The reflective dramaturgy of Maria Angélica Ribeiro, who is considered the first Brazilian playwright

• Grant number: 19/16461-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2019
• End date: November 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Theatre
• Principal Investigator: Larissa de Oliveira Neves Catalão
• Grantee: Jean Bruno Carvalho
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project aims to investigate the life and work of Maria Angélica Ribeiro (1819 - 1880), a personality who pioneered Brazilian feminine dramaturgy. It's assigned to her, according to Valéria Andrade Souto-Maior (2004, p. 308), "the pioneering that initiates the formation process of Brazilian national dramaturgy written by women", writing more than 20 plays during the second half of the 19th century . Due to the epoch in which she lived and to hers peculiar discourse - out rightly abolitionist and with a sensitive look at woman's figure in that society -, Maria is notorious by her vast work that contains incisively libertarian thoughts, accompanied by a feminine discourse, in the very nineteenth slave and patriarchal society. Beginning with a research in books and in diverse collections, analyzing the remaining plays and comparing them to the plays which were used by Maria as inspiration, I aim to collect and spread information’s, works and reflexions about Maria Ribeiro. Maria Angélica Ribeiro actively took part of the theatrical movement of her time and had as basis the French source of realist theater, dialoguing, up from these models, with her national reality. The playwright built, this way, a dramaturgy that reflected her time's canons and, not less impotent or argumentative because of this, her work challenges the limits of women's freedom in the 19th century, apart from attesting a great receiving by the critics, proved by some newspaper reviews and by the praise to the success of audience in the performances of her plays. Neither a revolutionary leader, nor a pro-slavery lady: Maria Ribeiro is between a complex interstice that made her a mirror that emits and reflects, that projects and reproduces.