From the “SILVER EPIDEMIC” to the “GOLD SCENE: The experience of the territory on stage

Abstract

Report by Verônica Gentilin, member of Cia. Mungunzá de Teatro. This report brings the experience of Cia. Mungunzá de Teatro within the Container Theatre, a sociocultural space designed and built by Cia. Munguzá in 2017. As the artistic residency of these members within the territory known as Cracolândia, in São Paulo, it has contributed to a reflection on the role of art and culture within a territory in conflict. Immersed in this territory, and forming relationships with the surrounding area, Cia. Mungunzá conceived and created the performance “Epidemia Prata” (“Silver Epidemic”) in 2018, which discussed its activities in the territory and the feeling of impotence in the face of the oppressive reality of the state. Five years later, the Company invited artists from the territory, with a history of social vulnerability, crack cocaine use, homelessness, and prison, to take part in the spectacle. A new performance called “Cena Ouro” “(Gold Scene”) was then born. Its text addresses the transition from one performance to the other
and what the process was like to include people from the territory in your artistic research. More than that, the text sought to bring together theory and practice, in a self-critical analysis of the artist’s and academic’s distant view of their narratives and their object of study.