Cornucópia Theatre – Lisbon
“Able to long able to be and to be safely to be safely able to be safely to be safely to be seen able to long to be safely to safely be here and there to be there. Able to be there”
Gertrude Stein | “The List”
The costumes confer an entity without gender, a character creation without beginning or end, a whole.
A list of shape and colour, which results in an involucre that allows seeing its structure and interior, even though its interior is expressed as an extension of everything around it, the red with lines intersect infinitely.
Each costume is composed of 2 overlapping suits in which the top suit presents rips instead of joining in the seams and these rips reveal the interior costume, the essence of the personage.
‘The List’ is a spoken ballet. “The show is a game of words. Puns. Fragments of unordered/disordered sentences”. A game of sounds that, articulated with music and the repetitive structures, forms the essential matter of whole construction. “On the other hand, the show is a game of colours. A limited range, in which the blue and strong red colours of the costumes dominate over the wood colour of four boxes (almost coffins) that the actors inhabit and with which they dance/costar”. Dipped on stage, in an almost complete obscurity, the mobile objects reveal the structural supports and construction mechanism. The scenery melts with the stage. “The nudity (…) of the scenery (a ramp at the background and another one in the proscenium, linked by a third one that goes from the proscenium to the background) enhances the immobility role, figured in the ballerina dressed in red that takes the entire show to descend the three ramps, in an imperceptible movement.
Manuel João Gomes , in “Público” (6/2/1997)
