1This article, written within the scope of pedagogical research called The potential of the notion of archive for investigations in the field of theater pedagogy, from the State University of Maringá, aimed to conduct, firstly, the mapping of discourses on the subject of theater pedagogy in scientific journals in the field of Arts and Performing Arts, in order to observe how such subject has been thought about and allowed to be thought about. Here, theater pedagogy is considered as the theatrical practices carried out in the scope of formal and non-formal education that aim at interests other than the professional artistic training of the subjects involved.
2Based on that, this textual weaving, shunting canonical rules of scientific writing, was enthusiastic about the notion of archive discussed by French thinker Michel Foucault: archive as something that evidences the accumulated existence of the discourses.
I understand archive as the set of effectively pronounced discourses: and this set is considered not only as a set of events that would have occurred once and for all and that would remain in suspension, in limbo or in the purgatory of history, but also as a set that continues to function, to transform itself throughout history, enabling other discourses to arise (Foucault, 2014a, p. 52, our translation).
3Regarding Foucauldian thought, when talking about archive, we are immediately referred to the notions of archaeology, which Foucault (2011) defined as the description of the archive, “[...] as the analysis of discourse in its archival mode” (Foucault, 2008, p. 72, our translation). That is, the French thinker does not define the archive as being only the mass of texts collected at a given historical period, but, above all, as the set of rules that, in a given time and space, are able to define, for example, what is possible to speak of; what would have been constituted as a domain of discourse; which would be the statements validated and destined to enter the memory of men and how they would have been put into circulation, passing through which individuals and which groups; which statements would have been lost in the dust of time, by abandonment, censorship or invalidation; how would the discourse and its relation with those who hold it be institutionalized; among other points (Foucault, 2011). Thus, the thinker complements:
I do not write, then, a history of the spirit, according to the succession of its forms or the thickness of its sedimented significances. I do not question the discourses about what, silently, they mean, but about the fact and conditions of their manifest appearance; not about the contents they may enshroud, but about the transformations they have effected; not about the meaning that is maintained in them as a perpetual origin, but about the field where they coexist, persist and evanesce (Foucault, 2011, p. 11, our translation).
4That said, interested in mapping discourses related to the field of theater pedagogy, leveraging an archive consisting of 213 articles prospected in 10 scientific journals considered significant by the field of the academic community of Arts and Performing Arts – Revista Arte da Cena (UFG), Revista Aspas (ECA-USP), Revista Sala Preta (ECA-USP), Revista Cena (UFRGS), Revista Urdimento (UDESC), Revista da Fundarte, Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença (UFRGS), Revista Repertório (UFBA); Revista Rascunhos (UFU); Revista Ouvirouver (UFU) –, in a temporal arc that extends from the 1990s to 2020, the present researcher, along the full reading of the texts, was hooked by the recurrence of some verbs within the discursive mass of the field in question. Having collected, selected and edited some of the excerpts in which these verbs are present in their texts of origin, we can see this textual weaving, a kind of dictionary of verbs, or, rather, a small dramaturgy, because it consists of narratives constituted by fragments whose chains at times give the feeling of having been written by the same hands, and sometimes point to the notion of living dialogues.
5Three students contributed to the initial collection of the researched material, through the compilation of all articles published in the aforementioned journals: Charlie Wilson Oliveira de Souza (PIBIC-AF-IS Fundação Araucária scholarship holder), Márcio Winícios Neris Fabris (PIBIC-CNPq scholarship holder), and Matheus Henrique Messias Batista (PIC researcher – UEM Undergraduate Research Program). This work resulted in the preparation of a macro-archive containing the data of all editions of these journals, the titles of each of their articles, along with the names of their corresponding authors, their abstracts and their keywords. Subsequently, this macro-archive was checked, through a simple search, for the terms pedagogy, theatrical pedagogy, theater pedagogy, and education, which culminated in the working archive on which the present investigation was focused.
