Yan Michalski's O Teatro sob Pressão: uma Frente de Resistência characterizes Brazilian theater during the late seventies and eighties as an institution in the process of disintegration. Audiences prefer television, productions of foreign plays or national works which are less experimental in structure or theme than those that earlier protested political repression. This pessimistic view is tempered by his concluding remarks that interest in theater is growing and his acknowledgment that playwrights still experiment with dramatic structure (95). Indeed, Michalski's study, like many of the experimental works he mentions, proposes to refresh a collective memory which is in danger of weakening and dying. It is an attempt to remind audiences and artists that the theater must continue to have a social and political voice by recalling a recent past in which that voice was of great importance.

While Michalski's intention is to keep Brazilian theatrical history alive, playwrights working in the same environment of public amnesia he mentions seem determined that the injustice and repression of a very recent past will not be forgotten. For these writers, the advent of democracy transformed what had once been the «teatro de luta» into a «teatro de memória».⁸¹ César Vieira's Morte aos Brancos reminds audiences that torture and oppression of those who only desire freedom have a long historical tradition. Viera frames his dramatization of an unsuccessful Indian rebellion during the colonial period with scenes of the kind of torture suffered by victims of military dictatorships. Jorge Rein's Roteiro para Turistas also takes the spectator on a journey back in time to reinforce images of the injustices suffered by those who struggled against oppression. However, Rein's play relies on recent memory to remind the audience of its responsibility to ensure that the words «nunca mais» do not constitute an empty phrase. I propose to examine both playwrights' use of environmental theater and history to underscore the idea that the audience must remember and reflect on a very violent and not too distant episode from its own national experience: the disappearance, torture and even murder of Brazilian citizens.

In 1968, Richard Schechner defined environmental theater as a form which is, first, located «somewhere between traditional theater and happenings». Second, in environmental theater, «all the space is used for performance, all the space is used for the audience». Spectators are both «scene makers» and «scene watchers», for, as in a street scene from daily life, those who watch are part of the total picture, even when they consider themselves to be mere spectators. Third, «the event can take place either in a totally transformed space or in a 'found' space». Fourth, the «focus is flexible and variable». Fifth, «all production elements speak their own language» rather than being mere supports for words. Sixth, «a text need be neither the starting point nor the goal of a production» (625-26). Environmental theater creates an atmosphere in which actors and audience interact forming one entity. Neither Rein's nor Vieira's play conforms in all aspects to each category of Schechner's definition, yet, the objective of both, particularly Roteiro para Turistas, is to produce such an effect.

Stage directions for Roteiro para Turistas indicate that the audience should be immersed immediately into the «space» the play will occupy. As the spectators enter and become part of a very familiar example of daily life re-created for them, they have already begun the journey which will transform them into participants in the action. Music and announcements like those one hears in an airport accompany slides showing tourist attractions: hotels, museums, parks,   —565→   beaches, etc. Flash bulbs and clicks made by cameras follow the public to their seats, now located inside a luxury tour bus. A guide steps to the front of the bus, greets everyone and begins the trip. Translations into English and French are provided. Attendants assure the group that every comfort is available. The audience can still see itself in the role of theatrical spectator. It is, after all, distanced (not in the Brechtian sense) from the action by the fact that it remains an observer of place and event. The audience has only become a tourist.

Throughout the first scenes of the play, spectators are lulled into believing that they will not need to participate in events portrayed all around them even though it might seem that participation cannot be avoided. The first indication that the «tour» is not going to be an ordinary sight-seeing trip around the area surfaces in the guide's description of the monuments the bus is passing:

The guide goes on to describe other sites with histories that reveal pain and suffering. One is a cathedral whose steps sinners cannot climb without falling to their deaths; another a mountain in the shape of an Indian woman which signifies both the determination and persistence of the area's conquerors and their oppressive practices.

As the guide speaks, slides representing the areas the bus must travel through flash by, much like scenes one observes while looking out the window. At first, they show wealthy neighborhoods, national monuments, apartment buildings. These comforting images are replaced by pictures of hospitals, blue collar workers on their way to work and, finally, a previously rapid projection lingers over shots of an underclass that can barely survive. However, the guide's cheerful tone does not change while refreshments are served. He treats the passengers to a soothing description of the lives of these most «adaptable» citizens. He says that they have overcome hunger and crowding with advanced sociological practices:

Here, the slides come alive as their subjects present a «show» for the passengers: songs that describe suffering and death. The bus speeds up but does not leave the terrible images behind until the tourists reach the museum which is to be the highlight of the trip. One of the guides cannot control her irritation at the number of news stories and films concerning a group of young women who tried to change things in the favelas. The filmmaker, she says, actually won prizes in Hollywood even though the government itself has published more objective and well-researched studies of these areas.

