{"id":564388,"date":"2025-10-22T15:53:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T18:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=564388"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:53:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T18:53:41","slug":"abdias-nascimento-a-supporter-of-the-antiracist-movement-combined-art-and-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/abdias-nascimento-a-supporter-of-the-antiracist-movement-combined-art-and-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Abdias Nascimento, a supporter of the antiracist movement, combined art and politics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jos\u00e9 Medeiros\u2009\/\u2009Abdias Nascimento Collection\u2009\/\u2009Ipeafro<\/span>Nascimento as Othello in the 1940sJos\u00e9 Medeiros\u2009\/\u2009Abdias Nascimento Collection\u2009\/\u2009Ipeafro<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

On May 8, 1945\u2014the same day Nazi Germany surrendered and World War II came to an end\u2014Brazil witnessed a milestone of its own. In Rio de Janeiro, the grand stage of the Municipal Theater welcomed, for the first time, a production featuring a Black lead and a majority Black cast\u2014a radical break from the norms of Brazil\u2019s performing arts scene. The play was The Emperor Jones<\/em>, written by American playwright Eugene O\u2019Neill (1888-1953), with Aguinaldo Camargo (1918-1952) starring in the title role. The drama follows an African American man who, after committing a murder, escapes to a Caribbean island and seizes power as emperor.<\/p>\n

This historic performance marked the debut of the Black Experimental Theater (TEN), founded a year earlier in Rio by playwright, actor, and director Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011). \u201cIt was the end of the era when blackness was synonymous with mockery on the Brazilian stage,\u201d Nascimento would write five decades later, in a 1997 article for Revista do Patrim\u00f4nio Hist\u00f3rico e Art\u00edstico Nacional<\/em>. He was referring to the entrenched practice in Brazilian theater of assigning Black performers only minor or caricatured roles\u2014\u201cridiculous, mischievous, and pejorative,\u201d as he described them. Major parts were typically reserved for White actors performing in blackface.<\/p>\n

From then on, TEN became a key platform for training and launching black actors who would go on to become major names in Brazilian theater, including icons like Ruth de Souza (1921-2019) and L\u00e9a Garcia (1933-2023). One of the company\u2019s most symbolic moments came in 1949 during the Shakespeare Festival at the F\u00eanix Theater in Rio. A scene from William Shakespeare\u2019s Othello (1564-1616) was performed by two Black actors\u2014Souza and Nascimento\u2014as Desdemona and Othello.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe presence of Black artists in Brazilian theater merits more in-depth study,\u201d says Leda Maria Martins, a retired professor of literature at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). \u201cIn the eighteenth century, Black people performed all kinds of roles, as acting was then seen as a low-status occupation. But by the nineteenth century, Black performers were increasingly pushed to the margins, reduced to highly stereotyped, secondary characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Martins, the theater company founded by Abdias Nascimento made important contributions to modernizing Brazilian theater\u2014though its influence has often gone unrecognized. \u201cAbdias was a pioneer, for instance, in bringing performative elements rooted in African traditions into his productions, especially ritual gestures from Candombl\u00e9,\u201d explains Martins, whose doctoral thesis, \u201cA cena em sombras: Express\u00f5es do teatro negro no Brasil e nos EUA\u201d (A scene in shadows: Expressions of Black theater in Brazil and the US), defended at UFMG in 1991, was one of the earliest academic studies on TEN.<\/p>\n

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Jos\u00e9 Medeiros\u2009\/\u2009Instituto Moreira Salles<\/span>A rehearsal of the Black Experimental Theater in 1944, with actor Grande Otelo<\/em> in the center, wearing a tieJos\u00e9 Medeiros\u2009\/\u2009Instituto Moreira Salles<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

