects of national concern, gained significant momentum. The staging of this play by the expressionist Polish-born director Zbigniew Marian Ziembiński significantly influenced the way future Brazilian theater projects were viewed and performed. As opposed to the other art forms flourishing at the time, most plays being written and performed were neither innovative nor socially relevant3. According to David George in The Modern Brazilian Stage, O Comediantes was an important “laboratory, where experiments in stagecraft took place, a school, as it were, of the dramatic arts” (8). The confluence of this group of actors so eager to elevate the art of theatre, together with Ziembiński´s introduction of new ideas then in vogue in Europe, the work of the stage designer Santa Rosa, and the play itself, marked the nearly perfect theatrical combination of artistry and experimentation with a distinctively Brazilian flair. In fact, Décio de Almeida Prado would later write about this performance in Teatro em Progresso that the theatre, as spectacle, became universal in the manner of the other modern arts, and Nelson Rodrigues represented for the stage what Villa- Lobos brought to music, Portinari to painting, Niemeyer to architecture, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade to poetry. What is certain is that the opening of Vestido made Brazilian Theatre lose its inferiority complex. (21) Rodrigues’ writings about himself, his theatre work, and Brazilian society (often found in widely-read newspaper columns) shed light on some of his broader themes as a playwright and subsequently help us understand his ideas more clearly.