Nos arredores do “fede a peixe”: repensando as opressões com o Teatro Jornal na UEB Vereador José Carlos Costa Pereira, município de Paço do Lumiar/MA

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the use of Newspaper Theater, a technique of the Theater of the Oppressed, as a pedagogical tool to strengthen youth protagonism and critical consciousness in a peripheral school context. The research was conducted at the Vereador José Carlos Costa Pereira Basic Education Unit, located in the Vila Epitácio Cafeteira neighborhood, in the municipality of Paço do Lumiar (MA), a territory marked by social inequalities, symbolic stigmatization, and recurring situations of violence and oppression. The central problem guiding the study is to understand how theater education, through Newspaper Theater, can contribute to students' critical reflection on oppressive relationships experienced in everyday school and community life, encouraging practices of resistance, participation, and social transformation. The research adopts a qualitative approach, of an exploratory nature, based on action research, in which the researcher simultaneously acts as a teacher-mediator of the pedagogical process. The research corpus consists of theatrical practices carried out with 7th-grade students of Elementary School, including theatrical games, scene improvisations, discussion circles, entries in a logbook, and oral narratives produced by the participants themselves, here referred to as spect./students. The data analysis is supported by the assumptions of Discourse Analysis, especially those of Pêcheux and Orlandi, combined with the contributions of Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, and Flávio Desgranges. The results show that Newspaper Theater enables the re-signification of naturalized discourses about oppression, identity, and belonging, by transforming everyday experiences into scenic and discursive material. A progressive shift is observed among students from positions marked by silence to more critical, participatory, and proactive stances, characterizing the emergence of youth protagonism both in the school setting and in community relationships. It is concluded that Teatro Jornal, by integrating aesthetics, politics, and education, constitutes a powerful pedagogical practice for the democratization of theater teaching in public schools, contributing to formative processes committed to emancipation, listening, and social transformation in peripheral contexts.