Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Sortilege (Black Mystery)

1995; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cal.1995.0133

1080-6512

Abdias do Nascimento,

Literature, Culture, and Criticism

Sortilege (Black Mystery) Abdias do Nascimento (bio) This play, written especially for the Black Experimental Theater (Teatro Experimental do Negro—Rio de Janeiro, Brasil), is dedicated to the memory of the actor and friend Aguinaldo Camargo and to my children Henrique-Christovao, Abdias, and Yemanja. Preface To reveal blackness in its intrinsic validity, to dissipate with one’s luminary focus the darkness which resulted from our total possession by whiteness is one of the heroic undertakings of our epoch. 1 —Guerreiro Ramos Since the action of this play takes place in a social and cultural habitat so different and unfamiliar to the majority of readers in English, one may justify these words of introduction to the reading of Sortilege (Black Mystery). I will attempt to furnish an idea, a picture, even if brief and crude, of the conditions which brought forth the black mystery; I shall try to relate it—again in an imperfect way—to the context of theater and culture in my country Brazil. This play is one of the products of the Black Experimental Theater—BET—which I founded in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1944, as an exigency of the lamentable situation in which black people found themselves in Brazilian society and, particularly, in the Brazilian Theater. Confronted by the very special characteristics of the historical formation of the country and taking into consideration the bases which govern relations between blacks and whites, we were fully aware of the type of challenge which we would have to face a challenge rather more difficult than that faced by blacks here in the United States or in Africa. One might call this a paradoxical affirmation. But only in appearance . . . To found a Black Experimental Theater was a task of the greatest complexity. Its fundamental objective projected itself in various directions. [End Page 821] Basically, before claiming its birthright, BET intended to further the affirmation and promotion of cultural values brought from Africa to Brazil by the black slaves. From the choice of the title of the theater we revealed one of our primary intentions: to purge the ancient load of pejorative connotations implicit in the word “black.” “Black” was always synonymous with absolute Evil; that which was ugly and inferior was always expressed in terms of “black.” This involvement with the more subtle aspects of our circumstance was reinforced by another of a more practical and immediate type: the degrading and unworthy position which black men occupy on the rungs of existence; on the economic, educational, political and artistic planes. In the field of sports, of soccer, where they even crowned a “king” Pele, the entrance of the black man was dearly paid for and constituted a bitter incident which still has not come to an end. And as for the theater? What was the situation in the theater? What were the parts which were reserved for the black? The same role for which everyday life had destined him: the subaltern roles. The black in Brazilian theater either played the grotesque caricature to divert the white audience (the black man very rarely goes to the theater) or personified sweeping and submissive Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas. He could even be seen taking the parts of folkloric types whose sole function it was to add color to the landscape—supplying a nuance of the picturesque and exotic . . . When one wanted an actor for a role of real dramatic importance the norm was to take a white man and paint him black. How could the black man demonstrate his dramatic capacity if they never gave him an opportunity? Where were the texts which focused on the black man as a human being or in which he could appear as the hero? It was left to BET to call the attention of the dramatists to this void. Or better, it was up to BET to make its own playwrights, to inspire the appearance of works in which the black man, as subject of the drama would be the irreversible denunciation of the long phase in which he suffered the manipulation, not always scrupulous, of authors who used him as an object. In Brazil, as in all countries where there...