At this point, the spectators enter another phase of their transformation into participants. The configuration of the theatrical space they now inhabit pulls them into the action gradually. At first, they are spectators; then, maintaining this function becomes more difficult as their theater seats become another familiar space, seats on a tour bus. Now, as the first scene ends, they are allowed to recover a little of the distance between spectator and action due to the nature of their «visit» to the museum, Mansão de Liberdade. The guide and receptionists do come down into the audience as if assisting their charges, but announce a walking tour of the mansion will soon begin. Everyone will be shown how the place functioned during «... uma etapa já superada da nossa história política» (18-19). Of course, those who might have objections or weak stomachs can remain in the bar. The building, once a cultural center, had, for a while, been an interrogation center for the political police, now long disbanded.

Although the audience might not leave its seats, depending on the production, the guides begin the «tour» through the use of sound, film and dramatizations of the activities which once were a normal part of the institution's daily routine. Prisoners arrive and are brutally examined, pushed and stripped by the guards. Even as scenes fade from view, their sounds do not. A guide moves on to show the tourists/spectators other sections of the building: cells, medical facilities and the rooms where torture took place. While the audience listens to the guide's orientation lecture, it finds itself individually illuminated by flashlights. Spectators cannot but feel, even if in passing, a certain empathy with those who, unlike themselves, did not choose to visit this place.

Now, the scenes of torture begin. The guide maintains his role, but others in the cast play both torturers and victims. Instruments are demonstrated and types of torture are illustrated while scenes of political unrest flash on the screen. Each element present on stage communicates terror and horror. The spectator is surrounded by event, fear, pain and a sense of being trapped in a space from which there is no escape. Yet, if as observer a spectator is already a participant in the action, full realization that this is the case here does not occur until the fourth scene.

Robert Skloot, in his introduction to The Theatre of the Holocaust affirms that literature on the Holocaust is so abundant because artists perceive that they have a moral obligation to tell the story, «... they believe that standing aside from the Holocaust or keeping silent about it is simply not a permissible choice» (11). All future generations must be made aware of the truth. For example, Elie Wiesel, an artist who survived Auschwitz, has stated, «Anyone who does not actively, constantly engage in remembering and in making others remember is an accomplice of the enemy. Conversely, whoever opposes the enemy must take the side of his victims and communicate their tales, tales of solitude and despair, tales of silence and defiance» (11). These stories are told in many forms: poetry, short story, novel, film and video testimony. The latter form provides, in James E. Young's opinion, a very effective structure for remembering event. «Like literary narrative, whether it is elicited by sympathetic listeners or commanded by the tradition, video testimony sutures time and space, yoking events together to create continuities and new insights, cause-and-effect relationships, and historical meanings» (158).

In Roteiro para Turistas, the testimonies offered to the spectators are not filmed, but function in the same way. They link events presented in the torture scenes to historical events and personal experiences that caused those in authority to believe that this kind of action was necessary. The testimony presented also relates past and present to the future of not only those telling their stories but to that of the spectators as witnesses.

At the moment when the theatrical presentation seems to be over, the actors shed their roles as guides, receptionists, torturers and victims in a play. Instead, they confront the audience as individual actors or even ordinary citizens; just like the spectators, but as citizens, they take everyone hostage. They then reveal that they are the survivors of the terrible scenes just seen by the audience and will now exact revenge from those who tortured them and/or murdered their friends and families. Each one tells in detail how he or she came to be a victim. Some had a political or social conviction, others were arrested or suffered because of mistaken identity or because of a desire to avenge the death of a relative. One young woman was born in the mansion itself. Her mother had been a prisoner and her father a guard. When the girl reached a certain age, she was raped in front of her mother in a twisted test of their loyalty.

