Theater and prison: infiltration practices of the performing arts in surveillance spaces

Abstract

Abstract: This text reports on work carried out by us, members of the research project Theater and Prison: infiltration practices of the Performing Arts in surveillance spaces, coordinated by Vicente Concilio. Since 2017, the proposal has articulated teaching, research and extension, providing university actions in spaces of deprivation and restriction of freedom. Based on artistic pedagogical activities, we carried out a participant research, recording these practices in drawings, dramaturgies, creative writings and articles. The main actions of the project take place in the Women's Prison of Florianópolis, at the Women's Juvenile Detention Center (CIF) and at the Custody and Psychiatric Treatment Hospital (HCTP). It is in this context that we seek to develop theater teaching methodologies; each institution with its specific needs. We reflected on their points of contact and their divergences, emphasizing our desire to build a network of research, materializing the work carried out by the group. The theatrical practices that we develop within spaces of deprivation of freedom aim to promote access to education and culture, in an attempt to build a different space, in the form of collective practices. We think about how these practices, when infiltrated in total institutions, can raise a collective thought that does not conform to the situation of incarcerated life, favoring a certain emancipation of these individuals and manifesting our link to a penal abolitionist perspective: Is it possible to think about the end of prisons through the arts?