Revue as an educational instance in the constitution of a narrative culture in São

João del-Rei (1870-1920)

Carolina Mafra Sá (FaE/UFMG)1

In the first semester of 2011, I started the doctorate in the line of research
History of Education, in the Education Post-graduate Program (FaE/UFMG). After that
year, during which I attended courses and rewrote the research project, I have started the
data collection, activity with which I am presently involved. I research the revue theatre
that took place in São Joao del-Rei/MG, between 1870 and 1920, as an educational
instance in which narrative cultures were built through different languages.
In the second half of the 19th century, the literate men of Rio de Janeiro and
Minas Gerais believed in the theatre as a civilizing agent, capable of educating people.
With that intent, laws were created that regulated theatrical presentations, as well as the
Brazilian Conservatory of Dramatic Arts2, responsible for ensuring that only the good
theatre, i.e., civilizing plays would take the stage3. In that time the plays presented in
Brazil were heavily influenced by the European dramatic arts. Plays from French,
Portuguese, and English authors were played, printed, and sold.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, the literates
from Rio de Janeiro believed that there was no national dramaturgy, therefore they
intended to form a national theatre inspired in the dramatic arts that took place in the
countries considered more civilized. This explains the great presence of European
dramaturgy in Brazil. The belief of those literate men in the inexistence of a national
theatre contrasts with an increasing production of popular plays by local authors and
theatre companies4. Operettas, farces, revues, burletas (satirical comedies with musical
1
This research is done in the line of research History of Education, in the Education Post-graduate
Program: knowledge and social inclusion, from the Education School of the Federal University of Minas
Gerais, with the financial support of CAPES ( Coordination for the improvement of Higher Education
Personnel)
2
The Brazilian Conservatory for the Dramatic Arts was created in 1843 and had kept its activities until
1864. It was reactivated in 1871 and finally dissolved in 1897.
3
For more information on the theatre idealized by the literates in the court and in Ouro Preto, see Sá
(2009)
4
There are many discussions in social sciences over the concept of popular culture that we cannot ignore;
however, initially for this research the term “popular theatre” has its origins in the sources themselves. In
the second half of the 19 th century, some theatrical genres were considered as “popular”. They are: circus
theatre, vaudeville, burletas (satirical comedies with musical numbers), farces, entertainment theatre.
Therefore, our first ambition is to understand what has been defined in that period as “popular theatre”.
As this definition has a central role in the research, I have considered the theoretical term the best one to

1
numbers), magic, and pantomimes filled theatres in the whole country. For the majority
of the literates, these popular plays were of bad taste, that is, not similar to the civilizing
occidental theatre. Thus, according to them, this production was preventing the national
dramaturgy to prosper.
It is interesting to notice that the revue theatrical genre, focus of this research,
produced in opposition to the theatre idealized by the Brazilian intellectual elite was
actually in vogue in Europe. According to Fernando Antonio Mencarelli (1999, p.28)
the “yearly revues and their variations were, in the same period, a much bigger scale
phenomenon present in the main capitals of Europe and America”. Antônio Guerra
(member of an amateur theatre group in São João del-Rei who has left the main
collection- kept by the federal university of the city UFSJ- that has made this research
possible) in his book Pequena história do teatro, circo, música e variedades em São
João del-Rei 1717 a 1967 ( Short story of the theatre, circus, music and variety shows in
São João del-Rei 1717 to 1967) affirms that the first revue play written and played in
the city – A mudança da capital ( The change of the capital) – was inspired by the
Spanish play La Gran via.
Cláudia Braga (2003) analysed the Brazilian theatre that has taken place in the
First Republic and the demands that the national elite made to this production,
neglected, for a long time, by the history of theatre. The author concludes that such
theatrical production was inspired by the European models, but constituted its own
structures. According to Braga the dramaturgy of that period also progressively acquired
Brazilian features, especially after the beginning of the Great War. This dramaturgy was
the result of a concrete reality and “anthropophagic- in the sense of a cultural ‘digestion
and return’ in other patterns, proposed by the modernists- being, first and foremost,
Brazilian.” (BRAGA, 2003, p.101).
The characteristics of the revue allow us to notice that as new plays of this genre
were produced and played in Brazil, new ways of storytelling were created. At the same
time, these narrative structures were learnt and taught by authors, actors, other members
of the companies, and the audience. According to Cláudio José Guilarduci (2009, p.9)
the revue transposed reality to the stage. People saw their own lives in scene, what
allowed “not only leisure and entertainment, but also a reflexion on the lives of those in

explain the data, trying to critically indicate possibilities to build new models, if necessary, as proposed
by Certeau (1982).

