Workshop / Masterclass :: Literature and Theater: inspiring sources of modern brazilian telefiction

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The origin of the telenovela is closely linked to the literature. From the French serials to the influence of styles such as Romanticism and Modernism, it all served as a basis for the formation of this televisual narrative. It takes from the literature its themes, characters and techniques through adaptations or free inspirations. The dialogue between literature and telenovela is still strong and constantly feeds the television production.

 If, in the early days, the reasons for the telenovela searching in literature for its themes were in the shortage of the skilled workforce for television writing, was from the 1970s, with the modernization and industrialization promoted by TV Globo in the genre of telefiction in general that the literature (including the dramatic) became a key element to our national teledramaturgy. A rite of passage as an inspiring source of Modern Brazilian Telenovela and telefiction as a whole.

From “Medeia” by Euripides, “Romeo and Juliet” by Shakespeare, through “Morte e Vida Severina” by João Cabral de Melo Neto, to “O Bem-Amado” by Dias Gomes, and “A Escada com Os Ossos do Barão” by Jorge Andrade. From “A Dama das Camélias” by Alexandre Dumas Filho, reaching “O Tempo e O Vento” by Erico Verissimo) and “Grande Sertão: Veredas” by Guimarães Rosa, to “Amores Roubados”, and  "A Emparedada da Rua Nova" by Carneiro Vilela. From “Helena” by Machado de Assis, “Senhora” by José de Alencar, “A Moreninha” by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo,”Escrava Isaura” by Bernardo Guimarães, “Gabriela, Cravo e Canela” and “Tieta do Agreste” by Jorge Amado, “Ciranda de Pedra” by  Lygia Fagundes Telles, getting to “Êta Mundo Bom!”, inspirade on Voltaire and Monteiro Lobato; it follows literature and theater as an inspiring sap for the vast and immense forest of television fiction, daily consumed by an audience eager for emotions, identifications, projections. In the coming and going of literature and theater in anthropophagic confluence with the telenovela, miniseries and series, the secular artistic expressions return to the public amplified by the power of the electronic media. Renewed by new languages and together with the telenovela, they maintain the essence that is to portray the action of man in time and space.

 The modern Brazilian telenovela (and its derivatives as miniseries) - a catalyst for literary and theatrical expressions – continues in its artistic and social development in an autonomous way, as a product of the aesthetics of contemporary audiovisual and, despite of our individuality, makes us feel part of a whole. After all, literature, theater, and telenovela represent the same record that seeks, in one way or another, to illuminate the intricate mazes of human behavior.