Tráfico e violência urbana em cena: Essa Noite Mãe Coragem.

Contemporary theater has explored aspects of reality, including urban violence in recent Brazilian plays. It is discussed how urban violence generated by drug trafficking in particular, social exclusion and extreme poverty could be reframed in theatrical production Essa Noite Mãe Coragem, inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, staged by Cia ZAP 18, from Belo Horizonte city, with a parallel between the Thirty Years War (Germany, 1618 to 1648) and the war on drug trafficking founded in the most important Brazilian cities. It is seen how fragments of the original text, mixed with testimonies of the actors, the presence in the cast of people from the community where the company is located and the use of popular songs that address poverty and social exclusion have acted synergistically to present situations of extreme violence in the country, out of the context of sensationalism of media. In the play violence is shown in a dialectical way, as something that should be stated and understood as an aspect of society and not as a break of a supposedly ideal order. This approach has been fueling the debate on the subject, always performed at the end of the presentations and where every form of understanding of violence has been submitted by the audience, dialectically. Keywords: Violence. Drug trafficking. Dialectical theater. Etnoscenology.