After the Long Silence offers a ground-breaking, meticulously researched criticism of Brazilian contemporary performance created by its post-dictatorship generation, whose work expresses the consequences of decades of state-imposed censorship.
Of the Brazilian theater scholars now active in the US, Tatinge Nascimento comes closest to the teacher-critic-director ideal. Her After the Long Silence: The Theater of Brazil’s Post-Dictatorship Generation has the merit of avoiding the trap of the traditional categories into which this type of study is usually divided. While not underestimating the challenges involved, new directions are proposed for the writing of a genuine criticism of the Brazilian performance vanguards. Drawing from an original research that looked at diverse modes of expression, including manifestoes, playbills, group archives, experimental texts, and public performances, enables the book to provide ample evidence of Tatinge Nascimento’s grasp of the importance of understanding historicity in relative terms, never allowing the weight of historical events to offset the key aesthetic trends in Brazilian contemporary performance.
- Severino Albuquerque, Professor Emeritus, Spanish and Portuguese Department at UW-Madison
"Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals."- CHOICE
Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento is an artist-scholar with an interest in experimental and Brazilian performance. She is a professor and chair of the Theater and Dance Department at Macalester College.