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the audience”. In this light, we can affirm that the revue in a certain way, against the
wishes of the literate men, also educated its audience. The characteristics of the genre
refer to a learning relation, since senses of reality were built in the interaction between
stage and audience.
Hence, it is interesting not only the senses built, but mainly the means of
storytelling, i.e., the languages used in the shows and how they were used to build these
senses. The revues were plays that through the use in stage of gestures, sounds, music,
images, lines and written texts created meanings and constituted a dramatic art. That is
to say, that the written texts were just a guide that, together with other languages, gave
meaning to the theatrical work in the staging moment. My intention is to understand
how the subjects involved in the theatre, in that time and place, related with the written
word and the various languages, with the objective of telling their stories.
I share the presupposition of authors as Brian Street (1984), Harvey Graff
(1987), and Roger Chartier (2002) that the analysis of oral and written culture as fixed
elements does not explain the complex relations between different types of language,
the characteristics and ways of thinking present in diverse cultures. I believe that in
order to analyse some cultures, as the Brazilian – in which schooling and press diffusion
were late – one needs to remove writing from a central position and understand it as a
technology incorporated and recreated, as it answers to social, cultural, and economic
demands of a group of people. Therefore, with the focus in one of these demands of the
society – the necessity of narrating itself – I intend to understand how the different
languages were used and incorporated, especially oral and written ones.
Although the genre revue was present in many cities of the world, creating a
similar cultural reality, I ask: what ways of narration were conceived, in São João del-
Rei, to stage plays through different languages in a society in which the relation
between written and oral languages was singular? What is the position of the written
and the oral in the construction of meaning in these plays? What is the importance of the
body, the gestures, and the sounds? For that, I use the concept of narrative culture
which refers to the actions and meanings produced by a determined group of individuals
in relation to its ways of storytelling.
I use the definition of Clifford Geertz (1989), based on Max Weber, that man is
an animal tied to nets of signification that he weaved himself, and defines “ culture as

3
these webs and their analysis” (1989,p.15). My ambition, and what the author considers
the role of science, is to interpret this entanglement of meanings through a dense
description of the actions of the subjects investigated.
Besides that, I consider the notion of Roland Barthes (1966, p.1) that the
narrative is something carried by articulated language of images, gestures and/or by a
mixture of those elements. Thus, there are numerous narratives in the world, present in
all times and societies.
The main collection used in this research, kept by UFSJ, is composed by printed,
manuscript, and typed theatrical texts, with traces of the staging production, also
theatrical reviews and advertisements cut from the newspapers of the time. I will
analyse the newspapers published in the city, as well as some publication on theatre. I
will also use some official documents from the Municipal Archive of São João del-Rei
and Minas Gerais Public Archive in order to cross data with the main collection chosen
for this research.
Up to now I have found 34 autobiographies, memoirs, and literary texts in the
library of Academia de Letras de São João del-Rei. In this material my goal is to find
accounts on theatre and/or a specific play. I initially looked for authors from São João
del-Rei but I have not found them. I have found authors from cities in the region of
Campo das Vertentes and the Zona da Mata that have spent some time in São João del-
Rei during their lifetime. In the documents from Antonio Guerra’s collection it is
possible to notice that theatrical texts, as well as amateur and professional companies
circulated among the cities of those regions, such as Barbacena, Juiz de Fora, and
Cataguases. I believe that it is necessary to extend the geographic limit so as to include
those regions of Minas Gerais state.
I have also found books with significant data for the research from authors of
different regions of Brazil and Europe. These can be used as a way to compare these
realities with the one investigated, so as to find similarities and differences in
storytelling. I finish this brief presentation highlighting that this is a work in progress,
whose investigative directions can be transformed throughout the next two years and
half that are left.
Bibliographic references

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