Book Smart

Tentative Transgressions: Homosexuality, AIDS and the Theater in Brazil
Severino J. Albuquerque
University of Wisconsin Press, 2004

In this first-ever book in any language to deal with homosexuality in the Brazilian theater, Albuquerque detects the subtle first stirrings of a theatrical trend in the age of AIDS.

“The plays are moving away, if ever so slowly, from shyly showing homosexuality as a transgression to a position of opening up for discussion a number of issues contributing to an acceptance of the fact that gay-themed plays can have the same universality of drama as plays by and about heterosexuals,” he says.

Albuquerque conducted research for the book during about five years, interviewing theater critics and those involved with the productions, consulting archival sources, seeing plays in both mainstream and off-Broadway venues in Brazil, and following the work of one community theater troupe in Rio de Janeiro.

Albuquerque says that the theater in Brazil always has been an accurate barometer of how social and political agendas are playing in the country. However, the stage has been ambivalent about assuming this role, he says.

“A key conflict that has shaped Brazilian theater since its inception has been an attraction to and rejection of the experience of the ‘different’ and disenfranchised,” he says. “The many gestures toward inclusion and solidarity and the equally forceful movement away from those sentiments have taken diverse forms and guises throughout the history of the dramatic arts in Brazil.”

Albuquerque says that the arrival of AIDS in Brazil raised major obstacles to liberalism regarding homosexuality.

Albuquerque, who is on sabbatical this year, intends to incorporate his research into future courses, especially those dealing with Brazilian culture, when he returns to the classroom. Meanwhile, he will discuss his book at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at Borders on University Avenue.