João Branco / Escola Superior Artística do Porto

In the short plays that make up this collection, Matéi Visniec - one of the most interesting contemporary playwrights - manages, with the seemingly casual tone of an everyday conversation, to address some of the most important social issues of our time that concern the human condition: the meaning of life and death, the value of things and people or the tension between the individual and society. Without geographical or temporal definition, what matters is people. What inspires the playwright is what interests us. Who are the people living today? In democratic times, where freedom of expression seems to be the foundation, the world should be perfect, shouldn't it? Based on this reflection, the show dialogues with the theater of the absurd, but is frighteningly current. More than ten or twenty years ago, some of the situations have become believable. In the endless world of social impossibilities, every day we are confronted with limits and red lines that are ignored, crossed, questioned. And it is in this context that the theater (apparently) of the absurd becomes a place of resistance. Theater as action and theater as a place where human beings see each other, provoke each other and place themselves in a situation of generous communication. Without screens or fake news channels as a means of intermediation. Just us. People, just being people. That alone is a privilege. — João Branco