POETRY AND SAVAGERY
Direction
Vera Mantero
Performers and co-creation
Nuno Bizarro, Ana Sofia Gonçalves, Vera Mantero, Margarida Mestre, Frans Poelstra, Christian Rizzo
Artistic Assistance
Lília Mestre
Set
Nadia Lauro
Costumes
Nadia Lauro and all the staff
Light Design
Cathy Olive
Props and Stage
Marta Rego
Soundtrack
Christian Rizzo
Sound Design
Rui Dâmaso
Executive Production
EIRA / Delphine Goater / O Rumo do Fumo
Co-producers
Instituto Português de Artes e Espectáculos / Centro Cultural de Belém/ Mergulho no Futuro-Expo 98 e EIRA
Sponsors
Centa, Casa de Mateus
Poetry and Savagery was commissioned by
Festival Mergulho no Futuro Expo98 and had its premiere in Lisbon on the 21st August 1998
“There is a current in today’s world which is a claiming for culture, the claiming for an organic and profound culture, which will be able to explain the life of spirit.
I call organic culture to a culture based on the spirit in relationship with the organs, and the spirit bathing in all the organs, and answering itself at the same time.
There is in this culture an idea of space, and I say that true culture can only be learned in space, and it’s an oriented culture, like oriented theatre. Culture in space means culture of a spirit which doesn’t stop breathing and feeling alive in space, and that calls to itself the bodies of space as the very own objects of it’s thought, but that as spirit situates itself at the centre of space, that is, at it’s dead point.
It is probably a metaphysical idea, this one of the dead point of space through which the spirit has to cross.
But without metaphysics there is no culture. And what does it mean this notion of space suddenly thrown into culture, if not the affirmation that culture is inseparable from life…
… culture is movement of the spirit that goes from void to forms and from forms inside void, inside void as inside death. Being cultivated means burning forms, burning forms to earn life. It is learning to keep upright in the incessant movement of forms that one destroys successively. (…)
Against father, nation and boss… love, spirit, sexuality. (…)
I call poetry today to knowledge of the internal and dynamic destiny of thought”.
Antonin Artaud in “Messages Révolutionnaires”
“As contradictory as this may seem, the generation X has no intention of renouncing the stage. On the contrary, in the hyper-communicative age of modern electronics and virtual technologies, they are returning to theatre as a medium in the widest sense of the term. The stage is increasingly a vital refuge, a testing ground for personal points of view: our individual essence, our emotional urges, our physical expression, our most intimate beliefs, our sexual orientation and socio-cultural background. On this ancient and cathartic battle field, modern nomads and buyers and sellers of souls have by no means set aesthetic values aside, because the perception of their audience means the world to them (…)”
Simon Kardum
waiting at the doctor’s. a television in the waiting room, tuned to Odyssey channel, if I’m not mistaken. it was the odyssey of Houdini, the magician. fascinating. a man who likes to shackle, imprison, chain, gag, incarcerate, handcuff (especially handcuff ) himself and to completely disappear under the water. to escape is the main idea in his life. to escape. to escape from. the american people certainly had fun watching him fooling the police by using his tricks, but the narrators of the program underlined the special joy that certain peoples (such as the german people, who lived under a dictatorship at the time) had from seeing him heading to the police head-quarters asking, as a special favour, to be handcuffed and jailed, only to ridicule the cops by immediately releasing himself from all handcuffs and bars that could ever be thought of. mr. Houdini was obsessed by publicity. he only visited police stations accompanied by a legion of reporters. and he did his tricks facing crowds, like the one in which he was hanging upside-down from the top of a skyscraper, wearing a straitjacket. they had come to watch him die, he said.
another waiting. this time at the bus stop. I am one of those people who never take buses, never wait for public transportation. I have my own transportation. but today I waited at the bus stop. and I stopped. the stop is not just the bus’, it is also the people’s. and to stop, nowadays, is a very pleasant thing. having to stop. people who have their own transportation never have a reason to stop. I stopped and I looked at the street. it can be very tiresome to look at a street, things constantly passing by your eyes, a ceaseless movement that insists on telling us nothing. so I decided to stare, trying not to be distracted by useless information, to see if I could see something. in front of the bus stop there was a tiny space between two buildings which allowed me to look at the stars. I stared at them, still. I know that for other people it must be a little odd to see someone still, staring, I myself would find it odd. but why looking at everything, if you don’t see a thing ?
Vera Mantero
Freedom. Immanence.
(from where did I get this idea of freedom?)
Freedom as availability to vibrations, availability to hear them and availability to accomplish them in some way. To hear these vibrations inside us, to embrace them, opens an enormous field of possibilities, creates the energy to construct, gives a sense of meaning, meaning to do things, or energy itself creates the meaning.
I like this idea, energy itself creates the meaning.
I think that freedom is what makes it possible to enter immanence.
Probably without freedom it could not be entered.
It must be why I am always falling back on the idea of abandonment, the idea of abandonment and openness and all the related items.
Vera Mantero