The Drama in Brazilian Stages: Connections among Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Lisbon

Abstract

This research project is part of the doctor's degree thesis in progress which analyses the presence of French dramas in Brazilian stages between the decades of 1830 and 1860 (FAPESP, 2014/06398-9). Hitherto, I gathered information about the plays with wide repercussion, identified the artists that performed them and concluded that three Brazilian actors - also entrepreneurs of theater troupes - staged a similar repertoire of French dramas. Furthermore, the doctor's degree thesis analyses the French immigrant playwright Luís Antonio Burgain dramas', performed by these three actors and studied as a passeur culturel, in other words, a mediator between the French and Brazilian theatrical culture. Using the transnational history approach, I study the diffusion and the continued permanency of the three actors' similar repertoire in the stages. I already restored their artistic and enterprising trajectories in Brazil and now I intend to map their stay in Europe, since João Caetano and Germano Francisco travelled to Lisbon and visited Paris to experience the theatrical activity of the capital. In this sense, this research internship abroad proposal intend to detail and deepen the information I already have about the repertoire represented by the three artists - plays from Paris theaters - and the presence of two of them in Europe. The research activities will be carry out in libraries and archives in Paris, where I will consult censorship reports, theatrical funds and studies (articles, thesis, reference works) not available in Brazil, in order to gather information about stagings, censorship and critical reception of the French plays most represented by the artists in Rio de Janeiro and Brazilian provinces' theaters.