This was performed at Camden People’s Theatre.

Created & perfomed by Pedro Antunes, Hugo Caroca, Ariana Lebron and Mauro Matos |Direction and Text by Pedro Antunes & Mauro Matos | Choreography by Ariana Lebron & Hugo Caroca | | Costumes & Set design by Lucy Newholm | Lighting design by Hugo Caroca | Music by Donald Newholm, Ruido, Tiago de Almeida and Joseph Vidar | Photography by Olga Belchior | Video Alex Forsey | Produced by Kerry Irvine

Supported by Scene Pool & Performance Initiative

St. Elizabeth of Portugal (1271- 1336)

A catholic pop performance

A Portuguese Queen that, although under her husband’s control, defies him and goes out into the streets to care for the workers and feed the people. The legend tells that one day she was caught by her husband leaving the house whilst hiding bread in her apron. She lied telling him it was roses she was carrying and when she opened the apron the bread had been transformed into roses.

This story is here dismantled and transformed into visceral visual experience where the queen is placed as real replica of the saint’s image represented by a stone sculpture, creating a figure of living metaphors and vivid allegoric pictures.

Beyond the narrative of the legend we assist to the people’s fight against an authoritarian and petrified society that is staged by a group of workers that perform the breaking of this cold sculpture of a roman catholic saint, carving away a sexuality and sensuality that emerges out of her ruins. The broken saint gives birth to a carnal woman of brown skin , a new body that emerged out the rigidity and immobility.

Under the ruin and the destruction we have the queen’s son trying to shape and construct the spirituality and memory of his own mother, wanting to embrace her body in a intimate and maternal moment, that has been ripped a long time ago.

Created and Devised by Audrey Albert & Pedro Antunes
Photography by Alex Forsey
Short Film (a work in progress)

Part of a series of short films showing the lives of families, couples and workers engaged in love affairs, romance and death. These collections of short films will be collated into a live performance, that will use all the characters and actions present in the short films, therefore the films are being used as a devising process and as a final result – to be presented in a sequence of short episodes (soap opera).

A son trying to reconstruct his family.
A performance about a family reunion.

A live family re-construction.

After many years of separations from his real family he attempts to recreate a family re-union, that he never managed to face in reality, so he invites a group of people to become the members of his family, to re-enact that moment. The audience will be placed in each of the different family roles. They will be asked and lead by the performer (the son) to re-enact different episodes of a happy family. His relationship with his father, his mother and his aunty will be adjusted or manipulated to his necessities. In this fictional set up, there are gaps  and lapses of memory and that’s where the autobiographical reality of the performer lies.

The idea is to create an intimate performance, that works a a family re-union and where the audience shares and participates on  the fictional construction of a family and simultaneously is the reality of the autobiographic identity of the the son (Pedro Antunes), as they (the audience) are placed and are made to feel a family persona (the father, the mother, the aunty or the uncle) and this will initiate a process of discover of the real motivations behind the experiment.

The Missing Parts is a exploration into my relationship with my family, as well, as my decision from being away from them, a necessity to lie about my missing parts, a necessity of a family to cover up the son that is missing , that is away. How a social mechanism works without a part? how can they replace that missing part? What are the fictional stories that live inside his mind to replace the absent father and mother that is away?

Created by Pedro Antunes

Direction and Staging by Hugo Caroca and Tania Leonardo

Performed by Pedro Antunes and Vera Soares

Presented at Camden People’s Theatre & Etcetera Theatre.

Next Sunday the 30th Nov, I’ll be presenting a performance in development (under construction / unfinished) at Camden’s People Theatre, that is called The Missing Parts (my company name is Big_Odd) and is the second of a double bill starting at 9pm. Please be there and give me your feedback afterwards. If you can’t make it and want to find out more about this performance, please folloe the blog.

Thanks
Pedro Antunes