THE THEATER OF OSWALD BARROSO: THE POPULAR AND THE EXPERIENCE TRAGIC
Oswald Barroso. Dramaturgy. Modern tragedy experience. Popular theatre.
Cerá-born playwrigth Oswald Barroso’s theatrical Works were deigned and developed from amateur theater performances, real-life experiences, and Brazilian northeastern culture study and reserach. By relating theater, poetry, northeastern culture, politics, social causes, people, and even events cut off from official history, Barroso Starts a dialogue between modern/contemporany theater and tradition to expose social issues, inserting his work into engaged drama literature and art. The present research analyzes how Barrosos’s work, set off in the 1970s amid Brazil’s dictatorship regimen, testifies to a “structure of feeling” of social and political reports, unveiling power disputes between social subjects and autocratic power. In a bundle of tewnty-one plays that span from 1975 to 2015, three are studied here: Auto do Caldeirão (1986), Vaqueiros (1999), and Dormir, talvez sonhar (2003). In his theatrical compositions, Oswald Barroso disposes of northeastern cultural elements, historical facts, and derivations to expose intolerance and opression by those in power toward weaker ones. The works of Raymond Williams, sociologist and art critic, support the ideas described in this research to whom tragedy is culturally and historically conditioned, as well as popular culture studies and theatre theories.