6Regarding the construction of the text that will be seen below, the only criterion for organizing the excerpts referring to these 21 verbs was to respect the alphabetical order of the surnames of their authors. With regard to the predominant criteria for choosing these mobilized excerpts, they were influenced both by objective factors, characterized by the collection of excerpts that contained the verbs observed as recurrent, as already said, and by subjective factors, led by the intuition and imagination of the present researcher in contact with this archive, since, as argued by Didi-Huberman (2012, p. 211-212), the risk of doing archaeology is called imagination and montage, since “[...] doing an archaeology is always risking to put, together ones with others, traces of surviving things, necessarily heterogeneous and anachronistic, since they come from separate places and from times disunited by gaps”. Therefore, the work of describing the archive, taken as archaeology, would call into question the notion of truth, starting by questioning its own status as a unique and indisputable truth.
7Finally, Foucauldian archaeology, elevated to the status of a critical machine, would again bring into question certain relations of power. Differing from the classical notion of history, the archaeology of Foucault (2003) would not obey the laws of verification, having the purpose of telling the truth by transcribing the model of what transpired, but would rather try to provide – about what transpired – a model such as to enable us to free ourselves from what would have occurred.
8Paraphrasing Foucault himself (2003; 2014a), when researching and serially gathering the excerpts from the archive mobilized here, we sought – by mapping the things said about the pedagogy of theater, things conserved, valued, reused, repeated and sometimes transformed – to show what transpires within, so that, evidenced the model of what transpires, sensations and perceptions others, perhaps, allow themselves to be awakened, since such discourses, when taken in isolation, tend to exhibit a certain content of origin and originality. This is perhaps what Foucault designates as exercise and possibility of freedom.
9“In theater, one learns while doing it, and this applies not only to beginners, as each creative process provides a new learning about the modes of doing it” (Ferreira, 2020, p. 433, our translation). “One of the goals of theater in school should be, therefore, to enrich the subject in their development as a person. And the best way to do so is to expand their capacity to relate to the sociocultural world, enabling students to discover and learn as many communicative registers as possible, expanding their vocabulary so that, through language, they learn to claim, ask, disagree, dialogue with others rather than acting in a violent, aggressive or prejudiced way” (Figueiredo, 2019, p. 253). “Thus, we talked about the need to review this pedagogical model in which the adult commands/teaches and the child learns/reproduces, because ‘doing together’ does not remove the role of the teacher, on the contrary, it enhances learning and can afford great satisfaction among subjects, adults and children” (Hartmann; Araújo, 2020, p. 10). “Through theatrical games, students can be taught fundamental knowledge in the language of dramatic representation, while learning to read theater scenes, which are born in improvised action, through continuous interaction between stage and audience, initially formed by the class group” (Koudela, 2002, p. 234). “This change in ‘presence’ within the classroom makes us reflect on how possible it is to propose a mode of teaching-learning that prioritizes the pleasure of playing and learning in a playful way, establishing relationships with peers, dissolving hierarchies, as occurs when playing in the playground” (Pereira; Sanches, 2018, p. 181). “Considering the above, I suggest a hypothesis: the preferences of teachers and students with regard to the use of their perception channels influence the students’ learning styles, and their teachers’ teaching styles are a fact that causes learning difficulties in teaching theater” (Rosseto, 2012, p. 88). “A conception of theater didactics based on the idea of ‘learning to learn’ is then assumed. Students start to be perceived not as passive subjects in the teaching-learning process, but as agents responsible for their training” (Telles, 2011, p. 146).
10“In other words, it is by playing that children discover the world and, at that time, imagination is one of the most important elements” (Correa; Araújo, 2014, p. 82). “End of the divisions between subjectivity and objectivity: onset of a mode of being in the world, with children and youth where play and games are not means, but, rather, the main existential broth of the relations between theater teacher and beginner student, people in coexistence, where the relational field is already the class itself, is already the form-content, is already what matters to us – body acquired in a state of risk, provisional, performed in inconstancy” (Ferreira; Hartmann; Machado, 2017, p. 66). “In this context, our provocation was: how to develop a scenic product in which the child experienced the work, were a game partner feeling summoned to assume the protagonism of the scene, to play with the performers. Playing... This would be a good start” (Pereira; Neris, 2019, p. 117). “Applied Theater will struggle to rediscover the intimate connection between ‘play’ and ‘theater’ if it is seen as part of a mission to save society, to apply a dressing to the wounds of dysfunctional lives” (Prentki, 2011, p. 193, our translation). “The notion of playing, in the sphere of popular culture, has a dimension of reinventing the world, of perceiving it through dances and games, through another channel of behavior, of an exercise in theatricality” (Telles, 2013, p. 36).
