“After several sold-out dates in Lisbon and Porto, ‘A Colónia’, by Marco Martins, returns to the stage at Culturgest in Lisbon from July 10 to 13,” the venue announced in a statement released today.
The play, which premiered in December, depicts the story of a summer camp for children of political prisoners, aged 3 to 14, created in Caldas da Rainha in 1972 by a group of citizens committed to defending civil rights, disillusioned by the failed ‘Marcelist Spring.’
Over two weeks, 18 children had the chance to meet and play with others. More than 50 years later, they now take the stage to tell their stories.
In an interview given in December, Marco Martins expressed the essential nature of this gesture and thanked these individuals for their “courage and boldness” in speaking “about the day their parents were arrested, the prison visits,” so that “what their parents went through, what they themselves went through, was not in vain.”
The production of ‘A Colónia’ became crucial for Marco Martins after reading a report by Joana Pereira Bastos about the summer camp in the 2022 edition of the weekly newspaper Expresso, which earned the journalist the Gazeta de Imprensa Award.
For the director, bringing this story to the stage became increasingly urgent. The 50th anniversary celebrations of April 25 provided the necessary pretext.
The initial idea was “to discuss the PIDE and its methods of operation.” From there, an in-depth investigation was launched, drawing on PIDE’s archives at Torre do Tombo, the author’s contacts, resistors like Teresa Dias Coelho and Margarida Lisboa, who were born during the dictatorship, former political prisoners such as the well-known couple Domingos Abrantes and Conceição Matos, who are also part of the cast, and the children who spent time at the camp.
Today, those who, in the summer of 1972, experienced freedom in a protected space, are adults, mostly over 60. Some chose not to speak or appear on stage. Yet, the memory of the dictatorship’s shadows and its threats endures. Hence the urgency.
The play’s dramaturgy developed step by step as the investigation progressed, based on evident questions: “How do we tell this story, and how is it transmitted over time, through people?” It is “through stories” that memory is conveyed. Another significant factor in advancing the project was the realization that today “young people know very little about April 25,” which is “becoming a distant thing.”
In a two-story set, Marco Martins layers testimony upon testimony, intertwining memory and narration.
“A Colónia” is rooted in documents and testimonies from the entire cast and includes references to texts by Bertolt Brecht, Czeslaw Milosz, Deborah Levy, Filippo Marinetti, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Jean-Luc Godard, Anne Marie Miéville, Slavoj Zizek, and William Shakespeare.
The performances are by Manuela Canais Rocha, Conceição Lopes, Conceição Matos, Domingos Abrantes, Humberto Candeias, Olga Sequeira Santos, Rita Veloso, Valentina Marcelino, and João Pedro Vaz, along with Sara Carinhas, Ana Vilaça, Rodrigo Tomás, Anderson Ramos, Arthur Lupi, Beatriz Ribeiro, Diana Soares, Inês Paulino, Joaquim Queiroz, Laura Trueb, Leonardo Martins, Lurdes Ferraz, Milena Mavie, Niurka Sacramento, and Pedro Conceição.
The music is composed by B. Fachada and João Pimenta Gomes.
Marco Martins will later adapt the play into a period film, to be shot this year.
