Reception of the Philoctetes myth in Brazilian Military Dictatorship

Carlos Henrique Escobar’s Ramom, o Filoteto Americano

Abstract

This paper analyzes the play Ramom, o Filoteto Americano (1975) by Carlos Henrique Escobar, written at the time of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil and winner of the Concurso Nacional de Dramaturgia award, from the perspective of classical reception in order to examine how the playwright makes use of Greek myth in a repressive context. Escobar resignifies the main elements of Sophocles’s Philoctetes to portray feelings of distress in a repressive dictatorship. The paper shows how Ramom is a meaningful critical play that resignifies Philoctetes’ disease in Ramom’s tortured body, echoing the suffering of a repressive, colonized society. It highlights research possibilities in a complex play that leverages Greek legacy in order to explore important themes in an authoritarian moment, which were not noticed by censors due to its radical performance structure and bold writing.