Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona
Lina Bo Bardi's scaffolded theatre in Bixiga, where the audience lines a 50-metre corridor stage.
The Oficina company was founded in 1958 by law students in São Paulo, among them José Celso Martinez Corrêa, and became one of the defining forces in Brazilian theatre with productions such as O Rei da Vela in 1967. A fire destroyed the original auditorium in 1966. From 1984 Lina Bo Bardi worked with Edson Elito on a replacement, completed in the early 1990s and opened in 1993 with Ham-Let; Bo Bardi called it a street rather than a theatre, and it was her last completed building.
Inside, a walkway about 1.5 metres wide and 50 metres long runs the length of the narrow plot, with roughly 350 spectators ranged along scaffolding galleries on four levels and a glazed wall opening the space to the sky and the neighbouring land. The fabric is deliberately raw: scaffolding tube, plywood, timber decking and exposed brick. The building is protected at municipal, state and federal level, IPHAN listing it in 2010. Since Zé Celso's death in 2023 the company has been led by Marcelo Drummond.
Highlights
- Fifty-metre corridor stage flanked by scaffolding galleries
- Lina Bo Bardi's last completed building, opened in 1993
- Glazed side wall opening the auditorium to the sky
- Weekend guided visits to the theatre and the archive house
