The premiere is part of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II’s program and the performance, described by the company as “enduring and celebratory,” will be staged in the Estúdio Valentim de Barros until the 20th, with a total of five shows, each starting at 7:00 PM.
As part of the 30th-anniversary celebrations of Teatro Praga, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II invited the company, founded in 1995, to temporarily return to the former Armazém do Hospital Miguel Bombarda, now known as Estúdio Valentim de Barros.
Times have changed, and interventions on the building and the city have altered the context and architecture, just as Teatro Praga is no longer the same, states the company in a presentation note for the performance.
The starting point for ‘Audição’ is precisely this reality check: Teatro Praga is heard for what it was and is, “a collective simultaneously within and outside an idea of theatre, seeking a specific relationship of resistance with places, bodies, and disciplines.”
Throughout the piece, Teatro Praga will always enter the wrong show, and ‘Audição’ is, therefore, a ‘casting’ where mistakes are inevitable since what is sought does not exist.
Without age limits, physical requirements, or professional demands, this ‘Audição’ is expected to go awry, as that is the intention: “It is in the mismatch between expectation and present, between past and future that the piece is constructed,” the company emphasizes.
‘Audição,’ the performance, stems from a specific memory of Teatro Praga when years ago during an audition at the Armazém do Miguel Bombarda, they met Diogo Bento, who now is part of the company.
‘Audição’ thus proposes “a symbolic return” to that experience, “not to dwell on it with nostalgia,” but rather as “an engine of reflection on the memory of the company’s 30 years.”
Directed by André e. Teodósio, Cláudia Jardim, Diogo Bento, and José Maria Vieira Mendes, “Audição” features original music by Alex D’Alva Teixeira.
The cast includes André e. Teodósio, Ângelo Castro, Cláudia Jardim, Diogo Bento, Inês Vaz, Joana Barrios, João Duarte Costa, José Maria Vieira Mendes, Júlio Mesquita, Paula Diogo, and other invited participants.
‘Audição’ lasts for four hours, allowing entry, exit, and re-entry of attendees during each session.