With few existing plays depicting the Black experience in Brazil, TEN began to commission and stage Brazilian works such as O filho pr\u00f3digo<\/em> (The prodigal son; 1947) by L\u00facio Cardoso (1912-1968), O anjo negro<\/em> (Black angel; 1946) by Nelson Rodrigues (1912-1980), and Sortil\u00e9gio, mist\u00e9rio negro<\/em> (Sortilege, Black mystery; 1951), written by Nascimento himself. The nine original plays created for TEN were eventually compiled into the anthology Dramas para negros e pr\u00f3logo para brancos<\/em> (Dramas for Blacks and a prologue for Whites), first published in 1961 and recently reissued by publishing house Temporal.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the plays written for TEN reveal Black protagonists\u2019 desire to \u2018whiten\u2019 themselves,\u201d observes Martins, who also wrote the anthology\u2019s preface. \u201cIn those narratives, the whiter one\u2019s skin, the greater the chance of moving up the social hierarchy. Interracial relationships also feature prominently,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt may sound contradictory, but this was a reality of the time\u2014a period when eugenic ideas were still circulating widely across Brazil. In the early twentieth century, the national ideal was to become White, a belief voiced even by celebrated, highly influential intellectuals like Monteiro Lobato [1882-1948].\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of staging a predominantly Black cast in Brazilian theater wasn\u2019t an entirely new one. Some two decades earlier, actor, director, and playwright De Chocolat (1887-1956) had established Companhia Negra de Revistas in Rio de Janeiro, active from 1926 to 1927. Yet no initiative came close to matching the influence of TEN. Even with limited resources, TEN extended its mission to include literacy and cultural programs for the Black community, attracting factory and domestic workers.<\/p>\n

TEN\u2019s success also inspired other initiatives, like the Black theater company Teatro Experimental do Negro de S\u00e3o Paulo (TENSP), founded in 1945 by professor and journalist Geraldo Campos de Oliveira. \u201cBoth TEN and TENSP were made possible by the democratic opening that followed the end of the Estado Novo<\/em> dictatorship [1937-1945] and lasted until the military coup of 1964,\u201d says M\u00e1rio Augusto Medeiros da Silva, a sociologist at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and an expert on Brazil\u2019s Black movement. \u201cIt\u2019s no coincidence that after 1964, both companies collapsed. The military regime [1964-1985] viewed antiracist activism as subversive and worked aggressively to silence these efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jos\u00e9 Medeiros\u2009\/\u2009Abdias Nascimento Collection\u2009\/\u2009Ipeafro<\/span>From left: scenes from The Emperor Jones (1945), with Aguinaldo Camargo (standing<\/em>), and O filho pr\u00f3digo<\/em> (The prodigal son; 1947), with Ruth de SouzaJos\u00e9 Medeiros\u2009\/\u2009Abdias Nascimento Collection\u2009\/\u2009Ipeafro<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

TEN\u2019s debut at the Municipal Theater in Rio was also a turnaround in Nascimento\u2019s personal life. Just two years earlier, in April 1943, he had been imprisoned at S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s infamous Carandiru penitentiary. At 29, Nascimento landed in jail after standing up to a racist incident alongside his friend Sebasti\u00e3o Rodrigues Alves in the 1930s. Both men, then serving in the Brazilian Army, had been barred from entering a nightclub through the front door and clashed with an officer from S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s State Department of Political and Social Order (DEOPS-SP).<\/p>\n

Expelled from the Army over the incident, Nascimento later traveled in 1941 to the Amazon and to Peru with Santa Hermandad de la Orqu\u00eddea<\/em>, a group of Brazilian and Argentine intellectuals. In Peru, he watched The Emperor Jones<\/em> performed by a White actor in blackface. It was there that he conceived the idea of founding a Black theater company in Brazil. But on his return, he learned he had been convicted in absentia for his part in the earlier altercation.<\/p>\n

While imprisoned at Carandiru, Nascimento cofounded Teatro do Sentenciado with fellow inmates\u2014a theater group composed entirely of convicts, which organized six productions in total. During his time behind bars, he also wrote Submundo: cadernos de um penitenci\u00e1rio<\/em> (Underworld: A prisoner\u2019s log), a memoir-like account chronicling the lives of other notable inmates, such as Lino Catarino, and documenting the challenges of organizing a theater company behind bars. The manuscript was finally published in 2023 by Zahar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey created their own scripts and handled every detail\u2014from costumes to lighting,\u201d says Viviane Becker Narvaes, of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). \u201cTeatro do Sentenciado opened up discussions about race inside the prison system by celebrating figures like abolitionist Jos\u00e9 do Patroc\u00ednio [1853\u20131905],\u201d she explains. Narvaes\u2019s doctoral dissertation on the group, completed in 2020 at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), is slated for publication this year by Hucitec.<\/p>\n

