Mistérios Gozosos

Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona – São Paulo

Mistérios Gozosos is a play by Teatro Oficina, directed by José Celso Martinez Corrêa and created from the poem O Santeiro do Mangue by Oswald de Andrade. The author is one of the main representatives of Brazilian Modernism, whose work, deeply political, joyful, and mocking, inspired the Tropicália movement of the 1960s. The action takes place in the Mangue of Rio de Janeiro—the most famous prostitution district in Brazil in the 1940s—and tells the story of a seller of saints torn between his family, who lives on the hill, and a young prostitute from the Mangue.

The first version of the play came to life in the streets of downtown São Paulo during Carnival 1994, for over 4000 spectators. It later had a run at Teatro Oficina from December 1994 to May 1995, receiving critical acclaim and sparking a lawsuit by a church member for alleged desecration of religious objects. Twenty-one years later, in 2015, José Celso Martinez Corrêa staged the play again, this time with music by José Miguel Wisnik and the composers’ collective from Teatro Oficina.