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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Staging Lusophony: politics of production and representation in theater festivals in Portuguese-speaking countries Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/70h801wr Author Martins Rufino Valente, Rita Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Staging Lusophony: politics of production and representation in theater festivals in Portuguese-speaking countries A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance by Rita Martins Rufino Valente 2017 © Copyright by Rita Martins Rufino Valente 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Staging Lusophony: politics of production and representation in theater festivals in Portuguese-speaking countries by Rita Martins Rufino Valente Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Janet M. O’Shea, Chair My dissertation investigates the politics of festival curation and production in artist-led theater festivals across the Portuguese-speaking (or Lusophone) world, which includes Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. I focus on uses of Lusophony as a tactics to generate alternatives to globalization, and as a response to experiences of racialization and marginalization stemming from a colonial past. I also expose the contradictory relation between Lusophony, colonialism, and globalization, which constitute obstacles for transnational tactics. I select three festivals where, I propose, the legacies of the colonial past, which include the contradictions of Lusophony, become apparent throughout the curatorial and production processes: Estação da Cena Lusófona (Portugal), Mindelact – Festival Internacional de Teatro do Mindelo (Cabo Verde), and Circuito de Teatro em Português (Brazil). Located in Portuguese- speaking countries with different experiences of a shared colonial history, these festivals engage ii with the notion of a transnational community based on shared Portuguese language and cultural history. Nevertheless, the organizers and artists of all three festivals struggle with the limitations of nationhood, arts policy, globalization, and the fraternal relation among countries that share Portuguese language and historic heritage. My research approach includes participative, ethnographic methods, which have led to close collaboration with festival organizers and artists as they navigate unequal power dynamics in relationships with other artists and with institutions. Using frameworks from theater, performance, dance, and curatorial studies, I examine how the organizers of these festivals use the notion of Lusophony to mediate between the local context of the festival and its transnational scope. My work contributes to theater and performance studies scholarship that exposes inequitable access to resources and mobility as experienced by artists from a wide range of cultural and social backgrounds. iii The dissertation of Rita Martins Rufino Valente is approved. Susan Leigh Foster Mary Nooter Roberts Andrew Apter Janet M. O’Shea, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv To my Família for their love and support in all things. Para Creusa Borges pela sua amizade, perseverança e coragem criativa. v Table of Contents Abstract..........................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................vii Vita..................................................................................................................................................x Introduction....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One Performances of forgetting and remembering: Framing Lusophony through theater festivals in Portuguese-speaking countries.......................................................................................................35 Chapter Two Governmentality, cultural citizenship, and circulation: The impact of national and supranational cultural policy in theater festivals................................................................................................100 Chapter Three Haunted stages: Collaborative theater productions in Estação, Mindelact, and Circuito de Teatro em Português................................................................................................................................172 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................255 Bibliography...............................................................................................................................263 vi Acknowledgements This dissertation is the product of the commitment, thoughtful insights, time, support, and resources of many individuals, organizations, and institutions across three continents: Africa, the Americas, and Europe. This dissertation would not have been possible without the financial support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Foundation for Development, the Moss fellowship, the UCLA Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance, the UCLA Graduate Division, the UCLA International Institute, the UCLA Latin American Institute, and the Fowler Museum at UCLA. These organizations provided me with the resources necessary to complete my coursework, conduct fieldwork in Portugal, Brazil, and Cabo Verde, and to successfully complete the writing of this dissertation. A minha gratidão to festival organizers Creusa Borges from Circuito de Teatro em Português (Brazil), António Augusto Barros from Estação da Cena Lusófona (Portugal), and João Branco and Daniel Monteiro from Mindelact – Festival Internacional de Teatro do Mindelo (Cabo Verde) for the long hours of interviews they committed to this project, and for letting me spend time in the archives of their organizations. A special thank you to Borges, Branco, and Monteiro, and to their teams, for letting me observe, participate in, and document the activities of their festivals. And um obrigada muito especial to Creusa Borges for her hospitality, friendship, and collaboration – this dissertation would not have happened without your support. Muito obrigada also to the many artists whom I met at Circuito de Teatro em Português and Mindelact, or whom I contacted through my archival research at Cena Lusófona. Along with Borges, Barros, Branco, and Monteiro’s contributions, the artists’ insights were critical in shaping my theorization of the politics of production and representation in theater festivals in the vii Portuguese-speaking world. Special thanks to Diaz Santana, Sílvia Mendes, and Elliot Alex; to Meirinho Mendes, Mel Gamboa, Flávio Ferrão, Ayres Major and the Parodiantes da Ilha, José Carlos Lopes and the Grupo do Teatro do Oprimido de Bissau, Herlandson Duarte, Trupe Para Moss, Fernando Mora Ramos, João de Mello Alvim, Cândido Ferreira, Leticia and Marli Bortoletto, Daniel Dhemes, Marcos Barros, Edvaldo Simão, and Beth Rizzo. A very special thank you to my dissertation committee members for their insightful suggestions and provocative questions, which pushed me to further interrogate my research sources and to always be attentive to and critical about my writing. Thank you also to their scholarship in the fields of dance studies, museum and curatorial studies, and anthropology, which anchored my theorization, methodology, and writing. A special thanks to my dissertation committee chair and graduate advisor, Janet O’Shea, for her guidance as I developed my arguments and structured my chapters. Thank you for sharing with me your talent for synthesizing and paraphrasing long sentences and convoluted thoughts into elegantly written, articulate, and rigorous scholarship. Thank you, Susan Foster, for your straightforward feedback and advice about scholarship and professional development, and for sharing with me your passion for the craft of writing. Thank you, Polly Roberts, for your continuous interest in my research, and for your thoughtful feedback. Thank you also for your support beyond the walls of academia. Thank you, Andrew Apter, for the exciting discussions about fieldwork and African diaspora. A tremendous shout-out to my colleagues and friends at the Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance, with whom I shared many hours of classes, and even more hours of conversation about our projects, the state of our fields and disciplines, and about our dreams and hopes for the future. Sharna Fabiano (whose painstaking efforts proofreading the final version of viii this dissertation were invaluable), Pallavi Sriram, Ellen Gerdes, Mana Hayakawa, Sarah Wilbur, Carl Schottmiller, Peter Haffner, and Barry Brannum – thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for sharing the thoughtful discussions, laughs, and tears that carried me through the dissertation journey. I am honored to be your friend and to witness your brilliance. A minha mais profunda gratidão goes to my family – my parents, Adelaide and Joaquim Valente, my siblings, Inês and Miguel Valente, and my husband, Brian Quinn. Mãe e Pai, I’ll be forever indebted to you for your unconditional love and support as I decided to move from Portugal across
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