O palhaço gargalhou, o mágico iludiu e o acrobata arriscou: artes circenses como metáforas da vida.

Abstract

To evade, to back flip, to imagine, to laugh, to fear. These are the most important verbs to compose the pages of this dissertation which was nurtured by playing cards, with trapezes and red noses. The circus languages are spaces of (de)construction whose multiplicity led us to think about it from the clowns ―Major Palito‖ and ―Allan‖, the magician ―Alisson Souza‖ and the acrobats ―Tito‖ and ―Alicate‖. With this perspective, we drew pathways to research how these circus arts are experienced in the city of Campina Grande as way of art and sociability. We took this present time as reference, but as this is about history assignment, we report to the past several times in order to find continuities and ruptures that could answer the various questions presented throughout this written essay, by an unceasing movement and at times unexpected (as the movements of an acrobat in the public's perspective) that without any theological intention has led us to other paths, which mostly occurred by this assignment and qualitative methodology presented in oral history, that plays with the researcher as it directs him by unpredictability and subjectivities of the interviewee. Therefore, we have added to the circus and historiographical discussions other ways of thinking and representing the circus universe beyond the canvas and the ring, intrinsically related to its practices and consumptions, presenting the city of Campina Grande through the different faces of laughter, risks and illusions in order to waken in the public feelings of fear, joy, escape, wonder, anger, fright, curiosity, composing a colorful and subjective spectacle.