El Alto | Queer: Gender Sexuality and the Arts in the Americas

Brazil / Brasil
120
RENATA
CARVALHO
The Brazilian Queen Jesus
La Reina Jesús Brasileña
Renata Carvalho is an actress, director,
transpologist 1 and activist. After debuting in
theatre as a teenager in the 1990s, she excelled
(still a male actor back then) in her portrayal of
female characters in plays by some of the world’s
greatest playwrights. Before being invited to
play Jesus in The Gospel According to Jesus,
Queen of Heaven, Renata spent ten years working
as a theatre director and, simultaneously, as
a social worker providing preventive healthcare
and assistance to travesti and transsexual
people in Santos, Brazil. Through the latter,
she came into contact with one of the most
vulnerable communities in Brazil, and it was
through this experience that she discovered
and understood herself as travesti, realising the
potential political and critical agency behind
this identity and the need to liberate it from
social stigma. Despite winning awards and
critical recognition, she struggled finding new
roles - largely due to the stigma around the
travesti body, banned from spaces of power
in society and from the world of the arts in
general. Her performance in The Gospel gave her
prominence and acknowledgment as an artist.
Its production caused a national commotion and
it was censored and attacked by conservative
groups that exploited politically the issue and
tried to censor queer arts, and against which
Renata became an emblematic leader. She is
now an active voice in the Brazilian LGBTQI+
community, and does research about the trans
body in theatre. She is one of the founders of
Coletivo T, a transgender arts collective, and
participated in the creation of Monart (Brazil’s
National Movement of Trans Artists), which seeks
to increase trans representation across
the arts. She co-developed the play Domínio
Público (Public Domain), which has been
staged in festivals around the world. Recently,
she premiered Manifesto Transpofágico
(Transpophagic Manifesto), a monologue where
she historicises the travesti experience, using her
body as a vehicle.
1 - Transpology is how Renata describes her field of
study, which involves the analysis, compilation and
dissemination of the physical, social and cultural history
of the trans community.
Renata Carvalho es actriz, directora, transpóloga 1
y activista. Luego de debutar en teatro como
adolescente durante la década de 1990, se
destacó (todavía como actor en ese entonces)
© Luciane Pires Ferreira