11“Therefore, the daily work of the theater teacher would be to create these investigative environments, still in dialogue with Antônio Araújo, to create fields of experience in which scenic meanings are engendered, by means of knowing oneself, knowing others and the world” (Caon, 2020, p. 5). “Through his studies on the evolution of Symbolic Games in child development, it is possible to find several points that justify the human capacity to create symbols, for representation” (Gama, 2002, p. 268). “In this endless game, the director-teacher’s task cannot be anything other than to create together with the actors-students. Thus, the stricter hierarchies are undone, everyone is a creator and the collective task of theater in school education can be circumscribed to the duty of multiplying notions” (Icle, 2011, p. 77). “We understand, throughout the classes, that the final presentation is not the most important part of the process, but the creation. However, it is necessary that students show what they have created to the other colleagues to complete the cycle, because this is an action to expand the repertoires” (Melo; Sampaio, 2020, p. 123). “By creating fictional contexts, the teacher can encourage the experience of roles, the exploration of the children’s corporeality and orality, the improvisation of situations, the enjoyment – through the appreciation of the creation of colleagues and characters experienced by the teacher, enabling the construction of knowledge about the theatrical language through a dramatic exploration and not from the point of view of the construction, in general decontextualized, of an artistic product” (Pereira, 2014, p. 78).
12“We have increasingly seen the need to denaturalize practices and customs of our society in the distinctions between genders. Theater classes should question determined and discriminatory places that come from students, helping them to avoid prejudiced conducts, expanding their way of seeing the world from the perspective of gender discussions” (Figueiredo, 2019, p. 253). “In addition, there was a perception of the emerging need to stimulate scenic creation and encourage the development of new views, new subjectivations, which will denaturalize cultural narratives and create possibilities for social actors to find in art perspectives of experiencing, of being in the world and that is also the home, from the Bachelardian perspective” (Réus; Mügge; Conte, 2020, p. 14).
13“In this sense, the objective of the theatrical practice in school is not to obtain an actor-student, since the theater teacher should not search for talents, but rather want to educate through theater” (Figueira; Rodrigues, 2018, p. 339). “Theatrical games that seek to listen to the surroundings, dialogue with the students’ social realities and help them to perceive social problems that directly affect them and the society of which they are part, hence there is another way to educate for solidarity in which there is a concern and an implication with aspects of life in society” (Figueiredo, 2019, p. 256). “In other words, to assume ‘educating society’ (sic) as to the importance and specificities of theatrical education as an intrinsic need of our profession of theater teachers and, consequently, to better investigate how theater education relates to the lives of all, particularly in their ways of thinking” (Magela, 2017, p. 48). “And, in this regard, perhaps the most important aspect is the possibility of assuming a new perspective in the craft of education: a view endowed with imagination and creativity, attentive to the greatness that can be contained in the simple discovery of the world” (Prudêncio, 2019, p. 479). “Dramatic improvisation or play has a meaning attached to the principles propagated by Escola Nova in which action and play were pointed out as the best ways to educate and shape the human being” (Scheffer, 2020, p. 13-14). “When talking about the joy of educating through theater, the interviewees considered that they see in the performing arts an important possibility of making the learning, in addition to being more joyful and pleasant, reveal thoughts and feelings” (Sitta; Ormezzano; Potrich, 2005, p. 162).
14“From their place as organizer of times and artistic-pedagogical spaces, that the teacher may promote cracks that summon the bodies of students to express their individualities, assuming the classroom as a space for sharing and coexistence between diverse subjects” (Berselli; Pereira, 2019, p. 185). “These cracks denote openings or principles, which may even weaken or crack the hegemonic whole. Their effect depends on what happens in these cracks, how seeds are planted, how they sprout, bloom and grow, and how they further extend cracks and openings” (Icle; Haas, 2019, p. 213). “Discovering cracks within this rigid and coercive system is to find the beauty and potential that, in our view, the art of the scene overflows” (Marques; Council; Silveira; Machado, 2020, p. 21). “When we expand this thinking to the school milieu, it can be considered that the theater teacher, in the same way as the intervention artist, can be this ‘crack hunter,’ in order to provoke tactical actions that seek to (re)signify the school and its disciplinary structure” (Silva, 2019, p. 242). “Art, then, proves its power as a catalyst for changes in imagination and also as a producer of cracks, resulting from a proposition based on the double refusal-and-creation” (Souza, 2020, p. 22).
