Composed primarily of stage-set images with some studio pictures, ‘The Grace of Disgrace – Comedy and Tragedy in Mário Viegas’ is curated by Paulo Baptista Ribeiro from the National Theater and Dance Museum (MNTD).
The exhibition, showcased in a cardboard theater built by Mário Viegas as a child, presents a videographic composition featuring excerpts from the artist’s performances, both solo and with others.
Launched on Friday at 6:30 PM, the exhibition coincides with the new production by the Almada Theatre Company (CTA) – ‘Praise of Laughter’, a play by Hajo Schuler, Rodrigo Francisco, and featuring Maria Rueff.
The scene photographs from Mário Viegas, part of the collection donated by the actor to the MNTD and displayed in the exhibition, include images from works such as ‘Baal’, which also appears on the exhibition’s poster, ‘Papa sobre papa’, ‘Deus os fez’, ‘Catastrophe Beckett’, ‘Straw Hat of Italy’, and ‘Suicidário’.
Other images displayed include ‘Mário Gin Tonic’, ‘Godot’, ‘King of the Berlengas’, ‘Krapp’, ‘Endgame’, ‘Festa é festa’, and ‘D. João VI’.
Drawings by Mário Viegas illustrating the play ‘The Phantom’ at Teatro ABC, along with another comic-style drawing about the presentation of “Mário Gin Tonic” at ‘Experimental Theater of Puôrto’, as spelled in the drawing, are also on display in Almada.
Another aspect of the exhibition is the ‘Unauthorized Self-Photobiography’ of Mário Viegas, a large-format book written by the actor before his death and posthumously published by his sister, containing nearly 250 pages with photographs, clippings, comic strips, and other personal notes detailing the life and career of the actor, who was born in Santarém in 1948 and died in Lisbon in 1996 at the age of 47.
In a video recorded for the CTA by the exhibition’s curator, available on the Joaquim Benite Municipal Theatre’s Instagram page, Paulo Baptista Ribeiro explains the choice of the exhibition’s title by noting that humor in Mário Viegas “always had a tragic side”.
“And what Mário Viegas tries to tell us, citing, for example, Samuel Beckett, is that there is nothing funnier than disgrace,” stresses Paulo Baptista Ribeiro.
The curator further explains that the exhibition comprises reproductions from the “significant collection” of Mário Viegas donated to the museum, aiming to depict “the black, tragicomic humor of a set of plays and films as well as other types of performances in Mário Viegas’s career”.
Open until December 21 at the Exhibition Gallery of the Joaquim Benite Municipal Theatre, the exhibition can be visited from Wednesday to Saturday, from 12:00 PM to 9:30 PM, and on Sundays from 12:00 PM to 7:00 PM.
With production by Ana Miffon and André Caldeira, the exhibition has design by Miguel Abreu. In the museum’s inventory were Inês Oliveira and Manuela Gomes dos Santos, and in the library, Ana Sofia Patrão.
