#theatre glauce rocha

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

So, in Brazilian free speech news, Roberto Alvim, director of the Center of Performing Arts of Funarte (the National Arts Foundation), has criticized (soon to be) 90 year old veteran actress Fernanda Montenegro. The actress, who has very little history of political engagement, posed for a magazine as a witch bound to be burned over books and was interviewed about her to-be-released memoirs. Alvim claimed, in response to said photoshoots, to “despise” Montenegro, and that she was a “sordid” and a “liar”, “vilifying the religion of Brazilian people”, and “violently slandering” ultra-conservative president Jair Bolsonaro, who Alvim vehemently defends and wages a an "irrevocable cultural war” for. He said her words were “childish" and of "abyssal scoundrel”, and that she "misrepresented the noblest values of our civilization, denigrating our sacred Judeo-Christian heritage.". He also said that the monologue in which Montenegro stars as Simone de Beauvoir had “nothing good”, was only a narration of the feminist author’s “sordid sexual adventures”, and “heroized her revolutionary mentality”.

In other news involving Roberto Alvim, he has vetoed the performance of a theatre play in a Funarte centre for ideological reasons. The play, RES PUBLICA 2023, depicts a dystopian fascist Brazil that persecutes minorities. Alvim said: "The play was not approved because it seemed to me that there was no aesthetic allusion in it, just a political discourse. It had nothing but a pamphletary speech. This is not called censorship but curation. I never banned the piece from being displayed elsewhere, and I think it's great that it is." Claiming his criteria is "purely artistic", he said it wasn't censorship, but curatorship, and that his curatorship won't work with any artistic piece that "reduces itself to ideological propaganda". In August, he fired a Funarte coordinator for "insubordination" against his veto to the play. Said ex-coordinator called the veto an "illegality". The Prosecutors' Office is demanding an explanation of the veto. This is Grupo Motosserra Perfumada ('Scented Chainsaw Group"), the team behind RES PUBLICA 2023.

In yet more news involving Roberto Alvim, the director has announced plans of handing Theatre Glauce Rocha, in Rio, to an Evangelical group, in order to turn it into "the first theatre in the country dedicated to the Christian audience". He said "Christian audiences never had a space to attend their beliefs". In the documents outlining his plan, he said Brazil is going through a “crucial moment in cultural combat", and that Bolsonaro must “act firmly and purposefully in the area of art and culture, today dominated by cultural Marxism and the progressive agenda”. Alvim claimed to be building an "army of great artists spiritually committed to our president and his ideals", willing to “give their lives for the building of Brazil, through the creation of works of art that redefine the history of national culture”. He told he sees no contradiction in that stance and plan and his attitude against politically charged cultural works. "I am working for the Brazilian public. I do not think there is contradiction because religion and politics are things that cannot be compared. Religion is an existential positioning. But it is an interesting and subjective debate that can be evaluated by my legal department." He doesn't have plans of handing theatres to non-Christian religious groups. The Federal Prosecutors' Office will investigate this ordeal. Artists have protested in front of Glauce Rocha against its possible handout, and also in defense of Fernanda Montenegro and censored artistic works.

On a final note, Alvim had spoken the hiring of his wife to head a theatre in capital city Brasília was of voluntary work. However, the Glauce Rocha documents reveal she'll be paid.