15“In addition, there is another interference in artistic perception and fruition – both also depend on personal taste and experiences. Therefore, the education of the spectator requires that individual perceptions be heard and interpretations by both students and teachers be avoided” (Cabral, 2008, p. 43). “The child, when indulging in the creative process, as in playtime, learns, acquires a taste for learning and becomes the protagonist of their creations” (Pereira; Sanches, 2018, p. 184). “In short, with the Bergsonian intuition method, we propose a shift of focus in the theater teaching from: 1. presentation of the theatrical language to the student (contextualization); 2. development of the taste for language through practice (making); 3. education of spectators for the language (reception) –, for the experience of alterity of self to oneself” (Sampaio, 2018b, p. 139).
16“In this sense, I ventured into a theatrical practice in which emotion, intuition and imagination could guide my artistic-aesthetic-pedagogical practice in a process of working with theater and, in this process, therefore, enabled self-knowledge, creativity, ethics, cooperation, sociality (being together), learning, autonomy, emancipation and humanization” (Cortês, 2014, p. 354). “In addition, both in Brazil and in Italy, the guidelines point to a valorization of art in school to improve subjects and their relations with society, art as a promoter of processes of humanization and socialization based on respect for differences and the promotion of diversity” (Ferreira; Mariot, 2019, p. 106). “After all, that is the role of art! Destroy and humanize in a few minutes through bodies, movements, words, images, voices and sounds… by sharing what is most sacred in us” (Jacobs; Souza, 2020, p. 5).
17“In other words, it is by playing that children discover the world and, at that moment, imagination is one of the most important elements” (Correa; Araújo, 2014, p. 82). “In addition to fostering a creative, imaginative and investigative setting for the encounter with children, drama enables exploring the specificities of research in the arts, regardless of methodological procedures in other fields of knowledge such as anthropology, psychology, sociology or education” (Ferreira, 2020, p. 430). “Thus, working with this element of drama – compound stimulus – is a way of thinking about a teaching-learning perspective that goes beyond the alienating transfer of knowledge, reaching – as Freire argues – a dialogic education, where teachers build knowledge with their students, by stimulating creation and imagination” (Janiaski Vale, 2020, p. 448). “We are all born with imagination and creativity to function as playful creatures, as human beings, but if all opportunities are denied by a society whose creed is absolute selfishness, the instinct to play dies in a generation that is not able to foster this ability in their children” (Prentki, 2011, p. 192). “The imaginary space, on the other hand, is characterized as a locus of infinite possibilities, created in the very scenic space. This consists in a proposal to build a place, where participants exercise their imagination through theatrical, dramatic games, improvisation techniques and scene creation” (Réus; Mügge; Conte, 2020, p. 2-3).
18“In this sense, it was possible to be together with the inmates and, thus, produce their narratives, since they participated in the workshop entitled by me Playing with Theater, taking as procedures for this endeavor both traditional games (playing in round games, songs) and theatrical games (learning to play/act scenically with the other), since both (sic) enabled a learning focused on self-knowledge of oneself and of the other, which were essential to reflect as an urgency their humanization through the space in which they were, that is, the prison space” (Côrtes, 2014, p. 375). “The teaching of theater in Brazil, since its beginnings, as narrated by Santana (2010) and Pupo (2005), is based on the absolute importance of the full exercise of dramatic play, theatrical play, rules and symbolic games and improvisation as a means for the acquisition (seeing, doing, living, understanding, meaning) of elements of scenic language and scenic relation” (Ferreira; Hartmann; Machado, 2017, p. 62). “Aware of the situation, we ask ourselves how to do Theater – a practice that requires exposure without ties, freedom to play and put oneself in someone else’s place – in spaces where control is the rule? How can we summon the other to the theatrical game in a place so arid and repressive, that cannot respect our existence?” (Marques; Concílio; Silveira; Machado, 2020, p. 19). “A game space is established and the Theater class seems to activate states of freedom, creativity and complicity that in other disciplines of the curriculum are not always allowed, encouraged and potentiated” (Pereira; Sanches, 2018, p. 181). “The game with the teacher-character, with each experiment, makes me realize its efficiency as a mediation instrument for the student’s involvement with matters of theater language, in a playful and impactful way, and also reinforces itself as a challenging element for the teacher, since it impacts the often solidified structures of the teacher/ student relationship, since both act together in the game space” (Vidor, 2011, p. 81).
