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Book Reviews Die lnternationale Brecht-Gesellschaf lnfernational Brecht Society http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/german/brecht/ Ich bin noch da / I'm still Here Das Brecht Jahrbuch 22 The Brecht Yearbook 22 Geschätsfürender Herausgeher/Managing Editor: Maarten van Dijk Mitherausgeber / Editorial Board: Sigfrid Hoefert, Roswitha Mueller, Marc Silberman, Antony Tatl, Carl Weber Brecht Yearbook, vol. 22 (1997), pp. 473-78 Lorena B.Ellis. Brecht's Reception in Brazil. New York: Peter Lang (http://www.peterlang.net/all/) , 1995. 196 pages. Kathrin Sartingen. Über Brecht hinaus...: Produktive Theaterrezeption in Brasilien am Beispiel von Bertolt Brecht. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1994. 360 Seiten. by Vera Stegmann, Lehigh University Two volumes appeared recently on the subject of Brecht's reception in Brazil, both published by Peter Lang: Lorena Ellis's study in English, reflecting the perspective of a native Brazilian, and Kathrin Sartingen's work in German, the outcome of research undertaken both in Germany and in Brazil. Despite the factual overlaps, neither author mentions or discusses the other's work beyond a mere bibliographic listing of the respective New York University and Bonn dissertations, on which their respective books are based. Yet the two studies are quite different in scope, character, and the audience they address.     Ellis's slimmer volume speaks to a general audience and is written in a more accessible style, free of modern theoretical discourse. Her book also contains a useful series of appendices, beginning with a brief chronology of Brazil's history from its "discovery" by the Portuguese Pedro Álvarez Cabral in 1500 to the present. The following appendices show charts of Brecht plays performed in Brazil and in Latin America, as well as a detailed overview of the plays staged in Brazil between the years 1945 and 1990, first in chronological order and then grouped by frequency of performances.     This basic factual information provides helpful resources for any newcomer to the subject matter, and even readers relatively unfamiliar with Brecht or political discourse in Brazil will enjoy and profit from reading Ellis's book. The first of four main chapters, "Brecht and Theater Abroad," covers Brecht's influence on world theater in general and then moves to the Latin American theater scene in particular. Opening with a reference to the 1989 revolution in Germany, Ellis begins by summarizing the phases of Brecht's reception in Germany before she discusses the situation in France, Poland, Austria, England, the Far East, and the Philippines. Among the Latin American Countries, Colombia plays the leading role in the theatrical avant-garde; Enrique Buenaventura's experimental group in Cali and Santiago García's Bogotá group, La Candelaria, have produced major innovations.     Chapter two, "Brazilian Theater before Brecht," traces the history of theater in Brazil from the sixteenth century on with an intent to show how political and cultural circumstances had already created a favourable space for a Brechtian aesthetic long before Brecht's time. Brazil's first theater- was developed by the Jesuits who used it for missionary purposes, as a form of propaganda. Ellis lucidly shows how these "Autos Jesuíticos," stemming from a medieval tradition, paved the way for an educational and didactic theater similar to the one envisioned by Brecht with one important distinction: While the Jesuit plays were designed to impose a new culture and religion in a dogmatic way, Brechtian drama is rather perceived as a liberating form that questions current conditions and ultimately assists in the search for a Brazilian national identity. This fundamental juxtaposition provides the basis for Ellis's discussion of more modern Brazilian playwrights or groups, the Teatro do Brinquedo, the Antropofagía and Tropicália movements, plays staged by Oswald and Mário de Andrade, Álvaro Moreyra, Joracy Camargo, or Renato Viana, as well as the Polish director Zbigniew Ziembinsky.     Chapter three, "The Contemporary Scene," opens with a brief summary of twentieth-century Brazilian history that seeks to show how the ongoing interest in revolutionary theater was a response to the series of authoritarian regimes that hindered democratic developments in the country. Four major groups have engaged in this task by staging Brecht and adopting some of his techniques. Teatro Arena, founded by José Renato, became in 1956 the forum for Augusto Boal who staged his play with the group. This play, his theoretical essays Teatro do Oprimido (Theater of the Oppressed), and the coringa or "joker" system (a form of narrator he developed) owe a great debt to Brecht, even though Boal combines Brechtian strategies with the Stanislavsky method he had learned in New York. A further group, Oficina, founded five years after Arena in 1958, also performed plays by Brecht and adopted a particularly radical, aggressive style in the sixties. Oficina came to represent a form of "Brazilian anti-culture" (66). A third group, Centro Popular da Cultura, led by the progressive playwright Oduvaldo Viana Filho, concentrated on educating the people through artistic means. The centre was closed in 1964 by the military coup d'etat. Some members of this dissolved group later rejoined to form Opinião and created Show Opinião, a collage of three singers, and they performed pieces in the tradition of literatura da cordel, which often tell fantastic tales of scoundrel-tricksters, reminiscent of Macheath in The Threepenny Opera.     