Hotel Europa

Hotel Europa insists on its research on post-colonialism through documentary theatre. Since it is necessary to both record and redeem that past, they draw inspiration from Marianne Hirsch’s book, “The Generation of Postmemory”, and the notion of post-memory, which addresses the relationship that the generation after those who witnessed cultural or collective trauma bears to the experiences of those who came before. After dwelling on love during this period of history, from former Portuguese soldiers who had children with African women to Portuguese women who fell in love with black men, “Os filhos do colonialismo” [The children of colonialism] goes back to real testimonies. A journey through the memory of Portuguese colonialism, its conveying and the connection the generations that were born after the Carnage Revolution of 1974 developed with a past that keeps distancing itself in time, but that is ever more present.

 

Hotel Europa is a duo of artists from two different countries (Portugal and the Czech Republic). André Amálio and Tereza Havlíăková met while attending the master’s degree in performance making at Goldsmiths, University of London. They’ve been working together ever since, creating documentary theatre that overlaps autobiographical material, family stories, national histories, testimonies, interviews and historical research, thus creating a complex web of references from both popular and classical culture, which reflects upon cultures, time periods and genres.