Boy in a state of siege: dodges and confrontations

• Grant number: 23/14500-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: April 01, 2024
• End date: September 19, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Theatre
• Principal Investigator: Elizabete Sanches Rocha
• Grantee: Gabriella Pereira Rodrigues
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/15874-0 - The aesthetic-political vision in Liberdade Liberdade (1965 - Brazil) and Liberdade Liberdade (1974 - Portugal): aspects of the work of Vianinha and the Grupo Opinião., BE.EP.MS

Abstract

BOY IN A STATE OF SIEGE: DODGES AND CONFRONTATIONS aims, through a critical and specialized analysis of Oduvaldo Vianna Filho's play Boy in a state of siege (1965), to demonstrate the author's experimentalism in dealing with critical reflections on the impasses in working with theater at the beginning of the Brazilian business-military dictatorship, thus inaugurating a new type of epicization of Vianna's dramaturgy.The dramaturgical arrangements of Boy in a state of siege unveil the organization of the dramatic action, highlighting the theatricality of the text through the use of temporal fragmentations, ellipses, cut-outs and collages, operating through jumps between situations and constructing images that synthesize various private and social conflicts. If in drama, as a theatrical genre, the ideological tendency is the positivization of individualization, in the play in question the attempt to fulfill the wishes of the protagonist, Lúcio, causes damage to the character, who does not become politically and individually aware throughout the play. On the contrary, the pressures he suffers and those he exerts accentuate contradictions and leave him more confused and erratic, in the public and private spheres. Lúcio learns little about these contradictions, but the reader can learn about them.In order to analyze the dramaturgy in its production context, we will consult all the academic articles on the play and Vianna's other literary works, including those made for the cinema between 1964 and 1966, in order to demonstrate the hypothesis about the play's experimentalism and the historicity of the material and, through this, ascertain the anti-democratic effects of the business-military dictatorship and, finally, what this work reveals about the history of Brazilian theater in the period before 1968 and Institutional Act 5.