Amapá: the last cultural frontier

Abstract

This article results from a research conducted in the State of Amapá with contemporary theater groups. Through interviews and documents, actions, practices, activities and implications directly linked to public policies for culture were investigated, whether by the lack of them or by their bad application. Although many of the reports, when clearly described, seem “scandalous” to us, they are widely present and visible, yet silenced. There are, looking for similarities in space and time, records of speeches by the critic and writer Machado de Assis about the role of the State and even the elitist view, in his time, of theatrical performance. Beyond this discussion, this work intends to demonstrate the distance, which is not only geographic, in relation to fiscal incentives for culture in comparison to the other regions of Brazil. Amapá draws itself as a State that is short of its cultural relevance and much of this is due to the actions and policies of public agents.