Os Confederados

In 1867 several thousand refugees from the former Confederacy landed the SS South America at the Brazilian town of Santa Barbara soon thereafter renamed Americana. Here in the western hemisphere's last slave society they tried to recreate the world they had lost. Os Confederados begins with the story of these first pioneers as they arrive in Brazil only to realize they have very different ideas about what legacies of Dixie are worth preserving.From that opening the play jumps one hundred and fifty years to 2017. Descendants of the original Confederados are holding their annual Festa a celebration of...something? As the characters struggle to reconcile their Confederado identity with their Brazilian values the same contradictions evident in the founding generation reassert themselves. After all what does it mean to celebrate a past you don't really remember?Os Confederados is a play about family about history and about memory. It's about race and gender and Brasilidade. It's about why we hold on and how we let go.