After the Silence review – compelling tale of racial inequalities and slavery in Brazil

There seems to be no dividing line between reality and fiction in Christiane Jatahy’s documentary-style show. It begins as a lecture about the history of Brazilian slavery, then turns into an exposé about the murder of a social justice activist given by the women to whom he was closest. Video evidence accompanies their testimonies; it feels like a people’s court, allowing the outraged and grief-stricken a hearing.
A triptych of back screens feature interviews and footage from their wider community in the rural mountainous region of Bahia, and the actors (Juliana França, Gal Pereira and Caju Bezerra, all phenomenal) chip in with their personal stories, as well as explaining or responding to the events on screen. It slowly dawns that the show is deliberately blurring lines between reality and drama, as well as screen and stage. The result is convoluted and powerful but for all its frustrations, it makes for an arresting experience.
Writer and director Jatahy last year brought her show Dusk to Edinburgh and this is the final part of her “horror trilogy”. It focuses on the gross racial inequalities that stem from the legacy of slavery. We see how that manifests in everyday life for this community, from hostile landowners to police forces that collude with the murderous silencing of protesters.
Spoken in Portuguese with surtitles, it is loosely based on Itamar Vieira Junior’s novel Torto Arado, about two sisters whose family live as tenant farmers in the rural Brazilian Chapada Diamantina region, and Eduardo Coutinho’s documentary Cabra Marcado para Morrer, about the assassination in 1962 of peasant leader João Pedro Teixeira, on the order of local landowners. Combined with that is Jatahy’s own footage of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous communities.
The drama here jumps from a protester’s death to his wife’s story, along with that of her sister, and it then veers into another tale of repression within marriage towards the end. It is unruly and frustrating but also emotionally compelling, partly because of its look and sound.
The three big screens occasionally open up to the most wondrous vistas of trees and mountains on Thomas Walgrave’s set. Percussionist Aduni Guedes adds foley-like sounds (designed by Pedro Vituri) to the action on the screen, while the actors interact with the footage too, adding comments in between the interviews. When the actors make rousing speeches or give their testimonies, the people on screen stand and listen, and when the community on screen dances in celebration, the performers join in, playing deep thrumming music (composed by Guedes and Vitor Araújo) which carries the full force of the show’s immersive power.
None of it has a conventional shape and it seems like a gnomic arthouse-film-cum-installation at its most indulgent. But I found myself asking if this was real or fictive over and over, which became an important but elusive distinction. And the morning after, the story not only stuck in my mind but took on bigger life, as all good theatre surely aspires to do.