Theater, politics, and culture: The role of life experience, symbols, and representation in constructing citizenship and democracy in Brazil

This dissertation is a study of the significance of experience in theater and participatory budget as instruments for civic engagement among theater of the oppressed practitioners, community activists, government, and low-income population living in the city of Santo Andre, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Using ethnographic methods, I investigate the theoretical, historical, and cultural intersections between theater and politics as performance to engage communities in the citizenship process. The representation of individual experience is the point of departure for action and principal link between theater and politics. This investigation originates from the following research questions: (1) Considering the Brazilian ideological, political, and cultural context in operation in the city of Santo Andre, what are the implications of government-sponsored theater in contrast with the participatory budget meetings? (2) What is the impact of paternalism and clientelism in furthering the mission of both theater and participatory budget? (3) How does Theater of the Oppressed, as a cultural reflexive form and symbolic representation of Brazilian cultural practices, and the individual's dialogue with agents of power, interact with the individual's desire for sociopolitical change? (4) What are the cultural implications of the discourse at the participatory meetings and the narratives portrayed in the plays? (5) How does experience, laden with cultural patterns, operate within theater and political participation to promote democracy and citizenship? This thesis proposes that (1) There is a shift in the meaning of theater of the oppressed in Brazil from a nostalgic revision of theater for social change, proposed originally in 1960s art and social movements of resistance to theater and therapy, and that the nostalgic meaning persists. In this process, theater of the oppressed replicates cultural patterns; (2) Participatory budget is the arena where political engagement and citizenship are enacted producing physical change, engaging the population in a dialogue with agents of power, closing an established social distance, and promoting social inclusion, but these processes are limited in both financial and cultural scope; (3) The individual experience is the key object, and point of origin in both participatory budget and theater of the oppressed; it offers opportunities for a dialogue with agents of power and for sociopolitical inclusion, and reflection on the individual's location within the Brazilian cultural context, but paternalism and clientelism, as they are fundamental parts of the individual's everyday experiences and interactions, affect the processes in both theater and citizenship.