TEATRO EXPERIMENTAL DO PORTO (TEP)

The money coming from Brussels enables the consumption society to grow fast. The quality of life of the middle class stabilises, and it gets used to new living standards. Both revolutionary fire and economic crises were left behind to make way for a country that periodically dressed up to show its organisation skills typical of a modern nation (Lisbon European Capital of Culture 1994 or Expo 98, for instance). Meanwhile, Cavaco Silva was covering the country in tarmac, opening private universities day in, day out, and slowly trying to make arts and culture irrelevant. For many of us, however, those were our best years—that’s when we came of age, built our most absolute certainties, wrote fiery love poems to weekly muses, fought against tuition fees, and demonstrated day in, day out. We were young. “Maioria absoluta” [Absolute majority], the third instalment of a youth trilogy, after “O grande tratado de encenação” [The great treaty on staging] and “A tecedeira que lia Zola” [The weaver who read Zola], returns to those 1990s.

TEP has the support of the Government of Portugal – Ministry of Culture / Directorate-General for the Arts, and is in residence at Teatro Campo Alegre in the scope of the programme Teatro em Campo Aberto.