The Drama and the Social Choreography between the Carnation Revolution and the anti-austerity movement ‘Que se Lixe a Troika’

Abstract

In the field of theatre and performance studies, Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić define social choreography as the rehearsal and production of a repertoire of gestures and movements that reinforce a social order; and social drama as a process that collapses a social order and rehearses its reconfiguration. Using material from different archives, I propose in this paper to apply these concepts to two moments of social drama in contemporary Portuguese history and to understand how they speak to each other through an artistic repertoire. While the revolution of April 25 1974, achieved institutional victories that persist to this day – the National Health Service being one example –, the promise of economic and cultural democracy hasn’t been fulfilled. Since then, the annual April 25 parade simultaneously celebrates the victories of the revolution and the revolution yet to be achieved, an orderly and choreographed annual protest to demand the unachieved social drama. This choreography of social drama was defined around an artistic repertoire socially recognized as representative of April 25 which, in 2012, at the peak of austerity policies, with the largest unchoreographed demonstrations since May 1 1974, resorted to the song that signalled the beginning of the revolutionary military coup – Grândola Vila Morena – for mobilization and resistance against austerity. The choreographed social drama of April 25 thus defined the choreography of the social drama of Que Se Lixe a Troika.