The final chapter "The Staging of Brecht's Plays in Brazil," begins with a lengthy discussion of secondary literature, which probably displays most visibly the book's origin as a dissertation. Ellis also reports on important congresses, such as the 1986 DAAD symposium in Rio de Janeiro. By this time Brecht's position as the most frequently performed German language playwright had become clear; but it was also evident that Brecht needed to be "Brazilianized" (95). Ellis then explores the question of translation, which had often been problematic for reasons of periodic political censorship as well as linguistic inaccuracies owing to the fact that many early translations were based not on the German original but on French versions of the plays. Ellis's account of Brecht plays performed in Brazil, as well as musical interpretations of Brecht songs by Chico Buarque, Cida Moreira, or Suzana Salles, offers a glimpse into the rich presence of Brecht's works in Brazil but also suggests that his mature works are still awaiting their complete discovery.     While the primary value of Ellis's study rests in the broad and factual overview it offers into the subject matter, Sartingen's study covers similar material in significantly closer detail, especially in her analyses of plays. Sartingen also displays a great interest in theory. Her subtitle, "Produktive Theaterrezeption in Brasilien am Beispiel von Bertolt Brecht," suggests that she is at least as interested in the question of cross-cultural reception of art as in the specific example of Brecht's case in Brazil. Her book therefore opens with a summary of ideas by important reception theorists: Wolfgang Iser's notion of a textual "Appellstruktur" and its "Leerstellen," (22) Hans Robert Jauss's concept of the "Erwartungshorizont," (24) Dietrich Krusche's considerations of artistic contacts with a "Fremdkultur," (27) which leads to Alois Wierlacher's synthesizing thesis of the "Selbsterfahrung durch Fremderfahrung" (29). Sartingen attempts to combine these recent theories in Germanistik into a workable model with the goal of applying it to the Brazilian situation. In doing so, Sartingen begins with a discussion of sociocultural conditions in Brazil. Among other issues she mentions the dictatorships, censorship, a two-class society with a large discrepancy between rich and poor, a private educational system that caters to the wealthy, while 30% of the population remains illiterate. Such factors influence the reading culture in Brazil, as economic conditions allow only about 5% to be regarded as potential readers, and they shape theatrical traditions. Many theater performances preserve some characteristics of a folk festival and tend to entertain rather than educate; sensuality and eroticism also play a large role. At the same time improvisation and spontaneity are much more inherent in Brazilian theater than on the German stage, which relies on planned performances. Recent trends have brought about changes from the folkloric approach to a more organized political theater, and Sartingen mentions the groups discussed by Ellis: Arena, Oficina, and Opinião.     We then learn about individual performances of Brecht's plays, followed by sections devoted to each of five different stagings of The Threepenny Opera and then to its Brazilian counterpart, Ópera do Malandro, by Chico de Buarque. Buarque, Brazil's well-known bossa nova singer, created this work in 1978, fifty years after the Berlin premiere of The Threepenny Opera and 250 years after John Gay's completion of The Beggar's Opera. Buarque adopts many elements of the Threepenny plot, although he made important structural changes. For example, he invented a fictive author, "João Alegre" - a literal translation of John Gay, and lie also punned on the word "gay" by adding a homosexual theme. Geni (Jenny), the prostitute who betrays Max (Macheath), is homoerotic and a transvestite. In contrast to The Threepenny Opera, in which theatrical characteristics predominate, Ópera do Malandro is more a "dramatized song" (Ellis 115). Indeed, Chico Buarque preserved only the initial "Moritat" in its entirety and composed lyrics and music for his own songs based on Afrobrazilian rhythms like samba, mambo, or the tango. This work became more popular than any single play by Brecht and was subsequently turned into a film, a Franco-Brazilian co-production which abandoned all original references to The Threepenny Opera.     Sartingen's thoughts on Ópera do Malandro conclude Part I of her book, which deals with reception theory and Brecht's reception in Brazil. Part II, "Über Brecht hinaus..." moves from the question of reception to that of influence, and Sartingen discusses in depth Brazilian plays that have been directly influenced by Brecht. Gianfrancesco Guarnieri's Eles não usam Black-Tie and his Ponto de Partida, Oduvaldo Vianna Filho's Rasga Coração, and Chico Buarque/Paulo Pontes's Gota d'Água receive particular attention, as well as works by Augusto Boal. In fact, a discussion of Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, a collection of theoretical writings that Boal wrote from 1962 to 1973 in his various places of exile, opens Part II. As the title suggests, Boal's theater addresses the lower classes, and as much as he derives his theories from Brecht, he hopes to go one step further. While Brecht's poética da conscientização above all raises our consciousness that the world can be changed, Boal's poetica da libertação aims at direct action and a liberation of the people. Sartingen analyzes various theatrical strategies by which Boal hopes to achieve his goals, such as simultaneous dramaturgy, image theater, forum theater, newspaper theater, breaking of repression, myth or trial theater, rituals and masks. The most famous of these devices is probably the teatro invisível, which can take place or "explode" suddenly in any place, in a supermarket, a restaurant, or a street. The accidental "spectators," often unaware that they are surrounded by a staged scene, may even become actors (146-47). While Boal breaks down the traditional barriers between actors and spectators, his figure of the coringa, a joker or narrator, serves to alienate or distance events in a Brechtian way.     