The Devourer: Zé Celso, life and art
Book: The Devourer: Zé Celso, life and art

Interviews, historical testimonies and unpublished essays make up an editorial feast about José Celso Martinez Corrêa — Zé Celso, founder of Workshop Theater. Released in May 2025, the book of Sesc Editions pays homage to the famous director, who marked the history of Brazilian art with his political criticism, the cannibalism he put on stage and the choice of a poetic style that celebrated freedom. The Devourer: Zé Celso, life and art It is organized by journalist Claudio Leal and compiles texts by different authors to provide us with a multifaceted portrait of the artist, who passed away in July 2023 at the age of 86. 

Born in 1937 in Araraquara (SP), José enrolled in the Largo São Francisco Law School in the 1950s; but instead of becoming a lawyer, he joined other students to create a theater group. In 1961, they professionalized the Teatro Oficina, “designed to question, provoke, invert, and shake everything up,” as writer and journalist Ignácio Loyola Brandão points out. 

The company would change its composition and aesthetic language over the years, persisting to this day as an important artistic collective. If in 1964, art critic Sábato Magaldi referred to one of the group's productions — Petty bourgeois, by playwright Máximo Gorki — as “the best realistic show that Brazilian Theater has ever staged”; in 1967, they surprised. They changed the course of national theater with the first staging of the king of the candle, text by Oswald de Andrade. The various plays that followed in the history of Oficina proposed artistic resistance to the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship and a latent critique of the middle class. In the 1990s, they gave Brazilian features to Greek tragedy, with the iconic staging of The bacchantes, by Euripides and, in the 2000s, they reconstructed the sertões, by Euclides da Cunha, to think about the Canudos massacre and the possibilities of de-massacre in modern Canudos. Since its foundation, as an amateur group, Zé has been at the forefront of the company. “There were more than thirty great shows and he excelled in each one”, highlights Ignácio Loyola Brandão. On the day of his death, as a result of a fire in the apartment where he lived, Zé continued working, this time dedicated to a theatrical production of the fall of the sky, by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert. 

As in this matter, in The devourer, the director and Teatro Oficina are two spheres that sometimes mix. The story of the creator and the creature are not the same, but they intertwine and cross each other. This can perhaps be explained by the fact that, as Bete Coelho writes in the book, Zé had a “way of life in which life is not separated from profession”.  

The banquet 

In one of the first texts in this reading, musician José Miguel Wisnik alerts us to another central characteristic of Zé: “his appetite for life in action was astonishing”. The publication seems to reflect this, since simply writing a profile of the artist would not be enough to account for this hunger for the world. 

As artist Monique Gardenberg says, “Zé was interested in things, in others. He asked me so many questions. When we spoke on the phone, we would stay for hours. The world had to stop, he wanted to know everything. What I was reading, if I was enjoying it, why I was enjoying it, what I thought of a certain film, what I was working on.” The devourer is constructed in this way, it proposes a long conversation, which goes from José's intimacy — with personal texts from family members and long-time friends, as well as childhood photos — to the broad spheres of his theatrical work and the photographic records thereof.

The publication takes the title one step further and seems to bring with it the anthropophagic instinct, by devouring characteristics of Teatro Oficina itself. Like the company's plays, it is long-lasting: built in 11 acts in more than 500 tall pages — a book of great stature, which takes us back to the architecture of the group's headquarters, designed by Lina Bo Bardi and Edson Elito in Jaceguai 520. Pairing with the numerous choirs of Zé Celso's plays, it brings together a large group of authors and interviewees — 49 to be exact. Among these names are great artists of MPB, such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Maria Bethânia; names that marked the history of theater, such as Gerald Thomas and Ruy Cortez; central figures in Teatro Oficina of the past — such as Ítala Nandi and Renato Borghi — and of the present — such as Camila Motta and Sylvia Prado; theorists who accompanied Martinez Corrêa in the history of Brazilian art and Marcelo Drummond, who accompanied José in the loves of life. 

The book also features a graphic design by Mateus Valadares, which reveals a spine with visible seams, a triple cover that unfolds into a poster and a colorful image notebook with photos from different periods of the director's life and work. 

 

The mouth that eats everything

“Forgive this text, folks, there is no other way,” writes Ignácio Loyola Brandão in his account of his friend Zé Celso. We do not forgive, but we are grateful. There is beauty in being led by some texts in this tone, which delve into the innermost depths of the Brazilian theatrical celebrity to remind us that “Zé was a normal person. He needed to eat, shit, take a bath. Hours in the bath until the Cantareira dried,” as Marcelo Drummond reports.

In parallel, texts such as those by professors Silvia Fernandes and Paulo Bio Toledo provide a theoretical look at the director's contributions to the national artistic and political scene. They take us through his references, his contact with Glauber Rocha, and the context that allowed the birth of Teatro Oficina — alongside Teatro de Arena and parallel to Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (TBC). Thus, they transform the book into an important study material for researchers in the field, in addition to being a beautiful and nostalgic memorial. 

We are also led to detailed and historical descriptions of those who lived productions directed by Zé Celso, as is the case of Camila Mota's text about the sertões; or fought alongside him for Bixiga Park, like the architect Marília Piraju. We also come across poetic and inventive essays in language, such as that of Letícia Coura, an artist from Teatro Oficina, and the writings of Zé Celso himself (whose bold, capital letters and spacing give body to the word). 

This is because the director would not leave a literary essay like this without some moments of interruption. Throughout the book, Claudio Leal carefully weaves together old texts by Zé, which complement the panorama of each chapter. He also takes the bold step of including in the book agreements and disagreements with these worldviews of the honoree. 

“Zé was provocative. He had no problem with adversity, nor with diversity,” says Bete Coelho. And so we find diversity and adversity as we leaf through the book. The conflicting opinions of actresses Myriam Mehler and Ítala Nandi about the radical gestures at Teatro Oficina are an example. As well as the sequence of texts about the king of the candle. In it, we are confronted with Augusto de Campos's harsh preference for Oswald's poems and writings over the historical staging of Teatro Oficina and, on the next page, it is Tom Zé who takes us by the hand, leading us through the emotional tears he experienced in 1967 when he left the theater with his "heart broken" by the play that would revolutionize Brazilian theater.

It is with these counter-scenarios that The Devourer: Zé Celso, life and art tells the story of Martinez Corrêa, from childhood to prospects for a future – now without Zé. As actor Renato Borghi points out, “Zé Celso changed the panorama of Brazilian theater”. From now on, as Camila says, we must “adore his work and his legacy that is present in many bodies, shattered into a thousand pieces, devoured by many people”. 

Ítala Nandi recalls that when the Teatro Oficina caught fire in 1966, while she and other actors were crying, “Zé disappeared and came back in a suit. He was taking pictures on top of the rubble, saying: 'A new theater will emerge here'”. In the face of the new fire in 2023, the company continues to work on this theatrical heritage and the strength to create a new theater. As Camila Mota concludes, “it's going to be a lot of work... Everything to do!”


Sign up for our newsletter

Leave a comment

Please write a comment
Please write your name