Theaters and the Creation of an Urban Public in São Paulo, Brazil

At the turn of the twentieth century, the rapid transformations of São Paulo, Brazil, astounded residents and visitors alike.  Empty fields gave way to manufactories, swamps to parks, and muddy roads to tree-lined avenues.  Moreover, the influx of immigrants and migrants was making a true “cosmopolis” of the once isolated state capital.  Along with people came new manners, customs, and tastes that led Paulistanos from across the social spectrum to articulate and debate what it meant to be a member of an urban public.  Much of this debate took place in and revolved around theaters, mass spaces that accommodated the scale and diverse preferences of Paulistano society.

This paper will explain how two otherwise opposing groups—legislators and anarchists—conceived of theaters as important schools for developing the urban individual and society.  For lawmakers supporting the construction of a municipal theater, such a space—its structure as well as the activity inside—would serve to realize the “cultural progress” a world-class city required.  For São Paulo’s anarchists, theaters were an ideal medium not only for diffusing anarchism’s central tenets but also for expanding participants’ capacity for rational thought and independent expression.  In both cases, theaters functioned as more than megaphones: audiences would learn not just by listening but also by seeing, displaying, socializing, and perhaps even performing, all within a controllable setting.  Moreover, in establishing the guidelines and goals of theaters’ social role, legislators as well as anarchists relied on and stressed the cosmopolitanism of theaters, that is, the international scope of their performers, repertoires, and ideas.  Unpacking and contextualizing these concepts and their surprising overlaps, this paper argues for the significance of theaters in the development of ideas about urban modernity, and especially the notion of an urban public, in the early twentieth-century city.