Boal's first drama that seriously addresses social causes and may simultaneously be seen as an example of a "productive reception" of Brecht in Hannelore Link's sense is Revolução na América do Sul (1960). A satire on nationalism, false populism, and pseudo-revolutionary pretences in Brazil's election year 1960, it concerns the factory worker José da Silva, a Brazilian everyman, who undergoes a series of absurdly tragical experiences and finally dies. Since the protagonist represents the people, the government has nobody to rule over in life end and needs to look for a new people so that the circle of exploitation can continue. This tragicomedy contains references to many Brecht plays. Its anti-capitalism is also linked to some anti-American sentiments, which appear here in the shape of an anjo da guarda. This guardian angel represents a foreign, English-speaking, economic superpower, which pretends to protect the process of democratization. Sartingen speculates that Boal's criticism of the United States may have been confirmed by his readings of Brecht. Stylistically, Revolução na América do Sul mixes folk traditions like the circus or the revista with a knowledge of European and North American theater forms and has often been seen as the most important piece of the period.     Sartingen's final chapter deals with film, because modern theater culture in Brazil is highly interconnected with music, bossa nova, and film, cinema novo. One director, Glauber Rocha, has been particularly influenced by Brecht, as his film Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol evidences. However, Brecht's influence on Rocha is a "productive" one, since Rocha hopes to liberate Brazilian cinema from the often imitated models, be they the "commercial-popular" aesthetic of Hollywood, the "populist-demagogical" aesthetic of Moscow, or the "bourgeois-artistic" aesthetic of Europe (316). Sartingen's book is clearly and logically constructed; each major chapter closes with a "Vergleichende Schlußbetrachtung" or "Schlußfolgerungen aus rezeptionsaesthetischer Sicht" in which she attempts to link the theorists she initially presented to her concrete analyses of plays. In her conclusion she adds ideas from Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence and Borges's notion of a reverse influence in "Kafka and His Precursors" to her list of reception theorists introduced in the beginning. Sartingen definitely succeeds in presenting an overview of the major contemporary theorists of literary reception and also in offering her readers insights into twentieth-century Brazilian theater, as related to Brecht. Personally, I find that her two concerns - abstract theory and concrete analysis - often remain independent issues, but a complete integration may be an impossible chore.     Both studies are valuable contributions to an important field of research: Brecht's reception in Latin America. Ellis's book serves as an introduction to the field, while a reader with pronounced interests in literary theory will refer to Sartingen's book. Both authors try to view the subject matter objectively, but a careful reading reveals a more Brazilian or Latin American perspective in Ellis's book, and a more European viewpoint in Sartingen's study. For example, Ellis writes at length about the effects of (Portuguese) colonization of Brazil, while Sartingen seems to be more sensitive to current anti-American trends in Brazilian theater. Aesthetic tastes also seem to differ slightly. Sartingen criticizes the tendency toward "kitsch" in many romantic Brazilian songs (192, 197, 248); Ellis, on the contrary, reports with amusement that the Kurt Weill Foundation once withdrew its authorization for the staging of Mahagonny by Ornitorrinco's director Cacá Rosset, describing it as “decadent and pornographic,” "corrupting the audience" (31). Besides different standards in erotic or emotional expression, Brecht's humour - or lack thereof - becomes an occasional subject. Ellis defends Brecht against criticisms of at least one prominent Brazilian director, Mauro Rasi, who finds Brecht heavy and humourless (95). Sartingen, on the other hand, proclaims proudly that "Brecht war nie witzig" (282), that he never integrated a joke merely for comic relief.     A more complete understanding of the subject, therefore, requires a reading of both books. Above all, it is refreshing to realize that "Brechtmüdigkeit" - a condition periodically lamented in Germany and Europe - is not even remotely a concern in Brazil or Latin America. Much of Brecht is still waiting to be discovered, and judging by the last decades, his reception will be a productive and creative one that might lead to new theatrical forms from which, in turn, Europeans and North Americans could learn. A call for papers for “Brecht in Latin America” will be posted soon at RVCI. For details contact Lellis@qcc.cuny.edu (Ref. BB in LA).