From historical to fictional: a reading of Queimados, a scenic document

Abstract

The play Queimados, published in 1977, by Luiz Guilherme Santos Neves, is proposed by the author himself as a stage document. It was based on the historical event that took place in 1849 in the municipality of Serra, in the state of Espírito Santo, when a group of slaves organized an insurrection. In this article, we will try to present a reading of the work based on Gyorgy Lukács' (2011) theory of historical drama, in which the author discusses how the dramatic figuration can be organized based on a dated historical event and what are the characteristics that particularize the so-called historical drama. In the dramatic genre, a relatively short and conclusive period is captured, focusing exactly on the dramatic moment in the character's life when a set of accumulated consequences are transformed into action. It is also possible, through the text itself in the body of the play, and in the paratext presented by the author, to probe how the creative process of writing took place.