PRESENCES OF CHILDHOOD IN CONTEMPORARY THEATRE

Abstract

This postdoctoral research project seeks in the academic exchange with the Institute of Arts of the State University of Campinas the deepening of studies carried out previously, and published by Editora Perspectiva in the book This is not an actor: The theater of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, about the relations between art and childhood. The central proposal of the project is to identify the specificities of artistic phenomena that involve the presence of childhood in creative processes, spectacles and formative practices of artists and theater and performance groups. The intention is to investigate creative partnerships between adults and children in order to understand how the child's ways of being and acting and their specific qualities of scenic presence provoke reformulations of the "classic" conceptions of actor and theater in contemporary times. For this, field research will be conducted with participant observation in artistic processes and shows and interviews with artists and children in Brazil and abroad. The observations will be recorded in field diary, and in photography and video, and analyzed in relation to recent research in the field of scenic arts, the sociology of childhood and phenomenology. The project provides for the proposal of creative laboratories that stimulate artistic partnerships between adult artists and children and the holding of a local meetings and an international conference at UNICAMP to discuss the relationships between art and childhood.