They are, one of the characters states after all the testimonies have been heard, not different from anyone else who suffered, «Cada um contou a história do seu jeito, mas é a mesma história. Cada um proclamou suas motivações próprias, as suas causas próprias, mas a luta geral cresce e se fortalece na integração das lutas individuais» (96). Collaborating together on the project of the play, they collected and revealed for their audience «as peças extraviadas de um jogo que morava na memória dos tempos...» They, not unlike the survivors of the Holocaust, both «make witness» and «make others into witnesses» (171). They attempt to ensure that the observers will remember their remembrances of these events.

In the final moments of the play, the characters announce that their torturers or those who made them victims are being exchanged for the spectators. Their act, according to radio broadcasts which accompany the action, has caused the authorities to begin a new cycle of repression. Their call for justice has not been heard. Rather, it has been misinterpreted, not understood. As the president addresses the nation, calling for cooperation in the fight against these new subversive elements, the word «fim» is projected on the screen. It quickly changes into the question «fim?» (109). The question underscores what the characters hope will be the effect of their effort: to provide us, the spectators (and always, as the play suggests, participants in the making of our own history) with an understanding of what has happened both in the dramatic and the real world. The characters' testimonies mirror those given by Holocaust survivors. They call for us, as Young says, «to become witnesses not to the survivors' experiences but to the making of testimony and its unique understanding of events» (171). This process is «valuable for our current understanding of events in their context, how one led to another, given the particular interpretations of events at the time» (171). The survivors   —567→   of both the Holocaust and the repression will all someday be gone, but their testimonies must continue to be a part of our collective memory. Rein's play represents an attempt to record that memory.

The obvious reason for using history or historical event as a dramatic frame for a protest of injustice in the present is the belief that history can teach us a lesson about our behavior throughout time. Indeed, through history, when it is understood analytically as Dale Porter suggests, «one can show that there is a logic to the sequence of development, a logic that applies to other sequences as well. One can understand a particular event as an illustration of a general law-like hypothesis, which will then lead to a better understanding of past events and, we like to believe, their seemingly mirror images in the present».⁸²

Playwrights, like all artists, politicians, religious leaders and others who wish to teach or manipulate society, use history. At times, they present, re-create or analyze history in order to come to an understanding about an event in the past. Yet, often, they, much like those who wish to preserve history, alter it to achieve a particular objective. According to David Lowenthal,

César Vieira transforms history and historical figures in the possible world of a play to demonstrate the necessity for positive change in the real world. The historical perspectives offered on stage invite each spectator to reject tyranny and social or political patterns that repress free will.

Morte aos Brancos was presented after the abertura, yet it remains an illustration of the difficulties facing any artist during a period of censorship and suppression of works critical of the government in power. In 1973, while Vieira, whose real name is Idibal Almeida Piveta, was doing research for a play on the Guarani Indians in the mission area of Rio Grande do Sul, he was arrested. Among the items the police took from his home were maps of the area and information on the uprising which took place in the eighteenth century. His interrogators refused to believe that all of this incriminating evidence related to their past and not their present. In his introduction to the version of Morte aos Brancos examined here, Vieira describes a recurring scene:

The police in this instance looked at a relic from the past and altered it into an object relevant to their own time and place. The maps and other information were not a lesson for the present, from their point of view. They became the present.

The play, although not for the same reason, also fuses past and present both internally and externally, that is, within the possible world of the play and the real world of the audience. If stage directions are followed, the audience, like that of Roteiro para Turistas, is part of the dramatic action from the moment it enters the theater. Spectators are seated close around the stage set and must write their names and addresses on cards upon entering. As each theatergoer comes through the door, his or her thumb is marked with red ink. During the scene in which Sepé, the Indian leader, is tortured, the audience's hands are examined to see whether they are tainted with red. Those who still have the mark are verbally abused and labeled «subversive». Actors also place black hoods on the heads of a few spectators and, again, according to stage directions, beat them with sticks. Contact between spectators and actors is maintained throughout the play -the past invading the public's space in the present.

Morte aos Brancos dramatizes events which led up to and followed an Indian rebellion against the destruction of Rio Grande do Sul's missions after the Treaty of Madrid. Vieira takes the central, historical incident and frames it with a series of scenes depicting the violent cultural and political clash that occurred when the Spanish and Portuguese laid waste to the communal life the Indians had known for generations. Sepé Tiaraju, the Indian leader of the revolt that took place in São Borja, is the focal point for all of the action. It was he who was killed leading his   —568→   people into battle against their adversaries. Yet, although Sepé is a constant presence, most scenes portray an altered version, that is, fictionalized, of the reasons for Sepé's reaction to the elimination of his way of life and the consequences of his efforts.

