Os Sertões : a luta I = Os Sertões : the struggle I

Dedicated to 'the poet Oswald de Andrade and to the businessman, showman, and actor Sílvio Santos,' the third part of the book tells the causing incident of the war, when a judge from Juazeiro stopped a shipment of wood that was paid for from being delivered for the construction of the New Church of Canudos. Three expeditions were sent by the National Army and defeated, the last one commanded by the famous Colonel Moreira César. The Army faced the humiliation of soldiers deserting and running away, and the impaling of Colonel Tamarindo. He ended up being the main character in a macabre installation on the road to Canudos, created by the Jagunços (thugs from the sertão) and the Mandrakes to intimidate new expeditions. The first movement of A Luta is written in cordel verse (popular string literature form). A Luta I also amplifies the performance space, with trench houses from the invincible Canudos that effectively form a spinal cord in the runway, and the aerial spaces of the mutãs, hideouts used by the Indians in the top branches of trees to hunt the jaguar, which the followers of Antônio Conselheiro reinvented. Lirinha, a musician from the Pernambuco band Cordel do Fogo Encantado, brought his passion for soundtracks, recording sounds from the theater itself, and transforming them into shots, artillery, creating with music the vanguard of the fight. The physical space of the performance is extended to the world, with recorded images, sampled, embroidered, in the streets that surround the theater, in the dressing rooms, in places hidden from the direct sight of the audience, making live cinema.

From 2000 to 2007, Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona worked on the staging of Euclides da Cunha's epic book, Os Sertões, which describes the 19th Century War of Canudos in the Brazilian 'sertão,' lead by Antônio Conselheiro. The final result was a pentalogy, formed by the plays A Terra (2002), O Homem I (2003), O Homem II (2003), A Luta I (2005), and A Luta II (2006), totalizing 27 hours of theater. Os Sertões reads the episodes of the war in light of past and present Brazilian history, and in relation to the struggle of the group against media mogul Sílvio Santos, who wanted to tear down the historic theater.