Theater of "bóias-frias": rethinking anthropology of performance

The anthropology of performance, as understood by Victor Turner, provides interesting perspectives for the analysis of what may be referred to as the "theater of bóias-frias". Conversely, this theater may be of special interest for purposes of rethinking some of the main propositions which have arisen on the borders between anthropology and performance. Considering the specificity of "the practice which calculates the place from which one views things" of this theater, several topics present themselves as guidelines for the text which follows: 1) social dramas, 2) relations between social and aesthetic dramas, 3) symbols and montage, and 4) theater paradigms in anthropology. In this exercise to rethink some of the "classic" contributions of Victor Turner, Erving Goffman, and Richard Schechner, "elective affinities" have been found between, on the one hand, the writings of Walter Benjamin and Brechtian theater, and, on the other, the dramaturgical principles of the bóias-frias