ASSITEJ Magazine 2019

“The current society
strives to erase the fact
that the child has a body.”
In analyzing the repercussions of this event, which
also included an investigation of pedophilia by the
District Attorney of São Paulo, virtual lynching,
threats, violent protests and even physical assault
on museum staff, the Brazilian writer Eliane Brum
concludes “the current society strives to erase the
fact that the child has a body.” 1 For Brum, it stems
from cultural constructions that erase the body of
the conceptions of childhood and conceive the child
as a being living in a world separate from the adult
world. The issues raised by the author around this
event, which has generated other developments
such as censorship in art exhibitions in some
Brazilian states, are extremely provocative to the
understanding of the relations between art and
childhood currently.
For the last four years I have been researching the
presence of children in contemporary theatre and
I have found some very interesting experiences
that challenge the invisibilization process of
the child’s body mentioned by Brum. Due to
their peculiar approaches and partnerships with
children, performances by artists such as the
Oficina Uzina Uzona (Brazil), Rimini Protokoll
(Germany), Romeo Castellucci (Italy) Gob Squad
(Germany) and Milo Rau (Switzrland) stimulate us
to think about the child’s body in performing arts
and in contemporary Western society.
Sometimes the discussions about the presence of
children in these performances bring a real concern
about the well-being and safety of the child (and
it is absolutely necessary to think about it) but
the censorship and the attacks may prevent the
maintenance of spaces and times in art where the
children can exercise an essential right which is the
freedom of expression and freely live an embodied
childhood.
Unfortunately, as Brum says in her article, certain
contexts show that not all children “deserve” to be
protected, only those who are considered “ours”.
Current events such as the war in Syria, military
interventions in Rio de Janeiro, and the detention
of children in “cages” on the US border highlight
the contradictions of the main argument used by
conservative groups to attack artists, contending
that every child needs to be protected from the
“evil” of the world. These terrible human actions,
often supported by those same conservative
groups, reveal which children “deserve” our
protection and which of them we must protect
ourselves from. Thus, they tragically define who
are children and who are not children in the eyes of
contemporary society.
Faced with this brutal reality, the contemporary
theatre, and many other artistic experiences
with children (dealing with issues such as gender,
race, ethnicity, sexuality, violence, immigration,
and religion) could be and already are a form of
resistance against the confinement of children,
not only those in true cages, but also those in
their homes, their schools, their police-controlled
neighborhoods, and their war-torn countries.
Therefore, these art experiences are acts of
resistance against the invisibilization of their
bodies and the silencing of their voices.
1
From the article The invention of childhood without body
published in the newspaper El Pais Brasil in March 2018.
64 Towards the Unknown – Confronting the Present