Memory and transformation: the role of narratives in the artistic creation of the Estopô Balaio Collective

Abstract

To recount a fact or a lived event is to remake it within oneself, rebuilding pathways and elevating it to a new perspective. When this recounting happens in the context of artistic practice, possibilities open to reconfiguring the past, creating connections with the present, and boosting the future through this action. When individual memory is remade with theatrical art as an activating medium, we can position it in the context of collective memory, thus inserting ourselves as subjects of a shared history. Therefore, this article intends to reflect on the artistic work developed by the Estopô Balaio Collective, a theater group based in the Jardim Romano neighborhood, in São Paulo - Brazil. With over 10 years of performance in the territory located in the east end of the São Paulo’s capital city, their creative processes are permeated by the memories and life stories of the region’s inhabitants, thus producing new discourses and reinforcing identity ties between the inhabitants and their neighborhood. This work intends to highlight the critical importance of the arts, mainly those embedded in community artistic practices, to maintain and preserve alternative narratives to the continuous tendency of homogenization of knowledge and ways of life. For this purpose, the analysis of the performance under the sign of Leda Maria Martins’ Oralitura and Conceição Evaristo’s Escrevivência will be used as theoretical supports, in addition to the concept of creative practices of re- -existence coined by Adolfo Achinte.