19“By emphasizing that theater and education represent a political act, we defend freedom of expression and the right and the need to have art in school, so as not to allow the manipulation of thought” (Catelan; André, 2019, p. 243). “The main function of this theater would be to give voice to the oppressed, working to help people to free themselves, be it from coercion, submission, or even violence” (Janiaski Vale; Gomes; Aguiar, 2020, p. 8-9). “Therefore, in the theater room, we spend our time building an environment of freedom and autonomy, which is not always constituted, but the idea is always persistent so that a space is possible where listening and affection can trigger actions that are developed with the same bases” (Merísio; Araújo; Silva, 2019, p. 186). “Art is perhaps the freest form of expression of human beings, and it is in the name of maintaining this essential characteristic of freedom that I emphasize that art should not have a manual” (Nunes, 2018, p. 241). “Theater is libertarian precisely because it shows and exposes” (Rocha, 2020, p. 25). “Theater frees and releases emotions contained by the pain of each one” (Rodrigues, 2020, p. 16). “Accordingly, theater classes seem to provide a space of greater freedom and body interaction, which other disciplines still seem to ignore or underestimate – with the exception of Physical Education, which students say in unison to be together with Theater ‘the best of all’” (Souza, 2015, p. 110).
20“In theater classes I realize how difficult mediation often is as there are so many focuses of attention provided by the practice. The time to mediate the class and be able to hear and be heard by everyone is quite long and the space for accomplishment takes a certain time” (Mathias; Berselli, 2020, p. 525). “Mediating means dividing in half or being in the middle. But what lives in this middle between stage and audience?” (Paiva, 2014, p. 154). “When the teacher raises a questioning or a challenge, he can perceive the degree of the appropriation of theatrical structures by his group, what knowledge the participants have and, thus, mediate learning and make it instigating and meaningful” (Pereira, 2015, p. 181). “The children argued, sometimes wept, but they mediated the disagreements themselves and encouraged their colleagues to make peace. [...] These ‘self-managing’ behaviors also resemble playtime actions, when children, with no adult around, manage events” (Pereira; Sanches, 2018, p. 182). “Sometimes mediation concerns the facilitation of access to works in material terms and is linked to advertising, flexible modes for the purchase of tickets, or building public loyalty. At the other end of the broad spectrum of meanings, mediating the relationship between the audience and the work implies making efforts towards the learning of artistic appreciation by little experienced spectators. Not always the professional or those responsible for the task of bringing the work closer and the audience is designated as a mediator” (Pupo, 2011, p. 114). “There is a need to build educators who educate fully, and the role of theater in this training is essential. Theatrical art, with its dramatic games and singing playing, can mediate this training and expand its spaces of action, affirming its importance as the ‘knowing,’ ‘being,’ and ‘doing’ necessary for the fundamental construction of man” (Werlang, 2008, p. 56).
21“Through the account of these experiences, we observed that pedagogies of the performing arts that involve storytelling performances can engender spontaneous communitas. In this process of dehierarchization of relationships, children conquer significant times/spaces in the school setting, acting as active subjects, narrators and protagonists of actions and stories” (Hartmann; Silva, 2019, p. 32). “From the imitations of animals, sounds, actions and gestures to the experience of everyday roles or characters in audiovisual stories or productions, from the construction of dramatic narratives by children to the appreciation of stories narrated and/or staged by adults and/or children; in different dimensions, theater can and I believe it should be present in the daily routine of Early Childhood Education” (Pereira, 2020, p. 397). “But, for the theater practiced at school to enable the construction of new narratives about the world, to provide an opportunity for the significant encounter between ‘actors’ and ‘spectators’ and to promote transformations in human relations – functions claimed by the contemporary theatrical movement – the pedagogical doing of the theater teacher needs to be involved in the construction of knowledge in the most radical sense of this term” (Santos, 2006, p. 16).
