Sustainability and Resilience in Brazilian Puppetry

Among the several forms and groups of puppet theatre present in Brazil today, the mamulengo tradition is certainly the oldest and one of the most representative forms of popular puppetry in the country. Varying in form and sizes, and initially adapted from early European influences during the colonial times, this puppet form developed characters and themes of its own, mixing local culture and traditional elements. Along with Brazilian dramatic dances and folguedos, regional collective dances and festivities in which typical embellished ox puppets play a central role, these historical artistic forms have been both preserved and renewed by local artists throughout the times. The aim of this article is to briefly introduce contemporary variations in Brazilian puppetry that addresses issues related to environmental preservation and sustainability, whether using more modern stage puppetry and devices, or inspired by traditional Brazilian folk puppetry, now modified and set in the Amazonian region.

The vital topics of climate change and sustainability have become more and more urgent, as, locally, the Amazonian forest is progressively being burned down, in the highest rates of deforestation in decades. “A planet made of tears and piles of scrap” is the title of the introduction to the recent 25th issue of the Móin- Móin – Revista de Estudos sobre Teatro de Formas

Animadas, a key Brazilian journal of puppetry. In this edition, dedicated to the themes of puppetry, ecology and sustainability, its editors and authors manage to address the growing concern with human activity and the current transformations in our planet that have led to a predictable collapse in natural resources and the environment. Among its varied texts and reflections on worldwide theatrical, socioeconomic and environmental issues, involving the challenges of ecology and the various issues that involve sustainability, a main question seemed to return, over and over, as we read through the articles: In which ways do puppetry, art and its values contribute to our survival, working against nature’s degradation and spoliation? With this central question in mind, we chose to recall two different types of Brazilian puppetry productions that deal more directly with the issue of preservation.

The first of them includes the plays and puppets that deal directly with themes related to the Amazonian forest and its native inhabitants, fauna and flora. Such plays, created and performed by mostly urban companies, shine a spotlight on themes such as those of the legendary Animals of Brazil, Amazonian Baby Animals and themes of forest preservation, such as The Last Tree, to name only a few iconic national productions. The memory and preservation of indigenous culture, myths and legends is also part of this category of puppet plays. Beautiful examples were The Legend of the Guaraná Fruit, Cobra Norato, and Iara, the Spell of the Waters, by, respectively, three renowned and award-winning companies: PiaFraus, Giramundo and Lumiato.

Whether calling attention to the forest and its inhabitants or to the myths and culture of its original native inhabitants, such shows help bring awareness to the importance of the environment, the forest and all of the cultural heritage that sur- rounds it. Only very recently, in 2015, has the popular puppet theatre of mamulengos become part of Brazil’s intangible cultural heritage. In a country of deep colonial roots that has always praised foreign rules and modes, traditional popular culture (such as mamulengo puppetry, indigenous and African-Brazilian popular cultural manifestations of all sorts) must struggle to be acknowledged; in that sense, the puppetry of the aforementioned companies is a beautiful and necessary, vivid reminder and enhancer of the country’s roots and original cultures.

A second type of puppet production related to environmental preservation and sustainability is one which not only thematically, but also formally, foments a local sustainable culture. Such theatre is more closely related to mamulengo and earlier folk forms and popular dramatic dances originated in the sixteenth century, in the days when the Spanish and Portuguese Jesuits enacted religious acts for the population in public festivities, seeking to convert the indigenous populations to Catholicism by use of dances, chants and simplified playlets. Local elements and indigenous deities were often present in such performances, and as time passed the dances and plots increasingly acquired new and secular themes.

These new and yet more traditional type of shows mentioned here are those performed by Jabuti-Bumbá, a fairly new company born in 2005 in the Amazonian Acre, one of the most remote states in the western extreme of the North region of Brazil. The creators of the company, a family of local artists, chose the popular Bumba-Meu-Boi tradition as its main inspiration, yet substituted its central character, an ox (or boi), by a jabuti, or tortoise: This new character is a colorful and larger-than-life tortoise puppet whose image strongly resembles the traditional large dancing and embellished popular ox puppet of Bumba-Meu-Boi. Strongly influenced by diverse regional and Amazonian cultural manifestations, the company mixes local and popular rhythms, legends, history, myths and dances, in order to address and denounce the growing destruction of the Amazon forest. In that sense, the jabuti represents the very claim for preservation of life in the forest: The tortoise, though bearing a thick and strong shell, is the first spe- cies to be victimized in the fires, since it is too slow to run and escape from the flames.

A symbol of nature and endurance, it dances with red Mapinguari, a local and legendary Amazonian monster, and honors religious and legendary characters, such as Our Lady of the Rubber Tree (Nossa Senhora da Seringueira) and fathers Joseph (José) and Pilgrim (Peregrino) or local environment leaders such as Chico Mendes, Hélio Mello and Matias, while executing rhythms and dances of Acrean popular religions. Nossa Senhora da Seringueira, the Holy Mother of rubber trees, a local Christian entity, is the patroness of the festivity, along with Santo Daime, a syncretic religious manifestation that was born in Acre in 1910, congregat- ing alternately Catholicism, African rituals and Kardecism.

While the original ox puppet in the Bumba-Meu-Boi tradition may be considered a symbol of abundance from the cattle cycle in 19th century northeastern Brazil, in the Amazonian state of Acre, on the contrary, the ox is currently viewed as a living symbol of destruction of the Amazon forest: In the rush for profits at any cost, the state’s lands are increasingly being burned down, turned into pasture and populated with the beef cattle which will in the end replace the tortoises (and several other local native species, along with the forest).

Closer in form to the Brazilian popular dramatic dances than to theatrical performances, the folk dances and puppetry created by Jabuti-Bumbá, dancing and parading in the streets and local and public festivities, compose a popular and collective form of art, a lively artistic experience accessible to all. Born against the devastation of the forest and the exploitation of animal life, it reinvents a traditional art form in our current historical reality, creating a new identity for its players and audience. A grassroots company defending its neighbor forest with papier-mâché turtles wearing calico fabric and colorful ribbons, it performs directly against the anti-forest authorities and the locally powerful, much resembling the typically oppressed characters of mamulengo or Bumba-Meu-Boi, who happily ad- dressed and inverted patterns of colonial violence, while dancing, playing and making fun of the oppressors.

In times of predatory exploitation of the forest and the environment, perform- ing against the unavoidable degradation of a society based on conspicuous production and consumerism, this kind of popular theatre adds to its inspiring folk traditions important and new elements of indigenous, African and Amazonian roots, re-creating, through its art, for the group and audience participants, differ- ent possibilities of being in the world, as certainly do, in varying degrees and forms, all good puppetry.

MAYUMI ILARI teaches English and American literatures and dramaturgy at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. ilarimayumi@usp.br