Theater and the performing arts has a strong presence in São Paulo's periphery communities due to many groups' use of performance as a form of political engagement. Many of the these theater groups and companies have formed through mutual interest in their community's cultural traditions and social change. Most members of these theater groups have acquired their training through local workshops and served in a kind of apprentice role within these local groups to acquire the skills to eventually become a professional level actor or dramaturg. In more recent years, some of the artists from these groups have pursued training at the university, achieving undergraduate and graduate degrees related to the performing arts, community engagement, and arts education.


The unifying mission among the different theater groups in the periphery has been a performing arts tradition rooted in cultural activism to educate and empower their communities. They incorporate cultural traditions that preserve and celebrate their communities' Afro-Brazilian roots (Teatro Terreiro Encantado), stage adaptations of important theatrical works like Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards to make them more relatable to the lived experiences of periphery residents (Brava Companhia), and call upon their communities' migration histories from Brazil's northeastern region to address the social inequality and state violence that impacts them (Grupo Clariô).  Theater becomes a medium not only for entertainment in the periphery, but a means for exploring and sharing histories rooted in the lived experiences of their audience members -- residents from the periphery of São Paulo. By centering histories from these marginalized communities, theater becomes a vehicle for denúncia, or social denouncement, which is a tradition in Latin America of using art, and in this case the performing arts, for critiquing social inequality and system oppression related to social class, race, and gender. 


While there are many performing arts groups with rich and interesting histories in the periphery, the focus will be to document Teatro Terreiro Encantado's history of social engagement through the arts. They emerged from this larger tradition of theater that has developed in São Paulo's periphery communities during the last few decades. Their focus on using theater as a means to address state violence against Black male youth follows in the tradition of the performing arts as social practice in the marginalized neighborhoods on the city's outskirts. Their play Auto do Negrinho, has been the way in which they have engaged with audiences in the periphery and throughout São Paulo to address the epidemic of violence through a story rooted in slavery and the traditions of the congada. This section will provide a foundation for understanding  the central role of theater as a political act for this Black theater group in São Paulo's zona sul (south side) by exploring the relationship between performance, politics, and popular traditions from Afro-Brazilian communities.

Explore the section links below to learn more about the group's history and its use of the performing arts as a political act.