The play ‘Catarina e a Beleza de Matar Fascistas’ by Tiago Rodrigues is set to return to the stage in Lisbon next January at Culturgest, the venue announced today.
According to the statement, the play will run from January 12 to 17, including a session with English subtitles on January 15, and a session with descriptive subtitles and audio description on January 17, due to high demand, with reserved seats for those requiring these resources.
Tickets are priced at 25 euros.
Prior to this, the play will be performed at Theatro Circo in Braga on January 6 and 7, as noted on the playwright and director’s website.
With script and direction by Tiago Rodrigues, the current director of the Festival d’Avignon in France, the cast features António Parra, António Fonseca, Beatriz Maia, Carolina Passos Sousa, Isabel Abreu, João Vicente, Marco Mendonça, and Romeu Costa.
The set design is by F. Ribeiro, costumes by José António Tenente, with lighting design by Nuno Meira, and artistic collaboration by Magda Bizarro.
‘Catarina e a Beleza de Matar Fascistas’ focuses on a family with a tradition of killing fascists, a ritual that the youngest member, Catarina, refuses to follow, believing that all lives should be protected. The play concludes with an extensive monologue from a far-right leader who secures an absolute majority and seizes power.
The play premiered in September 2020 at the Centro Cultural Vila Flor in Guimarães and has been continuously staged since then, garnering awards and performing in international theaters across different continents.
In Rome, its premiere was met with protests from far-right forces, including a member of the Brothers of Italy party, Federico Mollicone, now in government, who called for its removal from the lineup.
In a 2022 interview by the Journalists’ Club, in collaboration with the Lusa agency and the School of Social Communication, Tiago Rodrigues explained that the play ends in that manner “because it is a tragedy.”
“What happens there is the victory of the far-right due to the inability of a democracy, in this case, a family trying to defend democracy through violence yet unable to stop the victory of a fascist and anti-democratic discourse,” he said.
“The discourse is so unbearable, so provocative that the audience cannot help but react,” Rodrigues continued in the same interview, recounting various audience reactions on different stages: “In Portugal, they’ve sung ‘Grândola’, in Italy, ‘Bella Ciao’, in Vienna, the audience stood up. Seeing these audiences react gives me confidence, but at the same time, it concerns me that the audience so easily turns against an actor.”
