Moving stage: questions for the theatre of Machado de Assis

Abstract

We will analyze the comedy O caminho da porta, by Machado de Assis, from the perspective of Cecilia Loyola, for whom the author’s dramatic productions offer us realistic apparatuses — like the scenarios and the platitude that motivates the plot — but withdraw their stability, replacing the nuclear structure by an different one, multiple and slippery. An example of this new structure would be Machado’s use of the raisonneur, character that, in this play, is deliberately discredited, which means a considerable dismissal in relation to the realist structure.