Sara Carinhas

After presenting “Orlando” in 2015, you return to Teatro Municipal do Porto with a new performance, “Limbo”, co-produced by TMP. It premiered in early 2019 [at São Luiz Teatro Municipal], and it was also presented at A Voz do Operário. It comes to Porto nearly a year later. How do you look at the performance since then? Are there any changes? Does time cause you to look at it differently?

Sara Carinhas (SC) I think it will always surprise me. The idea of revisiting it will change the performance entirely. What is more, it depends on where it takes place, because it really is very much meant for the place it occupies. So one of the first things that can happen is having to adapt the script to the place. And that can ultimately change the order of what we had designed for A Voz do Operário, or add things that were not there originally. The idea is open enough to change according to what comes along. There are certain perspectives on the performance I myself can’t have. The script plays with several narratives, so much so that it may difficult to always try to find a topic when there are actually several of them intersecting one another. And even if it may seem as if it has one path, it is not a performance I’d say can only tell one thing. The more time goes by, the more easily I’ll see things I hadn’t seen before and were there at the beginning.

Going back to that beginning. How did this idea come to you?

SC It came to me during a trip to Athens, about three years ago, when I went to see a bit of what was going on with the refugees arriving there. I didn’t do much as a human being, except seeing how it worked and talking with the ambassador, who helped us figuring out the spots where people met and what was going on in those places, how many volunteers were there, the most problematic site… Plenty of things will never make it to the news, and that is what’s most interesting and most frightening when you come back. It made me want to sort of spread the epidemic and talk about it with several people. Because I’m a bit of a fool [laughter], and I didn’t take the chance to record many conversations I had. I regret that today, but I was able to talk to people who were really a long way from me and could only talk via Skype, and to people working at the UN. I had an interest in the subject for some time, and I never thought I could do a performance about it. I think it’s really difficult to put on a performance about what’s going on there, or to have actors playing refugees… You’d get to a point when you’d mistreat and weaken the subject. But there was something there. Some topics would surface in these conversations, especially about his place—which is no place at all—where people spend the rest of their lives, be it refugee centres, camps or borders. That’s what moved me the most, because it was the most anguishing. That’s how the word “limbo” appeared, but it became more charged after a discussion I witnessed with [Romeo] Castellucci here in Porto. He mentioned that word, because he liked the “limbo”, that of conscious, the clinical one, and he liked to work in that spot. I had already thought of that word, but that is when the title came up. The title obviously feeds all that is built, because it hangs over our heads the whole time, it is very strong, and what’s more, it exists in several languages. In all this, the other idea I think topped the others was to consider authors from my generation—I found it important to have a generation—and to consider them without borders. So I took the risk of bringing together very different people with completely different artistic educations, but who I thought had something to say and originated from places with such a different perspective that it would be nice to have that dialogue.

We can thus say that this notion of what “limbo” is and where it can be applied is never closed, and that we often come across circumstances and situations that once again lead us to question the concept of border, space, and going from one place to another. As you were saying, this performance will actually always mean something different to you according to the moment it takes place or the moment you watch it.

SC Ideally, what I feel about the object is also shared by those watching it. It may have different meanings for different people. In other words, an object with openings that people fill. Also important is the fact that I asked that the text wouldn’t be more important than the choreography. We provide several chances to share text and images other than just the spoken word. That was also important to me, and I had very thorough performers capable of going that far.

What knowledge did the performers bring? They’re somehow also co-creators, right?

SC Absolutely! Pierre [Ensergueix] is clearly French in several ways. He came with an unusually patriotic speech, which the others didn’t have, but they also didn’t experience attacks on the city as he did. There was a very European side to him, a way of telling stories and recording images we didn’t have. Marco [Nanetti] is a joyful Italian who did commedia dell’arte and is lost in London waiting for a place of his own. Nádia Yracema is a wonderful actress. She was born in Angola, she’s currently living in Portugal, but she lived in a number of places around the world. She was in the most complicated situation. She had lost her papers during the war, her family had run and suddenly she couldn’t travel that much, because she was always having to say she was Portuguese. She was mixed with people such as António [Bollaño], who was 18 when he started doing “limbo” and not sure whether he wanted to be an actor or a dancer. So they would bring stories that could start with them and become more universal. We can discuss that in the little things and in what’s personal. Filomena Cautela was very important. In spite of her necessarily coming with a label as to what she’s capable of doing, and in spite of the image we make of her, I’ve know her for many years, and I’m aware of her musical, choreographic and communication skills and of how significant they’d be in this performance. And finally there’s Carolina Amaral, a young artist from Guimarães who I’d seen working and who I found very thorough.

What comes after this project? Do you know what you want to do next? Have you thought of anything?

SC I get easily bored, and so I have this problem where I always come up with a lot of things, and not necessarily all to do with the performing arts. I’m currently finishing a thesis that made me write about what I do. And it is interesting to write about practice; I think something may come of that and be a part of what I do. I have to zoom in again, because sometimes we must learn some things by ourselves to be able to ask the others to do the same. It makes me very happy to help, to teach, to be an assistant. Anything that places me next to or opposite to. At least helping people becoming happier. I figure most of the projects I may come up with will be like that, even if in a less predictable place.


Interview conducted on May 25, 2019, at Teatro Rivoli's maintenance office, by José Reis, coordinator of TMP's communication office.
Photography © José Caldeira/TMP