22“The Theater of the Oppressed seeks through the practice of theatrical games, exercises and techniques to stimulate the discussion and problematization of everyday issues to provide greater reflection on power relations through the exploration of stories between oppressors and the oppressed” (Leal, 2015, p. 194). “It is about overcoming the notion of theater as holder of an a priori knowledge to be transmitted to an audience that does not have it, but as the element that generates perceptions and concerns. An audience of unique individuals who are offered an experience, seeking to generate, in this meeting, a new knowledge different from what was brought by any of the parties” (Perez, 2015, p. 146-147). “Theater in Prison is a possible way to restore citizenship, as a possibility of recovering the lost name, by offering those who participate in the process the opportunity to belong to a group with a guaranteed identity” (Rocha, 2020, p. 25). “In this context, the presence of theater classes in the school’s weekly schedule seems to constitute the only opportunity for opening up to subjectivity in elementary education, the only curricular space in which it is possible to provide students with the understanding of their realities in a critical-reflective way and offer a freedom of experimentation and expression that is normally denied to them in school, social, family routine” (Trotta; Morais; Rangel; Mangeth, 2019, p. 264).
23“At the moment when the universe of applied theater is in frank expansion, discovering every day new contexts for the theatrical event, reflecting on the reason, intentions and on whom theater is overlapped becomes an important task; indispensable for those who believe that communities should be guaranteed their protagonism, their right to voice” (Coutinho, 2012, p. 126). “As we have said, in our proposal the transformation of school worlds is associated with the encouragement of the development of the child’s protagonism. For protagonism to develop in childhood, it is important that the experience of children is expanded, that their repertoire is enriched, hence our choice to use Drama and Storytelling in the process. From this perspective, protagonism is related to autonomy, to experience and also to imagination” (Hartmann; Gasperin, 2018, p. 156-157). “Based on the premise that it is possible and necessary to discuss politics, theater and society in artistic and pedagogical processes with adolescents, so they become critical agents and protagonists of their history, and the history that surrounds them, the question that permeated this writing was: how to conduct an artistic practice that emphasizes the view of adolescents as to political issues that affect them?” (Menegaz, 2019, p. 328–329). “The preparation for the presentations, the assembly of the exhibition, the construction of settings and costumes, rehearsals, change the school routine and engage students in production. According to one of the school teachers, the activity provides ‘youth protagonism,’ since students are in charge of creating, organizing and directing both the scenes and the event itself” (Mundim; Queiroz; Menezes; Rafael; Brandão, 2019, p. 01). “In the approach based on listening, I call attention to the opening of spaces in which the participants themselves can generate their formulations and occupy the centrality in enunciation and the resulting protagonism in all instances of scenic creation” (Souza, 2020, p. 20).
24“This path, created by pedagogy, is that on which the ‘artist‘ will tread, questioning and reflecting on how to address the issues that arise during this same creative process, analytically observing the nature and meaning of what is being created” (Carvalho, 2012, p. 33). “However, we provide creative spaces that enable our students to effectively produce pedagogies in theater from, with, through all these pieces of knowledge and notions? Do we act as the ignorant master of Rancière, who, by ignoring fulfills the function of questioning (and instigating), more than providing answers?” (Ferreira; Hartmann; Machado, 2017, p. 63–64). “Considering that Theater, as we view it, has at its core the function of questioning the current order, we start, in our practice, to find moments where with art we would be able to tension the places of authority and, by tracing these moments, propound the debate – even if in a microscale – about the oppressive structures already so well solidified in the socio-educational regime” (Marques; Concílio; Silveira; Machado, 2020, p. 17–18). “The theatrical experience that truly produces knowledge as a result of intuition, that is, questioning the dictates of intelligence, is the one that allows the person to create problems for oneself and for things” (Sampaio, 2018a, p. 515).
25“On stage, the communities gained more opportunity; if before they appeared as characters of the scene, represented by agents ‘from outside,’ over time they start to act in it, as actors. In many places around the world, initiatives have spread that have discovered theater as a language capable of making the voice of communities arise” (Coutinho, 2012, p. 119). “Thus, theater has the potential to be a tool capable of representing to people the experience of feeling human, of self-knowledge and freedom” (Janiaski Vale; Gomes; Aguiar, 2020, p. 5). “The capacity for dramatic representation is present both in make-believe games and in a theater show represented by professional actors, assuming different forms that develop through an evolutionary and constructive process, from the child to the adult artist” (Koudela, 2002, p. 234). “It is important not to forget that to be in (theatrical) representation for a child is also to show oneself, to represent the part of or for something, to become visible or to be for someone” (Leyva, 2017, p. 94). “It is necessary to enhance the learning of the theatrical language by the beginner, going beyond their skill in the representation of characters” (Martins, 2002, p. 243). “Thus, we know today that a theatrical sign, a presence that represents something, holds a signifier – its material elements –, a signification – its concept –, and a referent, an object to which it refers in reality” (Pupo, 2001, p. 182).
