page_title: Eugênia Álvaro Moreyra
section_title: Marriage and political and cultural life
hierarchical_section_title: Eugênia Álvaro Moreyra / Biography / Marriage and political and cultural life
caption_attribution_description: Português: Casal Eugênia e Álvaro Moreyra, em caricatura de autoria de Alvarus
context_page_description: Eugênia Álvaro Moreyra 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.
context_section_description: At the height of her career as a street reporter, Eugênia met the poet Álvaro Moreyra, who attended the same intellectual and bohemian circles. In love, they got married in 1914. Eugênia then adopted her husband's name and surname, and left her journalistic career on hold to devote to her new family life. The couple had eight children, four of which survived infancy: Sandro Luciano, João Paulo, Álvaro Samuel and Rosa Marina. She participated in the Modern Art Week of 1922, and founded with him in 1927 the Teatro de Brinquedo (Toy Theatre Group), whose intent was to manifest modernist ideas. Between 1928 and 1932, she made several excursions to the countryside and outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, introducing the public to modern European authors.
  With the fragmentation of the Brazilian modernist movement after the Revolution of 1930, Eugênia went on to defend along with Alvaro Moreyra, Pagú and Oswald de Andrade, leftist positions, actively participating in the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (National Liberation Alliance), consequently being persecuted by the Vargas government. Influenced by Carlos Lacerda, Eugênia and Alvaro affiliate themselves to the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB), and in May 1935 she joined the group of founders of the União Feminina do Brasil (Women's Union of Brazil), an organization promoted by women members or sympathizers of the PCB. 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. 
  In November 1935, after the Communist Conspiracy movement, Eugênia was detained and accused of involvement with the PCB. She remained about four months in the House of Detention on Frei Caneca street, where she shared the cell no. 4 with communist militant Olga Benário Prestes, Maria Werneck de Castro, Nise da Silveira, Armanda Álvaro Alberto and Eneida de Moraes. She was released for lack of evidence on the morning of February 1, 1936. She then returned to political activism, engaging herself, among other activities, in a campaign for the release of Anita Leocadia, Olga Benário's baby who was born after her deportation to a concentration camp in Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. 
  In 1937, Álvaro presented to the theater department commission of the Ministry of Education and Culture his plan for the organization of a "Brazilian Dramatic Company", which was approved. He and his wife then toured the states of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul, subsequently performing a three-month season at Teatro Regina, in Rio de Janeiro.
caption: The Moreyra couple, in a caricature of Brazilian artist Alvarus (1920).
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