Censorship and revolution in Mário Cesariny’s Um auto para Jerusalém: writing, editing and performance

Abstract

Um auto para Jerusalém is a play written by Mário Cesariny that recounts the visit of the child Jesus to the doctors of Ancient Palestine. In the biblical episode fictionalized by the Portuguese surrealist poet and painter, the boy addresses the sages and intellectuals to denounce the world’s problems and to urge them to act, rather than remain mere observers—or even part of the problem. His account is one of misery, violence, and repression. This dramatic text, like the short story by Luiz Pacheco on which it is based, stands as a clear allegory of the long Estado Novo dictatorship. So much so that both works were subject to censorship. Like many other plays, the Auto could only reach the stage after April 25, 1974. Only then could it also circulate freely in book form. The successive rewritings and new editions Cesariny produced (1964, 1976, 1991), as well as its staging during the PREC, allow for a prismatic view of the play in its versions before, during, and after the Carnation Revolution. This article traces the social history of the Auto and offers an analysis particularly of the first two published versions and of the premiere staging by João d’Ávila, which was scheduled to open at the Teatro São Luiz on the very day of the attempted coup of March 11, 1975.