In 1968, as Brazil\u2019s military regime intensified political repression under Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5), Nascimento chose to remain in the US, where he was living on a scholarship from the Fairfield Foundation. \u201cIn Oakland, Abdias was welcomed by the Black Panthers and was already seen as a major figure within Pan-Africanism\u2014an international movement advocating for the rights and interests of Black peoples,\u201d says Gilberto Alexandre Sobrinho, of UNICAMP\u2019s Institute of Arts. During his postdoctoral fellowship at New York University from 2021 to 2022, with grant funding from FAPESP, Sobrinho researched Nascimento\u2019s years in the US. He remained there until 1981, with an interlude in Nigeria between 1976 and 1977.<\/p>\n

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MASP Collection | Elisa Larkin Nascimento\u2009\/\u2009Abdias Nascimento Collection\u2009\/\u2009Ipeafro<\/span>Nascimento speaks at Serra da Barriga (Alagoas), in 1983; Ok\u00ea Ox\u00f3ssi (1970), a painting by NascimentoMASP Collection | Elisa Larkin Nascimento\u2009\/\u2009Abdias Nascimento Collection\u2009\/\u2009Ipeafro<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In the 1970s, Nascimento took up a teaching position at the State University of New York, in Buffalo, where he founded the Chair of African Cultures in the New World. Because he wasn\u2019t fluent in English, he conducted his classes in Portuguese, with translators assisting his students. Alongside his academic life, Nascimento took up painting, creating images inspired by orix\u00e1s<\/em>\u2014African deities\u2014and religious traditions of Afro-Brazilian culture. \u201cAbdias became part of the Latin American arts scene in Harlem, in upper Manhattan, and interacted with key figures of the Black Arts Movement,\u201d says Sobrinho. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t looking to sell his art to galleries, but to build a collective visual identity that reflected the aspirations of Black Brazilians.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he returned to Brazil in 1981, Nascimento founded the Afro-Brazilian Research Institute (IPEAFRO), which is now led by his widow, social scientist Elisa Larkin Nascimento. In the 1980s, he ventured into Brazilian politics. After successfully running for Congress (1983-1987) with the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), Nascimento later served as a substitute senator in the 1990s for anthropologist and politician Darcy Ribeiro (1922-1997). Following Ribeiro\u2019s death, Nascimento held the Senate seat until 1999.<\/p>\n

During his tenure, Nascimento proposed legislation on reparations for Brazil\u2019s Black population. His initiatives passed through all legislative committees, though they never advanced to a full congressional vote. Before his death in Rio de Janeiro in 2011, at the age of 97, Nascimento was able to witness some of the ideas he had long championed take shape through the efforts of other lawmakers. \u201cWhat we now call reparative or affirmative action was already being advocated for by the Black Experimental Theater back then,\u201d notes Sobrinho. \u201cThey even pushed for something resembling today\u2019s racial quotas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story above was published with the title “A stage for struggle<\/strong>” in issue in issue 349 of march\/2025.<\/p>\n

Project
\n<\/strong>Afroperspectivism and artistic creation:<\/em> Struggle, thought and images in Abdias Nascimento<\/em> (n\u00ba 19\/22573-9<\/a>);\u00a0Grant Mechanism<\/strong>\u00a0Research Fellowship Abroad;\u00a0Principal Investigator<\/strong>\u00a0Gilberto Alexandre Sobrinho (UNICAMP);\u00a0Investment<\/strong>\u00a0R$83,266.96.<\/p>\n

Scientific articles<\/strong>
\nSOBRINHO, G. A.\u00a0O legado do Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN): Li\u00e7\u00f5es de est\u00e9tica, pol\u00edtica e comunica\u00e7\u00e3o<\/a>.\u00a0Concei\u00e7\u00e3o\/Conception<\/strong>. 2023.
\nSOBRINHO, G. A.\u00a0Abdias Nascimento no s\u00e9culo XXI e o tr\u00e2nsito de suas obras e ideias nos circuitos da diversidade<\/a>.\u00a0Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian Studies<\/strong>.\u00a02024.
\nSILVA, M. A. M.\u00a0O Teatro Experimental do Negro de S\u00e3o Paulo, 1945\u201366<\/a>.\u00a0Novos Estudos Cebrap<\/strong>. 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He was at the forefront of initiatives such as the Teatro Experimental do Negro, founded 80 years ago","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[241,263,204],"coauthors":[4472],"class_list":["post-564388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-history","tag-theatre","tag-visual-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564388"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564406,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564388\/revisions\/564406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564388"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=564388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}