Theater in black and white – The process of staging the play “Os Negros” by Jean Genet by the black students of the University Theater of UFMG

Abstract

ABSTRACT The objective of this article is to carry out a critical account of an experience of theatrical creation based on racial issues in the environment of a technical school for the formation of actors, the Teatro Universitário/UFMG. The central argument is to address the implications that the option of dividing the class between white and black students had for the daily lives of students and teachers, contributing to mark the black presence in the school and stimulating the debate on racial issues in theatrical training. On that occasion, two shows “Os Negros” and “A Cerimônia”, respectively adaptations of “Os negros” by the French playwright Jean Genet and “Cerimônia para um negro assassinado” by the Spanish artist Fernando Arrabal, were staged. Representative of the so-called Theater of the Absurd, they have in common, among other aspects, the use of the metatheater, the dialogue with ritual and religious elements, the protagonism of characters marginalized by society and the fact that they approach a kind of “banalization of evil”, which ranges from the crimes allegedly committed out of love, by the characters of Arrabal, to the questioning of how we naturalize the death of black people in Genet. KEY WORDS Racism, quota policy, theater of the absurd, black theater