Terminal (L’État du Monde) [Terminal (The State of the World)] is the second part of your diptych about the climate crisis, whose first part was entitled L'État du monde (Un dur réveil) [The State of the World (A Harsh Awakening)]: are your titles becoming increasingly pessimistic?
Miguel Fragata: Ever since the foundation of our company Formiga Atómica ten years ago, our work has been strongly connected to the present, to the reality of our societies. When we decided to create this diptych in 2021, we came up with the idea of creating two shows for two different types of audiences. The first, L'État du monde (Un dur réveil), is aimed at younger audiences. Through the stories of children, it shows the relationship between small everyday gestures and their consequences on the climate. At the Festival d’Avignon, we’re presenting the second part of this diptych, Terminal (L’État du Monde). In this creation, aimed this time at adults, our approach to the climate crisis is more philosophical. We definitely think it’s the most urgent subject right now. We’re torn between pessimism and the need to react.
What meaning do you give to the word “Terminal”?
Inês Barahona: This word has a double meaning. If at first it seems to indicate the end of something, it also illustrates the idea of an interface, a connection to something else, another dimension, another language. While we do want to focus on this idea of the death of a certain vision of humanity, we also want to look to the future and get a glimpse of what this new reality could be. A reality which would emerge as humanity is threatened with extinction. This new play is about hope. The climate crisis is also a crisis of imagination. If we were to imagine together a future that doesn’t exist yet, what would it look like? Our goal here is not to provide solutions to this crisis, but rather to imagine something we could start together, something that doesn’t yet exist.
In 2023, a research project preceded the writing of Terminal (L’État du Monde).
Inês Barahona: Yes, and we conducted that research in Portugal, but also in France, in Lyon and Avignon, in order to gather the material necessary to the creation of this show. This process reflects the modus operandi of our company, which has been characteristic of our work since the beginning. With Formiga Atómica, we develop our creative activity in direct and prior relation with the audience for whom our shows are intended. The shows arise from a fundamental question that imposes itself on the life and mind of the company. From this initial concern, a research strategy is implemented so that the audience becomes contaminated with the same question. We strive to strip the subject of all preconceived notions so that we can listen fully and productively.
Miguel Fragata: Everywhere we’ve been this year, our research has taken on different forms. First, we created filmed interviews we called Retour au futur (Back to the Future). In those videos, the interviewees return to a place currently undergoing transformation or already transformed. They recount their life before and describe this place from the past. Through their memories, we go on a guided tour of that place, both physically and emotionally. We provide a clear picture of these evolutions over time, linked to political, social, and economic changes, among others.
We also created a series of videos entitled Improbables dos à dos (Improbable back-to-backs). Two individuals with very different backgrounds sit back-to-back. They ask each other questions about universal topics, or about the climate crisis. Those questions include: How do you see the world in 50 years? If you could change something to have a global impact, what would you do? What’s your greatest fear? What do you believe in? Or what do you not believe in at all? These broad questions allowed us to gather very different points of view about the climate crisis. We want to share those videos with the participants either through screenings or by sharing links to the productions with the audience. At the Festival d’Avignon, some of the films are programmed as part of the Café des idées in the Cloître Saint-Louis and the Territoires cinématographiques at the cinéma Utopia. In some places, we also recorded radio programmes about sustainable development. It was an opportunity to listen to experts and political leaders on the subject. We set up a travelling green library consisting of books related to ecology, the climate crisis, and sustainable development, which was an opportunity to organise encounters with authors. In the theatres we visited, we asked the spectators to fill in a questionnaire about their consumption habits. Every time, we tried to get enough responses to conduct a sociological study. Finally, we created short theatrical performances we called Théâtre hors-format, performing them unexpectedly in cafés, stores, and gardens to spark a discussion with the audience about the crisis we are experiencing. All those things fuelled our reflection, and we adapted them based on where we were. They gave us a lot of material to imagine this show and its atmosphere on stage. All this material inspired us directly and indirectly.
This sort of field work is inherent to all your shows. Would you say it is your calling card?
Inês Barahona: We discovered this way of working while developing our first project, and we like it a lot. This method forces us to listen, on any given subject, to experts and laypeople alike. We want, in our creations, to really serve an idea. For it to become concrete on the stage, you have to go look for it in the real, in a concrete way, in people’s words, in their thoughts and lives. You have to confront them to each other. The idea of confronting all those ideas gathered through those different encounters is something that deeply resonates with us.
On stage, what shape does that terminal take?
Miguel Fragata: Terminal is part of a great symbolic and fictional narrative. The place Terminal is also symbolic. We are not playing in geographically concrete locations. On stage, we have six characters, two musicians and four actors and actresses, in the middle of an empty, desolate space. We were particularly inspired by Samuel Beckett’s universe to create this atmosphere. Time is like suspended. In the middle of the stage, a very large root grows out of the ground and occupies the space. It has swallowed thousands of things, like musical instruments or real chairs from the São João National Theatre in Porto.
Inês Barahona: The story of Terminal (L’État du Monde) is a mirror of our situation, a mirror at once realistic and dystopian of reality. This terminal is both an endpoint and a starting point. The characters try to find ways to escape from it, even if some of them are opposed to the idea. Incursions in different directions give them glimpses of possible, contrasted futures. We don’t get to see those journeys, but we hear their stories.
Music plays a very important part in your show…
Miguel Fragata: It sets the pace of the story and highlights key moments. Two musicians play several instruments live: acoustic and electric guitars, percussions from different countries, a piano. All of this creates a varied tone palette. Alongside the musicians, we’re working with a singer. Like a narrator, she guides the audience through this fiction. Her speech is inspired by Australian songlines. For millennia, the memory of the Aboriginal people has been passed down through the words of the elders, called songlines. Transmitted from generation to generation, they guide these populations through their territory, showing them the way. In the spirit of those ancestral words, the songs we have created tell the path of each character.
Would you described your work as an “activist play”?
Miguel Fragata: We know full well we’re never going to change the world with our art. But we are also convinced of the transformative power of theatre. Given that one show isn’t going to save the world from the climate crisis, how can we imagine a form that might give us the keys to think about that crisis and better understand it, to understand how urgent it is to act? It was those questions that led us to imagine this play, convinced of the power of the word.
Interview conducted by Vanessa Asse (February 2024) and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach