A encruzilhada de Kossi Efoui assentada no orixá Èṣù : relações epistemológicas sobre a dramaturgia afrodiaspórica

Abstract

This Master’s Thesis analyzes the work A Encruzilhada, by the Togolese playwright Kossi Efoui, which portrays the universe of four characters: the Ponto, the Woman, the Poet and the Cana at a crossroads without exit. In the late 1980s, this play won the prize at the Inter-African Theater Competition of France Radio International - RFI, which made it one of the main African works in contemporaneity, since its dramatic poetics breaks with the traditional form of a African theater, which generally has characteristics related to folklore in view of the condition human being and its relations in society. In this way, the play had its first translation into Portuguese and staged on Brazilian stages by the Teatro Coletivo En Classe et En Scene from the University of Brasilia. This group is composed of students and external members from the University, which are interested in the production and staging of theatrical texts of Frenchspeaking African playwrights from Sub-Saharan Africa. In this sense, the objectives of this Master’s Thesis are present in the analysis of this dramaturgy by Kossi Efoui, with the perspectives of afro-brazilian cosmovisions centered on the candomblé religion of the nation Ketu. In this way, the analysis is based on the epistemologies of the orixá Èṣù, which is one of the most controversial entities in the pantheon of African-based religions. The epistemologies about this orixá are present in the theoretical approach of the following chapters: Èṣù Yangi, who portrays the dynamic principle; Èṣù Lonan, the dispatch present in the staging and Èṣù Bàrá, the analysis of the dramaturgical corpus of the play. These different nomenclatures exposed in the chapters represent the qualities of Èṣù, which were invoked in this dissertation, in order to understand the complex poetic dimension of Senhor dos Caminhos, present at the crossroads African and Afro-Brazilian. For these discussions, we turn to the theorists Sylvie Chalaye, Aimé Césaire, Abdias do Nascimento, Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, Patrice Pavis, Kossi Efoui, among others, that allowed us a theoretical reflection on this drama in contemporary times. Finally, this research follows one path, but others may arise at this theoretical crossroads, as we are committed to reinventing and reinterpreting the world.