In a recent announcement, the municipal company Faz Cultura has confirmed that a new theatrical piece will debut as part of the celebrations marking the 110th anniversary of Theatro Circo. This production is the third installment of Supracasa, an initiative supporting artistic creation under Braga 25 – Portuguese Capital of Culture.
The piece is described as “a sensitive, critical, and profoundly theatrical journey through the real and imagined lives of Portuguese actresses from the 19th and 20th centuries.”
The performance features a monologue that “multiplies into voices, memories, and bodies.”
Though only one actress takes the stage, the performance evokes hundreds of lives of forgotten actresses, immortalized divas, and women who dared to make the stage a place of affirmation and resistance.
Based on “extensive” research that incorporates documents, biographies, photographs, memories, and rumors, the show constructs a ‘false history’ of actresses in Portugal. This fiction serves as a lens to reflect on the reality of Portuguese theater, both past and present.
“My interest in these figures grew when I realized that behind the mannerisms, exaggerations, and legends, there were women who fought for their place. Many founded companies, directed theaters, demanded to be heard. Others faded into obscurity. This production is also about them,” explains Raquel S., the playwright, director, and artistic director of the piece.
The show utilizes excess as poetic material and humor as a means to critically revisit the past.
The image of the “great actress” is deconstructed and reimagined in a narrative that blends laughter and wounds, pomp and precarity, applause and silence.
Alongside Raquel S., the artistic team includes Pedro Azevedo, who leads set and costume design, Odete in sound creation, Rui Monteiro in lighting design, and Inês Maia in production direction.
The visual communication, designed by Nuno Matos, draws inspiration from early 20th-century photographs of actresses, which are recreated and reinterpreted in the production.
“‘Hei de reparar’ is not just a show about the past. It is an attempt to understand what remains of these women in the present theater. It questions how collective memory is constructed and who is often left out,” emphasizes the announcement.
