Cabaré da Rrrrraça: processo de criação de recursos estéticos na abordagem do racismo/antirracismo

Abstract

The purpose of this study, whose theme is the scenic event Cabaré da Rrrrraça, by Bando de Teatro Olodum, is to explore its creative process, highlighting the aesthetic resource of laughter by highlighting its functionality in the approach to racism/anti-racism. To this end, the reflections triggered had, together, as guiding resources, the following: A. the “traces' ' of the generative process, via immersion in the reports/testimonies (interviews) of its creative subjects. To this end, a variant of narrative interview was developed based on the idea of crossroads – in a space-time relational dimension mediated by the corporeality of the interviewees in a spiral movement echoing Exu's protagonism – as ancestral wisdom (space of action in the present permeated with sense of the past), enabling the presentification/updating of experiences lived during the creative process rehearsals – which was called: creative interview in artistic creation processes. B. a groping of interpretative-critical reading from the angle of crossroads as philosophy and modus operandi in the attempt to traverse the creation networks in search of explanations for the process – this one, centered on improvisation that embraces the marks of spontaneity and rituality. And its catalyst element in interaction with the micro and macro context is the “question/answer” game. Thus, the study adopted a dynamic reasoning structure under which the scenic event was conceived as a Poetics of crossroads that materializes in the body of its actors, in other words, in the space-time-body-laughter-black corporeity. Laughability – laughter, comedy, irony, humor – is an action of this crossroads, which such black bodies incorporate into the scene, in a scenic and ritualistic performance. Therefore, we have a face to face between colonial laughter (racism) and decolonial laughter (anti-racism), materializing the confrontation with the coloniality of the body, being, knowledge introjected into black corporeality by the colonizing ideological representations in their crossings and layers. Based on the above, the “question” used by the director can be read as a decolonial act – when considering that the question “are you black?”, “what does it mean to be black?” The notion of the tripod is implicit: coloniality/race/racism, being a counterpoint to Eurocentrism. As well as, an Afro-centered practice because the actors speak for themselves, and, thus, the focus is on their subjectivities (corporeality), providing the flow of an Afro-diasporic ancestral memory as well as its updating. So, laughter, humor, here, is understood as “Other”, opposing racist laughter by being linked to it, at the same time configuring the scenic performance with a ritualistic character, opening other paths. Due to its transdisciplinary character, alongside the reports (interviews), the contributions of thinkers from the fields of: Performing Arts (Wole Soyinka, Sandra Chacra, Spolin Viola, Silvia Fernandes); Processes of artistic creation (Cecilia Almeida Salles); Black Theater (Abdias Nascimento, Wole Soyinka, Oyin Ogunba, Bakary Traoré); Sociology (Edgar Morin); Critical social theory of black feminist thought (Patricia Hill Collins); Theory of Afrocentricity (Molefi Kete Asante, Leda Maria Martins, Luiz Rufino); Afro-descendant philosophy (Eduardo Oliveira); Decoloniality (Aníbal Quijano, bell hooks, Frantz Fanon, Grada Kilomba, Lélia Gonzalez, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Walter Mignolo); creativity (Steven Johnson); Phenomenology (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alfred Schütze).