This postdoctoral research is part of the project 2021/08668-7, developed at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo, under the supervision of Professor Dr. Cecília Antakly de Mello, with the support of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). Initiated in December 2021, the study is dedicated to recovering the immediate critical reception of the first performances of Peking Opera (Jingju 京剧) in Brazil, in 1956, and to analyzing its impact on the cultural landscape of the time. Hailed as the most exceptional event of that season, the introduction of audiences in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to traditional Chinese performance forms was ultimately overlooked by twentieth-century Brazilian theatre historiography—confined to brief mentions or entirely omitted.
Through extensive archival research, numerous records documenting the Brazilian public’s first encounter with Jingju have been uncovered and are currently being examined. These materials provide previously unpublished contributions to the study of theatre history in Brazil, theories of theatrical mobility, discussions surrounding the diplomatic use of theatre in the global context of the Cold War, and broader debates on the limits and potential of both critical and spectator experience.
Based on the discovery that the performances in Brazil were part of an international tour which began in 1955 in Paris, and on the need for a deeper understanding of the global dissemination of 京剧 (Jingju) as a strategic mechanism for capturing the foreign gaze, the project included a twelve-month research fellowship abroad (2023–2024), conducted at the Institut de Recherche en Études Théâtrales of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 (grant number 2022/14218-7). Access to various libraries and archives across Europe enabled in situ consultation of a significant volume of pivotal primary sources and new critical bibliography, while the residency at IRET fostered collaboration with the research group TopoLogiques. Within this framework, I explored the hypothesis of a mise-en-scène of an imagined "Chineseness" within the operational landscape of an intercontinental network of institutions, theater entrepreneurs, cultural intermediaries, critics, and spectators that enabled the circulation of Peking Opera during an era of barriers.