A TRIP, FOR THE RESILIENT, THROUGH THE (RE)CONSTRUCTION OF MEMORY IN PORTUGAL

By Pollyanna Diniz*

A Living Museum of Small, Forgotten and Unwanted Memories, created by Portuguese company Teatro do Vestido, was presented for the first time in Brazil since the creation of Mirada – Ibero-American Performing Arts Festival, in a week where memory, culture and science took another blow, this time one of those that fall under the category of irreparable damages. The National Museum fire in Rio de Janeiro last Sunday (2nd) was mentioned by actress, playwright and director Joana Craveiro, under a projection of headlines and newspaper clippings showing the museum on fire as soon as spectators entered the room. This loss does not affect only Brazilians, but all populations across the Americas, underlined the actress before resuming her original work and explained why she decided to dive deep into more than 80 years of her own country’s history.

Minutes before, during the prelude, she showed a photo of her as a little girl in high school, back in 1980. While in Brazil (at least many of the 1990s children) they sat behind a school desk for a picture, with the green and yellow flag on the back, in Portugal they have old pictures standing in front of a picture of the Swiss alps. But what did the Swiss alps represent for a country that, years before, in 1974, witnessed the April 25 Revolution, stripping the power away from one of the world’s longest fascist dictatorships, which lasted for 48 years? In fact, after we are given this information regarding the number of years, we do the same as the actress: we immediately start asking ourselves how could people withstand a fascist regime for so long. How did they survive?

In an interview to Portuguese newspaper Público about the tragedy in Rio’s National Museum, anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro gave a statement that could perhaps help us understand the motivations behind A Living Museum of Small, Forgotten and Unwanted Memories: “Brazil is a place where ruling is building deserts. Natural and physical deserts, like the devastation of the cerrado region or the Amazon. They destroy nature and now they are destroying culture, building deserts in time. This means we are losing part of the history of Brazil and the world, because these items mean something to all of civilization.” Within the context of the performance, Joana Craveiro’s dedication can be interpreted as an attempt to prevent these deserts from destroying Portugal’s history, but especially to prevent the desert from erasing subjectivities, eroding away a story that no one can find in school books. While the task seems almost inglorious, Joana Craveiro decides to resist.

The Portuguese artist created a museum whose main asset is stories, experiences and accounts that perhaps have never even been made, but which had to be heard. Those from invisible, common and resilient people, who left their country and had to hurry back, who have different versions than the official story, who can share other ways of perceiving reality through the look in their own eyes. One of the countless people interviewed by Joana Craveiro when creating the performance decided to write what he wanted to write, in a utopian attempt to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. Regardless, the show is also a way to approach the subjectivity of memory, a way of reflecting upon how each person builds their own images of the past, even those drawn from a common source, such as family life. How are these political but also obviously sentimental memories passed on throughout the family? How can someone who never really experienced those stories can access this past, which is a personal construct, but also collective at the same time? One of the springs propelling the performance is the artist’s own story: the regime’s contradictions evidenced by the actions of her uncle, who supported the dictatorship; the shelf where banned books were kept; the childhood references to comrade Mao Tsé-Tung; the discovery that her own house was used as place to hold illegal meetings.

This museum’s collection, however, goes beyond recovering these subjective narratives, which had never been brought together before. It is an impressive and almost obsessive effort, given the massive amount of research carried out by the company: a colossal number of books, photographs, records, original pamphlets, and films. These materials virtually make up and entire art installation as the backdrop. Another performance springs to mind: Arqueologias do Presente - A batalha da Maria Antônia, by the Opovoempé troupe, which uses other resources both in its mise-en-scène and play-acting, but which also reveals extensive research on the years of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil, based on a battle between students from Universidade Mackenzie and the School of Philosophy, Sciences and Arts of Universidade de São Paulo, in the year 1968. But in the Brazilian group’s performance, spectators can walk around the stage, read the newspapers of the time and books on morals and civics, access testimonies from people who were in the battle. Despite the Portuguese performance handing out banned books and pamphlets, the spectator is still left with a desire to actually see and read that collection, perhaps in an art installation of its own. It’s not that the play-acting by itself isn’t enough, but precisely for the contrary reason, since it sparks curiosity in spectators and makes us think how much more there is to unravel in all of those files, and how the theater can help rewrite historical processes.

The play-acting is structured in a way that may seem fairly simple at first, but actually carries a vast complexity and finesse in the thought-structuring process. Joana Craveiro gives a lecture performance, diving into the challenge of presenting this museum to the audience, as if she were teaching a class, by projecting a notebook with several different notes, photographs and hand-written keys, added to the images as the lecture progresses. She juggles books and notebooks around, puts on records in the record player, distributes pamphlets among the audience. Strictly speaking, this isn’t just one lecture performance, but seven in total, working together to build the play’s discourse. Alone on the stage, the actress gracefully carries on the performance for five and a half hours. There is also an intermission, when the audience partakes in a Portuguese supper. Like a school recess, a time to recompose and somehow start to deal with the myriad of information shared by the performance, or also to reaffirm eating as an act of experiencing, interacting and sharing.

  The length of the performance might scare some spectators. The fact of the matter is that, in some scenic proposals, witnessing time pass together and experiencing an extended time at the theater may be essential for the performance. In the case of A Living Museum of Small, Forgotten and Unwanted Memories, although the entire collection makes sense and adds to the dramatical nature of the performance, it seems much more related to a sense of affection to those stories, to its sources, than to what was shared in such a precious manner only to be somehow edited, as if this meant they were being “disposed”. That wouldn’t be the case. Nonetheless, despite the long duration, this journey accompanied by the resilient, as the actress refers to spectators who stayed until the end, is one of historical discoveries and redefinitions. Touched by the need to understand as individuals built upon a collective history, scouring through whatever is left of this time in us, and how to deal with the redefinition of the present.

 

*Pollyanna Diniz is a journalist, critic and theater scholar. Holding a Master’s degree in Performing Arts from Universidade de São Paulo (USP) Diniz is the founder and publisher of the blog “Satisfeita, Yolanda?”, specializing in critics and news in the world of Performing Arts.