26“It is about overcoming the notion of theater as holder of an a priori knowledge to be transmitted to an audience that does not have it, but as the element that generates perceptions and concerns. An audience of unique individuals who are offered an experience, seeking to generate, in this meeting, a new knowledge different from what was brought by any of the parties” (Perez, 2015, p. 146–147). “How can the body of seniors, within their expressive possibilities, be potentiated, overcoming limits and giving meaning to the scene?” (Soares, 2011, p. 33). “As an actress, theater teacher and teacher trainer, I have tried to overcome the prejudice that is still present when terms such as ‘pedagogical’ or ‘educational’ appear as partners of ‘artistic’” (Vidor, 2011, p. 81).
27“The advocation of art education in school is a political action that adds to the intentions of transforming society, which so craves for the school space” (Catelan; André, 2019, p. 243). “For a theater that proposes itself as a transforming element, as thought by Boal, it is necessary to denaturalize the forms and ways of being crystallized by the forces of conservatism, showing that as they are produced by men they can also be transformed, returning its liberating face to the dimension of aesthetics” (Goldschmidt, 2011, p. 44). “As promoters of practices, those who seek to prepare theater class as a transformative action, we wondered how to devise proposals that respected the individualities, interests and identities of people who live daily with the repressive command of surveillance” (Marques; Concílio; Silveira; Machado, 2020, p. 19). “In this order, the transformative potential that theater can trigger in people’s lives and ways of seeing and thinking was observed” (Réus; Mügge; Conte, 2020, p. 14). “Theater transforms due to the new possibilities of feeling life” (Rodrigues, 2020, p. 19). “Theater Education, in these terms, should be, first of all, an incentive to encounter with the duration of oneself and of the things of the world, which always transforms itself to make each thing unique, even if it can be reduced, by the exercise of intelligence, to categories and representations, to enter principles of communication, for example” (Sampaio, 2018a, p. 517). “Through theater teaching activities there was the legitimation of a transformative education through artistic doing, with considerable learning results and development of the creative potential of the student [...]” (Santos, 2020, p. 18). “In this sense, by stating that theater can be a weapon of liberation, of social and educational transformation, Boal emphasizes the need for transitivity of education, defended by Freire” (Siqueira; Rodrigues; Lara; Campos, 2018, p. 85). “We experience theatrical practice as the emergence of a territory capable of transforming the world and ourselves” (Stürmer; Meimes; Barp; Lima; Silva, 2020, p. 20).
28“Thus, the Jesuits, employees of the multinational Society of Jesus, at the service of colonization/civilization/catechization, use theater as a methodological expedient for the application of their dramaturgy so well developed in the biblical book: the liturgy of the apocalypse, the death of the body and culture of Others” (Almeida, 2018, p. 83). “Titled ‘Art and health: theater in health education,’ the research had as main objective the construction of an analysis on the pedagogical possibilities of utilizing theater in health education processes [...]” (Goldschmidt, 2011, p. 44). “When most of the teachers interviewed say that their artistic presence is an attribute used by them, when they carry out the teaching activity, as it is incorporated into their work, whether it is teaching or artistic and, when they play different roles, to the extent that they are teachers and that they want to establish an attractive communication with their students they are, consciously or not, enabling learning to occur more effectively” (Pessoa Dal Bello, 2013, p. 68).
29“According to his analysis [Vygotsky], artistic works enable individuals to experience human feelings in an intensity and in a way that differentiates these feelings from those normally experienced in everyday life” (Assumpção, 2014, p. 45). “Thus, the child revisits their own desires and logics, making their playing body emerge when experiencing challenges in the process of fruition in art” (Braga; Alves, 2018, p. 64). “Therefore, it was exciting to experience the potential of theater in the process of re-socialization of adolescents deprived of freedom” (Castro, 2020, p. 30).
