Assembly proceeds from a lab and role-play open to local communities to experiment and develop a project that is then presented as a performance.
Local community issues are addressed in the lab and an ‘assembly’ organised with a local group.
Each performance is directly linked with the local community’s background, history, stories and heritage, and is unique and different each time it is performed in a new context.
Two ‘actors’ are selected and coached to perform in the lab that is set up at every new venue and the remaining participants in the lab take part in the ‘assembly’.
The starting point is as follows:
A couple of performers argues about the “housing problema” and living together. One of them wants them to stay where they live and to work together in order to improve their way of life. The other partner prefers to move. But move where? To a new house? A new neighbourhood? A new town? A new country? The result of their discussion has 3 options: they stay; they move; they separate and each of them goes their own way.
But before, they have to identifie the problems that can only be solved with the community – using “political” tools. The two then call upon the Assembly – the public in the stalls.
The debate then ensues between the two and the members of the public to establish a contract: will the community, as represented by the Assembly, accept the problems put forward to be valid ones? Will they sympathise with them and express their solidarity? Are they ready to take responsibility? How do they intend to achieve this? Who is to do what? With what means? What form of action should they resort to? Who will commit themselves to it? What’s the next step?
Author: Rui Catalão
Community link: Paulo Lage, Vânia Cerqueira
Assistance: Luis Leonardo Mucauro
Lights: Cristovão Cunha
Produçtion: ORG.I.A
Coprodução: Teatro Maria Matos
Project financed by the Ministry of Culture / Direção Geral das Artes
