Combing the traditions of Forest Theatre and Street Theatre

Zeca Ligiéro

Rio’s poor Black communities have long suffered under violence, stigma, poverty, racism and the lack of opportunity. But one theatre is putting pride back into the communities with work that is built on the voices of the favela.

Key takeaways

1. Forest Theatre
   Built on the traditions of indigenous people and rubber tappers, the plays are rooted in the mythology of daily life.
2. Street Theatre
   Vivarte performs free on streets and in parks to make their shows accessible to ordinary people. Performances respond to live events, like animal noises and smells, and involve audience interaction.
3. Avoiding appropriation
   Community groups, elders and shamans are key collaborators to ensure that cultural stories are not misrepresented or reduced to stereotypes.
4. Immersive exchange
   Performers learn the ceremonial requirements for performing the stories, including how to cleanse the audience with incense and warm up games, like the Monkey Game, which help performers achieve the right state of mind.

When Vivarte finishes its performance in a Huni Kuin indigenous community from the south of the Amazon, they are not met with applause, but shouts of greeting.

The audience sounds a cheerful ‘ííííí.’ People get up, raise their arms and dance. Like the actors, made up and dressed in traditional costume, the audience also wears body paint and is dressed to share that moment.

For Vivarte, a forest- and street-theatre group, it’s a common way to end a show. The group works with indigenous and riverine people in the region of Acre, Brazil, investigating the relationship between the forest environment and its enchanted beings, in the face of contemporary threats.

Vivarte started in a school classroom in 1998, and since then has been focused on research and promotion of Amazonian traditional cultures. It works with the storytelling and mythology threaded through the daily life of indigenous communities and their environment. Over the years, the group has developed 19 plays and set up its own headquarters in Rio Branco, becoming one of the oldest theatre groups in the state of Acre.

Vivarte workshop with Huni Kuin people, photo Talita Oliveira, 2019

The plays are inspired by stories from the region, gathered during free art workshops that engage with local communities. The costumes and characters in these plays are familiar in the daily life and mythology of communities in the Amazon.

Touring its shows, mainly in the north of Brazil, the group performs on various stages, including outdoor asphalt areas and dirt floors, and develops new audiences among distinct ethnic minority groups.

Vivarte’s ‘Forest Theatre’ enacts the stories of forest people, while challenging the conventions of traditional Western theatre. It’s influenced by street theatre as it incorporates surrounding sounds, smells and the interventions of animals and other forest beings.

Vivarte director Dani Mirini is studying Forest Theatre for her master’s degree at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. ‘Forest Theatre is alive, because the forest is alive. Like the forest, it is in constant transformation,’ she says.

‘For me, it’s this theatre formed a long time ago here, when the night comes and the rubber tapper or riverside people who don’t have a television will gather around the fire and tell stories about how the hunt was, how it was fishing, what agriculture was like, what it was like a while ago, how they got there.’

Vivarte was founded by Maria Rita Costa da Silva, Mirini’s mother. She was a teacher at Zuleide Pereira High School, in the rural area of Rio Branco, capital of Acre. Most of her students were children of rubber tappers or indigenous people. Realising that many were ashamed of their origins, the teacher created a play from the stories told by the students’ parents and grandparents.

Watching these stories play out, some of which the children didn’t even know, helped them to value and respect the traditions of their elders. The performance, called The Stories and the Myths of the Forest, became the first project of the Grupo Experimental de Teatro Vivarte.

Dani Mirini em Kanarô, Teatro Sesc, Rio Branco, Acre. Foto Ícaro Passos, 2022.

In each isolated community, audiences react enthusiastically, and this interaction is also characteristic of street theatre in large Brazilian cities. Vivarte turned to street theatre as a way of reaching low socioeconomic communities and guaranteeing excluded people full access to art and culture.

This decision recognises the reality of the northern region, specifically in Acre, which is one of the states with the fewest cultural offerings in the country due to the socioeconomic context of inequality and social exclusion. Street theatre makes art accessible to communities by bringing it to villages, streets and public spaces such as squares, bandstands and parks.