Processos criativos em Performance Negra Narrativa: a poética griô dos arcos musicais em África e na diáspora

Abstract

This thesis is the result of a doctoral research project carried out within the Graduate Program in Arts, Cultures, and Technologies at the Federal University of Goiás. This investigation sought to problematize and create theatre from an Afro-centered paradigm. The research aimed to examine methodological procedures for creative processes in Black Performances within the field of the Performing Arts, drawing on the uses and symbolisms of the berimbau and other African musical bows—especially the xitende and the makhoyane—as well as the performance of their players, their practices, and their artistic creations. To this end, the theoretical foundation was built upon the concepts of performance, Black Performance, Traditional Black Performance, Black Theater, ancestry, and crossroads, resulting in a theoretical-conceptual elaboration of the notion of Narrative Black Performance. The methodology guiding this research is grounded in the notions of poetnography and lived fieldwork, which together form a methodological approach to creative work in the Performing Arts. Thus, drawing on bibliographic research, fieldwork, and practical laboratories of scenic creation conducted in collaboration with the Swati artist Thobile Makhoyane, the thesis defended in this study is that Narrative Black Performance is situated at a crossroads between Narrative Theater, storytelling or story narration, Black Theater, and Traditional Black Performances. As such, it encompasses artistic productions within the Performing Arts that draw from the poetics and knowledge present in the performance of orality and the oral textuality of African and Afro-diasporic expressive manifestations forged at crossroads, with the intention of creating narratives, musicalities, and body dramaturgies through a griot-inspired poetics that tells, sings, plays, and dances stories from an Afro-centered and counter-colonial paradigm