30As can be seen, the tendency is to invest in the utilization of theater as an instrument to learn and educate – processes taken in a broad way –, by creating, playing, playing games, imagining and representing, which are considered inherent to theatrical practices, thus capable of awakening desire and pleasure in participation, that is, the liking. In the wake of this, theatrical practices are offered as effective in mediating the subject/world relationship, providing this subject with the experience of situations in which they can narrate, in order to be a protagonist in their experiences, their desires, their worldviews, their sensations, etc. Ultimately, throughout and at the end of this process, the aim is to humanize.
31Another noteworthy aspect is that the excerpts listed here prove to be interdependent. An excerpt can easily belong to the domain of the categories of more than one of the verbs presented here, a fact that reinforces the profusions at stake.
32Hence, the pedagogical-artistic discursiveness examined here, by emphasizing the consensus of sayabilities, exposes, to the same extent, the machinery of veridication games (Foucault, 2010) related to the practices of theater pedagogy, which produces the polarization between true and false discourses. Such context tends towards the impossibility of establishing dissent. When operated in circumstances free from dissent practices, in theory, most of the verbs scrutinized above, at least as the ways they were used seem to indicate, would become inert: cracking, denaturalizing, questioning, overcoming and transforming. A paradox arises: the identified tendency to the absence of dissent within such discourses would not oppose certain notions carried by the verb liberate, fomenting in large part, as seen here, the practices of theater pedagogy? From this, two other questions emerge: would the limits of theater pedagogy practices be circumscribed by the domain of the tangle constituted by these 21 verbs and their derivatives? Would there be the possibility of fabulating other theater pedagogy practices free from the scope of such verbs, their notions and their developments?
33There is no way to refer to the notion of freedom, from the point of view of Foucauldian thought, without considering its considerations about the exercise of power, supported, above all, by its attitude of not opposing power and freedom. Firstly, it is necessary to recognize the articles mobilized here as a productive field for the exercise of power, since they contribute to the conduct of conducts, through, in large part, the description and prescription of practices. In fact, according to the French thinker, everything that concerns the interactions of the subject with himself and with his peers would be under the scrutiny of power relations. That said, according to the Foucauldian elucubrations, the forms of intersubjective relationship subject to open field of possibilities, that is, those relations that can be modified, can be considered endowed with some content of freedom.
Power is only exercised over ‘free subjects,’ and while they are ‘free’ – understanding that as individual or collective subjects who have before them a field of possibility in which various conducts, various reactions and different modes of behavior can be presented. Where determinations are saturated there is no relation of power: slavery is not a relation of power when man is chained (it is, then, a physical relation of obligation), but precisely when he can move and, at the limit, escape. Therefore, there is no face to face with power and freedom, with a relationship of exclusion between them (everywhere where power is exercised, freedom disappears); but a much more complex game: in this game, freedom will appear as a condition of the existence of power [...] (Foucault, 2014b, p. 134, our translation).
34Showing what happened, in part, in the discourse of theater pedagogy, at least by the selection of the articles mobilized here, it is notorious a certain tendency to the prostration of the field with regard to its supposed potential to generate diversity of reactions, conducts and thoughts, due to the predominance of a discourse that maintains naturalized notions, always the same. Would theater pedagogy practices be effectively thought of as an open field of possibilities? Perhaps saturated and anesthetized by the illusory search for the unrestricted exercise of freedom as a way of overcoming and extinguishing the facets of power, the field of theater pedagogy practices needs – considering that its desires do not exactly generate the effects it claims to combat – to assume itself as a productive space for the exercise of balanced relations of power, so that, to the same extent, it gives vent to the possibility of failure of this power, exercised by resistance and by dissent, for example. It is in the gap that emerges from this failure that space is opened for the exercise of the forms of freedom, in a game of feedback between power relations and practices of freedom. To this end, perhaps a good start is to hold in a state of suspicion the monochromatic and sweetened tones of happiness, hope, optimism and positivity that predominate within the field of theater pedagogy practices, considering that they can foster other scales of reactions, covering from apathy to vivacity, and vice versa; from sadness to joy, and vice versa; from melancholy to happiness, and vice versa; from resistance to vulnerability, and vice versa; from desire to disinterest, and vice versa; from belief to disbelief, and vice versa; among others.
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