Is the study of actors’ and actresses’ trajectories still a historiographical gap? Notes, possibilities and contributions

apontamentos, possibilidades e contribuições

Abstract

The objective of this article is to reflect on the incipience of biographical studies regarding artistic trajectories in Brazilian historiography, especially of actors and actresses. To do this, firstly, I present a mapping of biographical research carried out by historians in recent years, based on a state-of-the-art exercise/bibliographical review of a portion of this production. Next, I reference some of the few major studies that, in History, investigated the trajectories of actors and actresses, and discuss the gap that still exists in relation to this type of approach. In a third part, I point out some possibilities and paths to be explored by historians who, perhaps, are interested in studying such itineraries. Finally, I comment on the issues that I have studied in my doctoral thesis, a work in progress that deals with the artistic trajectory of Fernanda Montenegro, and whose objective is to understand the autobiographical project undertaken by the actress over time. By being concerned with the production of artistic memory, the work is inserted alongside biographical studies and the history of the present time, operating in this gap and contributing to an expansion of research on artistic trajectories in Brazil.