“Giving doesn’t hurt, what hurts is resisting or In peace with the ‘dita-dura'” is the Theater of Brazil’s recent history. On stage, the military dictatorship and the cultural resistance to the “long night journey” that was the generals’ government. And the one telling this story is a product of this very dictatorship – a child of the “Medici government” who, in the midst of total repression, created a theatrical language capable of resisting and outsmarting all forms of dictatorship: the Tá na Rua group.
“Giving doesn’t hurt” was the group’s response to the first signs of sabotage against Lula’s government and the entire defamatory campaign that followed, which resulted, years later, in the 2016 judicial and media coup and the unfortunate election of Bolsonaro in 2018. The play ended with the warning that “the wolves were in sheep’s clothing” ready to take power again.
This play was invited to perform in Paris as part of the Brazil Year in France program in 2005.