Mott, Simone Silva Reis (2007) Little world/mundinho: an 'antropofagic' and autobiographic performance (uma performance antropofagica e autobiografica). PhD thesis, Victoria University.

Abstract

How can we identify and emerge from the chain of bodies, territories and cultures, called 'my body', my 'self'? Can the performing body transcend cultural boundaries? What would such transcendence look like? If it happens, what can it say about a possible intercultural body format? How to create a performance with an extracultural approach? Invasion, migration, and population dislocation over the last five centuries has caused significant movement amongst global populations. Cross-cultural performances have developed from these invasions, migrations, and dislocations. The late 20th and early 21st Centuries have seen the development in the 'West' of intercultural and extracultural theatre/performance. This project presents a performance derived from the unique combination of Brazilian and Australian performance practice. It sheds light on the power of the theatrical event for disparate audiences, and on the performer’s experience of the creative process while generating a new performance text that addresses the questions: What is it to 'be' 'Brazilian'? Does 'Brazil' exist? What is it to be 'Latin American'? Does 'Australia' exist? This project, Little World: Four 'Autoethnographic' Performances, explores the author/performer’s 'being' 'Brazilian', being 'Latin American' in 'Australia', and a 'performer' in 'theatre', through autobiographical and autoethnographic performance drawing on the writings of Clarice Lispector, Franz Kafka, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and the performance practices of Brazilian Candomblé and Japanese Butoh. It attempts to place the spectator in the position of the performer, encountering 'Australia' through another culture and language. And following Oswald de Andrade’s 'anthropophagy', it proposes and enacts the cannibalising of the 'foreign(er)', the digestion of foreign stereotypes to produce new identities. The thesis component of the project will provide a first person autobiographical and autoethnographic account addressing the questions raised above; the performance-making processes; and the social and theoretical contexts and the aesthetic elements of the performance.

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