Manaus is a city that bleeds into the Amazon, staunched only by the cramped spear-rank roots of cashapona trees. When first designated a city, it was christened the "City of the Margins of the Black River," perfectly fitting of its placement at the juncture of the Negro and Solimões rivers at the heart of the Amazon Rainforest.

Manaus is a city of novel science, with the new National Institute of Amazonian Research at the forefront of botanical, entomological, and anthropological innovation. Its economic facility rests in its immense rubber production, whose facilitated wealth once attracted creators of diverse and experimental literature and art.

However, the doors of the Amazon Theatre have been closed for nearly sixty years, giving Manaus little cultural leverage to persuade the rest of Brazil that it is anything but a spigot for latex.