| Length / Year: | 150’, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Text and direction: | Tiago Rodrigues |
| Artistic collaboration: | Magda Bizarro |
| Stage design: | F. Ribeiro |
| Lighting: | Nuno Meira |
| Costumes: | José António Tenente |
| Sound design and original music: | Pedro Costa |
| Choirmaster and vocal arrangements: | João Henriques |
| Voice-over: | Cláudio de Castro, Nadezhda Bocharova, Paula Mora, Pedro Moldão |
| Choreography: | Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz |
| Weapon coordinator: | David Chan Cordeiro |
| Translations: | Thomas Resendes (French), Daniel Hahn (English), Vincenzo Arsillo (Italian), Igor Metzeltin (German) |
| Surtitles: | Patrícia Pimentel |
| With: | Isabel Abreu, António Afonso Parra, Romeu Costa, António Fonseca, Beatriz Maia, Marco Mendonça, Carolina Passos Sousa, Rui M. Silva |
| Thanks to: | Mariana Gomes, Rui Pina Coelho, Margarida Bak Gordon, Rita Mendes and the team of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II |
| We also thank: | Sara Barros Leitão and Pedro Gil, who, even thought they are no longer on stage with us, will always remain Catarina |
| Music from the show: | Hania Rani (Biesy and Now, Run), Joanna Brouk (The Nymph Rising, Calling the Sailor), Laurel Halo (Rome Theme III and Hyphae), Rosalía (De Plata) |
| Executive production: | Festival d’Avignon |
| Produced by: | Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisbon) |
| Co-production: | Wiener Festwochen, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione (Modena), Théâtre de la Cité - CDN Toulouse Occitanie & Théâtre Garonne Scène européenne Toulouse, Festival d’Automne à Paris & Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale, Comédie de Caen, Théâtre de Liège, Maison de la Culture d'Amiens, BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Le Trident - Scène-nationale de Cherbourg-en- Cotentin, Teatre Lliure (Barcellona), Centro Cultural Vila Flor (Guimarães), O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o- Novo) |
| With the support from: | Almeida Garrett Wines, Cano Amarelo, Culturgest |
| Note: | Created in September 2020 at the Centro Cultural Vila Flor (Guimarães, Portugal) |
Theatre
Tiago Rodrigues - Catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas
Description
Inspired by a historical event, which became the symbol of a resistance movement against the Salazar regime, Catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas, winner of the 2022 UBU prize for best foreign show, is the work of one of the greatest directors and authors of recent years, Portuguese Tiago Rodrigues (Amadora, 1977), who started this year as the head of the Festival d’Avignon.
19 May 1954. Beleizão, a small town in southern Portugal during the Salazar dictatorship. Catarina Eufémia, an illiterate farmworker leading the revolt for higher wages, is killed by the Guardia Nacional Republicana. Catarina was 26 years old and left three orphaned children.
Tiago Rodrigues’ new Catarina lives in the near future, she is young, a vegan and a rebel, and belongs to a family that since that historic day in May, to honour Catarina Eufémia’s memory, performs the ritual execution of a fascist every year, perpetrating from one generation to the next the same reaction to the original violence. Everything is ready, the table is set, the family gathered, the fascist kidnapped, but Catarina – the chosen one – is besieged by doubt and unable to shoot, triggering a lively debate about violence, revenge, individual responsibility, authoritarianism, democracy. “Is it legitimate to use violence to build a better world? Can the rules of democracy be violated with the stated intent to defend it?” Using paradox, Tiago Rodrigues builds an engaging show, that interrogates the spectator, raising an ethical dilemma that echoes in today’s Europe and strikes at the heart of the wars that plagues us.