He and his wife, although already dead, are put on trial with others the authorities felt had conspired against them. Their life and that of the Indian people is contrasted with European economic and social values and the Indian resistance is portrayed -throughout fifteen scenes beginning and ending with the trial. Each scene has some aspect of the above-mentioned elements, but will concentrate on, for example, Indian communal life just as it is invaded by European merchants, or the relationship between Sepé and his wife Jussara.

The historical «truth» concerning Sepé's struggle functions in the play as a point of departure for a dramatic confrontation with the recent past, and, of course, the present as a possible continuation of that recent past. The trial scenes reveal absurdities that have been a reality in past legal proceedings, and are certainly like those that were a part of many interrogations and trials of so-called subversives during the years of repression. At one point, interpreters for the Indians do not repeat evidence exactly as it is given by the defendants. They say what the officers of the court wish to hear. In the first scene, one of the accused is questioned concerning the whereabouts of Jussara, Sepé's wife:

The most flagrant absurdity which runs throughout the trial sequence is that all participants know the principal defendants are dead, murdered by the authorities who now sit in judgment of their actions.

Other significant fusions of past and present appear in the torture scenes and at the moment when British representative Richard Wall offers to lend a hand to the military and religious leaders. Wall, according to stage directions, is «um agente inglês na América do Sul, com intensa atividade nos mais amplos setores, inclusive na área da informação. No momento funciona como assessor diplomático comercial-militar de Altamirano» (79). In a scene identified as the Spanish and Portuguese army camp on the Chuí river and dated January 11, 1756, Richard Wall tenders financial aid to the military and sets up a small installation marked: International Bank. Actually, Wall has money to loan everyone:

The significance of the torture scenes will be immediately understood by any audience with some experience of this political phenomenon. The horrors suffered by the Indians transcend the barriers of time when, on leaving Earth during an extended dream sequence, they encounter two blacks who have also been tortured and murdered.

The final scene invites the audience to become judge and jury of the historical figures and events it has just witnessed. Actors appear in modern clothing and announce that «acabou o sonho, o pesadelo, que terminou a ficção e que começa a realidade» (142). As the spectators discuss history, they will certainly fall into a debate on matters of present-day concern.

In this play, historical event serves as a background for more recent incidents. Vieira, as the I historian Dale Porter describes, looks back at a series of «antecedent» events from the perspective of the present in order to shape his audience's reaction. The playwright places his characters in, as Porter says of one approach to history, «an emerging story line, the final episode of which guides the arrangement of the whole. The 'final episode' may in fact be and event in the historian's present which is used as a touchstone to draw out the significance of the past for the historian's generation» (100).

Morte aos Brancos and Roteiro para Turistas change history from different time periods so that it has the Brechtian function of presenting a problem or event in an unusual format. Furthermore, the audience is drawn into each production   —569→   by the structure of the play so that the drama becomes part of its own past and present. As participants in the action, spectators cannot escape recognition on some level of their own social and political responsibility. Rein and Vieira surround the public with altered history to remind each member of the audience that certain past events, no matter how recent, must be analyzed, and understood. The result may be that these events will serve as a «touchstone» that not only explains the past from our perspective, but also prevents undesirable changes in the real world of our present and our future.

Albuquerque, Severino João. «From Abertura to Nova República: Politics and the Brazilian Theater of the Late Seventies and Eighties». Hispanófila 95 (1989): 87-95.

Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Theater. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1974.

Lowenthal, David. The Past is a Foreign Country. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Michalski, Yan. O Teatro sob Pressão: uma Frente de Resistência. Rio de Janeiro: J. Zahar Editor, 1985.

Porter, Dale H. The Emergence of the Past: a Theory of Historical Explanation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Rein, Jorge. Roteiro para Turistas. Porto Alegre, Tchê!, 1986.

Skloot, Robert. «Introduction». The Theatre of the Holocaust. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.

Vieira, César. Morte aos Brancos. Porto Alegre, Tchê!, 1987.

Young, James E. Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 74, Number 3, September 1991