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Sinopse

Rui Catalão

Mal de Ulisses

September

2024

Premiere

Fri
13
Sat
14

Sinopse

In the first year that I worked on the Mal de Ulisses project, I collected many testimonies with the life stories of immigrants. I focused on the reasons why they left their countries, their families, how they arrived in Portugal and what has happened to them since. In a scene from Pasolini's film The Hawks and the Sparrows, the comedian Totó plays a Franciscan friar obsessed with evangelizing migratory birds. For years, he imitates their songs, tries to learn their language, but is unable to communicate. Finally, he realizes that birds communicate through their movements. This episode was the starting point for the version of Mal de Ulisses that I worked on in Porto with three interpreters from three corners of Brazil, and Nickita, Cape Verdean.
The writer Joseph Roth said of emigrants that "they assimilate to our sad condition of life not too slowly, as is often pointed out, but too quickly." During rehearsals, several scenes were created in which the same protocol was repeated over and over again: starting from an inaugural gesture, the dancers had to generate a movement vocabulary common to all, no matter how elementary. Only then were they free to explore more individual aspects, which the group then had to add to the collective. While choosing musical themes, I discovered an old record of Brazilian birdsongs where I learned about the existence of the pitiguari, also known as "gente-de-fora-vem", which owes its name to its reputation for announcing the arrival of strangers. It was then that an accident forced me to think about this: how do birds fly if they break a leg? — Rui Catalão

migrations

reality

demographics

© João Octávio Peixoto

© João Octávio Peixoto

© João Octávio Peixoto

Colour photography. A black man sitting on top of a shipping container with his head turned towards the horizon.

© João Octávio Peixoto

Info sobre horário e bilhetes

Fri

13.09

Sat

14.09

Campo AlegreAuditorium

tickets

Aditional info

  • Price 
    2.50€
  • Duration 
    1h

  • Age rating 
    To be assigned by CCE
  • Additional information
    Spoken in Portuguese with Portuguese subtitles

Acessibilidades do espetáculo

Accessible to wheelchair users
Text
Subtitling

Author's bio text

Rui Catalão is a dramatist and director. He makes scenic documentaries that are intensely choreographed and where he crosses chronicles of everyday life, one the one hand, and memory and generational identity, on the other hand. His last plays with this group were: Ao abrigo da distância and Ivone!. He also directed other plays that involved communal work: Assembleia, Judite, Jornalismo Amadorismo Hipnotismo and Cortes. He adapted the biblical characters Ester and Judite to the stage. He wrote the screenplays for Morrer como um Homem and O Capacete Dourado, as well as monographs on the work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Tiago Rodrigues, Ana Borralho and João Galante. Following a career as journalist, he started his artistic work with choreographer João Fiadeiro (1999-2003). He lived and worked in Romania, where he was a part of the local upcoming contemporary dance scene (2005-2009). He writes for the Público newspaper every now and then, and he is a chronicler at the GQ magazine.  

Ficha Técnica

  • Performerd by
    Nickita Bulú, Allian Fernando, Hewerthon Soares, Leo Tulipa

    Directed by
    Rui Catalão

    Technical direction
    João Chicó

    Creation assistance
    Ana Rocha

  • Head of Production
    Marta Moreira

    Produced by
    Irreal

    Co-produced by
    Teatro Municipal do Porto, Festival TODOS – Caminhada de Culturas , Futurama, Binaural Nodar, Teatro das Figuras, Fórum Cultural José Manuel Figueiredo/Centro de Experimentação Artística

    Support
    República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das Artes, Fundação GDA

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