This family kills fascists. It’s a tradition that everyone in the family has followed for over 70 years. They have all got together today in a house in the country near a village called Baleizão in the south of Portugal. One of the youngest members of the family, Catarina, is to kill her first fascist, who has been kidnapped for this very purpose. It’s a day to celebrate, a day of beauty and death. However, Catarina finds herself unable to kill him or else she’s refusing to do so. A family fight breaks out and a lot of questions arise. What is a fascist? Is there a place for violence in the struggle for a better world? Can we violate the rules of democracy when we seek better ways to defend it?
"The play tries to do what I feel is one of theatre’s vital strengths: to propose characters who, through what they think and say and do on stage, and through the way they do it, allow us to think differently about our lives. What we had at the beginning was a family, a questioning of violence’s place in a democratic society, while faced with the threat of antidemocratic thought and action, while faced with the imminence of a dictatorship, and we wanted to raise these issues in a manner that would also challenge ourselves. So that they wouldn’t be appeasing, serving only to confirm what we believe to be our shared values – and which are probably not the values we share, we just believe we share them, and then we’re often surprised by election results and we realise that we may share those values on a more human and personal scale, but on a social scale the interpretation and manipulation of ideas and the shape of our civic involvement often separate us as citizens. So we didn't want a play that would appease, confirm, or even assume to know what the audience thinks, and what that audience's beliefs are. We wanted a play that would disquiet, regardless of the convictions of those seeing it. That would provide pleasure, naturally, but a disquieting pleasure. And for that we had to be the first to feel disquieted. It seemed fundamental to me to look for it in every rehearsal, for that spark of disquiet. And I was very scared, although very excited, about the successive days of disquiet we experienced while working with this material, while trying to come up with characters that weren’t too easy to understand, while trying to come up with words and events on stage that weren’t Manichean in their way of looking at the world, that wouldn’t try and manipulate the audience, but rather use the tools of the theatre to lead that audience on a journey that is that of fiction and thought. And so the moments when I was most sure that we were doing relatively interesting work were also the most uncomfortable moments for me, of greatest doubt. But they were always moments when I recognised the disquiet. I couldn't find an easy answer to what we were creating."
Tiago Rodrigues, interviewed by Maria João Guardão
Winner of the Best Foreign Show Award UBU 2023 in Italy.
Winner of the Best Foreign Show Award from the Critics Association in 2023 in France.
Winner of the 2023 Giuseppe Bertolucci Price, Best feminine european actress for Béatriz Maïa.
Distribution
With Isabel Abreu, Romeu Costa, António Fonseca, Beatriz Maia, Marco Mendonça, António Parra, Carolina Passos Sousa, João Vicente.
Text, direction Tiago Rodrigues
Artistic collaboration Magda Bizarro
Stage design F. Ribeiro
Light Nuno Meira
Costumes José António Tenente
Sound design, original music Pedro Costa
Choirmaster, vocal arrangements João Henriques
Voices-over Cláudio de Castro, Nadezhda Bocharova, Paula Mora, Pedro Moldão
Choreography Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz
Weapon coordinator David Chan Cordeiro
Translation Thomas Resendes (French), Daniel Hahn (English), Vincenzo Arsilio (Italian), Igor Metzeltin (German)
Surtitles Patrícia Pimentel
Production
Production Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisboa)
Executive production Festival d’Avignon
Co-production Wiener Festwochen, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione (Modena), Théâtre de la Cité - CDN Toulouse Occitanie & Théâtre Garonne Scène européenne Toulouse, Festival d’Automne à Paris & Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale, Comédie de Caen, Théâtre de Liège, Maison de la Culture d'Amiens, BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Le Trident – Scène nationale de Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), Centro Cultural Vila Flor (Guimarães), O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo).
With the support of Almeida Garrett Wines, Cano Amarelo, Culturgest
Thanks to Mariana Gomes, Rui Pina Coelho, Margarida Bak Gordon, Rita Mendes and the team of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II. We also thank Sara Barros Leitão and Pedro Gil who, even though they are no longer on stage with us, will always remain Catarina.
Music from the show: Hania Rani (Biesy et Now, Run), Joanna Brouk (The Nymph Rising, Calling the Sailor), Laurel Halo (Rome Theme III et Hyphae) et Rosalía (De Plata).
Created in September 2020 at the Centro Cultural Vila Flor (Guimarães - Portugal)
Nominated in the Best international show category of the Premis de la Crítica.