This paper investigates how the relationship between art and science can be productive in science education, from an activity developed in "Science on Scene", a visitor area of the Museum of Life, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The activity consists of the presentation of the play "Lessons of Botany", by Machado de Assis, followed by debate and the playing of a CD-rom. In this paper the first semester of the 2007 season was analyzed, including 1.827 spectators. The 171 questions elaborated during the debates carried through after thirty performances, had been registered in writing and interpreted on the basis of "Content Analysis". Examination of the data stimulates the discussion about the interface between the processes of artistic creation and scientific education. This discussion is based within a Freire critical perspective of education, and is seen as a dialogic space, a place of permanent creation/recreation of life.
Machado de Assis; Science education; Theatre; Popularization of science
