Caranguejo Overdrive and the National Mismatch

Abstract

Like prose and poetry, Brazilian dramaturgy has also addressed issues related to national identity, however, since the history of modern Brazilian theater has traveled through more complex trajectories than other genres, the investigation about what is being Brazilian also happened in other ways. In Caranguejo Overdrive, a play by Pedro Kosovski created in a collaborative process with Aquela Cia. de Teatro, the author, telling the story of a crab-man who returns traumatized from the Paraguayan War after years on the battlefield, being no longer able to recognize his hometown that was completely modified by progress, collaborates with the identification of paths that try to elaborate the complex national scene, bringing out a text that, in its own structure, questions the socio-historical formation of Brazil, reveals the precariousness of current human relations and the truncated constitution of national identity, which, as a result of the mismatch between discourse (It is necessary to modernize) and the concrete action (Change without overcoming), shows how the history of Brazil repeats itself uninterruptedly to the point of being incorporated into the very form of the national theater.