Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento holds a degree from the Acting Conservatory Casa das Artes de Laranjeiras and a Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An actor, director and scholar, she began a professional stage career while living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the United States, Tatinge Nascimento joined Cleveland’s New World Performance Laboratory (NWPL). Together with this company, she participated in Jerzy Grotowski’s final Objective Drama session at UC-Irvine, and performed in Europe, North and South America. Tatinge Nascimento’s performance and scholarly interests include intercultural performance, the intersection of ritual and theatre, and Brazilian post-dictatorship theatre. She has contributed articles to Theatre Research International (United States), Biblioteca Teatrale (Italy), Didaskalia (Poland) and Folhetim (Brazil). She is the recipient of a research fellowship from the Wesleyan University Center for the Humanities and was a scholar with the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards’ Tracing Roads Across. Recent awards include an Arts Grant from the Consulate General of Brazil in New York to direct Pornographic Angel, her published adaptation of Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues’ short stories. Before that, Tatinge Nascimento directed the North American premieres of Garcia Lorca’s Once Five Years Pass and Nelson Rodrigues’ Lady of the Drowned and The Deceased Woman, as well as her stage adaptation of Garcia Marquez’ short story Eyes of a Blue Dog. She is an Associate Professor of Theater at Wesleyan University.

Research Project

Brazilian Group Theatre Through the Dictatorship and After: Rehearsing Community, Performing Resistance

My current project examines the organization, political resistance and artistic contributions of Brazilian theatre collectives under the 1964 military coup and after. My research links the work developed by current independent theatre groups in three major cities—Teatro da Vertigem (São Paulo), Cia. dos Atores (Rio de Janeiro) and Grupo Galpão (Belo Horizonte)—to the legacy of previous theatre collectives working under the censorship and political duress of the military rule. Raised during the undemocratic silence created by government-imposed censorship of the arts and media, the post-dictatorship generation reaffirms its predecessor’s collaborative ethos while presenting new commentaries on the nation’s recent political history and postcolonial condition. Teatro da Vertigem creates environmental performances, Cia. dos Atores explores Brazilian modernism’s antropofagia, and Grupo Galpão experiments with popular forms and circus techniques.

Selected Publication

• Nascimento, C. T., Crossing Cultural Borders Through the Actor’s Work: Foreign Bodies of Knowledge, London: Routledge, 2008.