Eugênia Álvaro Moreyra

Eugênia Álvaro Moreyra (née Eugênia Brandão; March 6, 1898 – June 16, 1948) was a Brazilian journalist, actress and theater director, who became president of the professional theater union. A feminist pioneer, she was a leader of the suffrage campaign in Brazil. She was also linked to the Brazilian modernist movement and was a staunch defender of Communist ideals. She was married to the poet and writer Álvaro Moreyra, who played a major role in the renewal of the Brazilian theater, organizing cultural popularization campaigns and working as an actress, director, translator, declaimer and later president of the union of theater professionals.

Biography

Early life and career Eugênia Brandão was born in Juiz de Fora in 1898. Daughter of Dr. Armindo Gomes Brandão and Marie Antoinette Armond Brandão, and granddaughter of Baron Pitangui, she had a comfortable childhood in her hometown, but with the death of Armindo, her family began to face financial difficulties. As her mother could not claim the inheritance left by her husband, which by law should be under the responsibility of her sons, she moved with Eugênia to Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1910s in search of employment. She found work at a branch of the Post Office nearby Lapa, The woman, however, had already been removed from the asylum, but Eugênia continued living on the site in an attempt to obtain information from other inmates. Not being successful, she took the opportunity to report the everyday life of those people in their restrictive confinement. The resulting series of articles, published in chapters for five days in a row, snatched a large number of readers, yielding to the author the deserved recognition from colleagues, competitors and the general public, which would come to nickname her as "the first reporter of Brazil". Before getting married and temporarily abandon her profession, Eugênia circulated by the newsroom of two other famous newspapers of that time, A Notícia and O País. and founded with him in 1927 the Teatro de Brinquedo (Toy Theatre Group), Her house at that time had become a meeting place for bohemians and intellectuals, and among the many attendees were Di Cavalcanti, Vinicius de Morais, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Graciliano Ramos and Jorge Amado. where she shared the cell no. 4 with communist militant Olga Benário Prestes, subsequently performing a three-month season at Teatro Regina, in Rio de Janeiro.

Unionist activity and death Between 1936 and 1938, Eugênia was president of Casa dos Artista, the union of the theatrical class in São Paulo. After Alvaro's death in 1964, a significant number of photographs and clippings from newspapers and magazines about his wife were found in his personnel files. The collection was partly used by him as a reference in the composition of the autobiographical book As Amargas, Não subsequently donated by his relatives to the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa (House of Rui Barbosa Foundation).