Tónan Quito

A ten-hour performance to watch Chekhov’s four main plays: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. The piece was meant to be performed during the night and to end at daybreak, thus turning dawn into the main character. Dawn is the future. What will be! All these plays confront us with an issue that haunted Chekhov: what will humanity be like in the future? A question that seems to haunt each and every one of us in these times of uncertainty and fear. The frustration and powerlessness of the characters enables us to think about how absurd our life is and how to change it. This is a performance about change, and change is on what we want to work: the shift from old to new, the failure of old practices, the liberation from old truths. In his work, Chekhov portrayed the life of certain strata of the petty bourgeoisie of that time (disoriented and depressed people, beset by the collapse of a decaying society), looking at the vices and ambiguities of intellectuals torn between the will to transform reality and their inability to act vis-à-vis that society. — Tónan Quito


TÓNAN QUITO is an actor and theatre director with a degree from the Lisbon Theatre and Film School. He started his journey in 4º Período – O do Prazer, directed by António Fonseca, and he has worked with Luís Miguel Cintra, Joaquim Horta, Lúcia Sigalho, Paula Diogo, Nuno Cardoso, Tiago Rodrigues, Jorge Andrade, Patrícia Portela, Pedro Gil, João Garcia Miguel, Gonçalo Waddington, Tiago Guedes, Alex Cassal, Miguel Loureiro and Carla Maciel, among others. He co-founded the cultural association Truta, where he staged Ivanov, Tales from the Vienna Woods and Anatol. He created In Between the Lines with Tiago Rodrigues (who also wrote it) and Fausta, by Patrícia Portela, with Pedro Gil. He founded HomemBala with Patrícia Costa and directed An Enemy of the People, Richard III, Faith, Hope and Charity, Oresteia and Casimir and Caroline. He also directed A Midsummer Night's Dream for Companhia Maior. He played small parts in films by Simão Cayatte, Jacinto Lucas Pires, Hugo Pedro, Manuel Mozos and Tiago Guedes, among others, as well as in television productions directed by Filipe Melo, João Leitão, Tiago Guedes and Marco Martins. In 2019, he starred in the film Sadness and Joy in the Life of Giraffes, by Tiago Guedes. He was an assistant teacher at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School in 2019.


SECOND HALF • TEATRO NACIONAL SÃO JOÃO
September
18 Fri / 19.00h
19 Sat / 20.30h