Making a tour thru all these shows of standup comedy what distinguishes "ridiculous 3" of other?
NM: In "com.tema" we have 3 different plays, the first structure of "I'm gonna beat you" were a separate set of sketches, which sometimes had some connections here and there. We created the "quickie of Funchal," a perspective of humor, we told the story of the city from its beginnings, in the fifteenth century to the present days and we had a "the quickie of the crisis" that was the hardest thing we've done so far in terms of texts, because nobody knew nothing of economics, zero, we have to understand everything to dismantle all that language and find the right tone to do it with humor. Then there are "the ridiculous" that was not created by us, but the texts are from Filipe Sousa are two characters talking about the ridiculous figures that we see every day and how we do not realize how ridiculous we are.
One difficulty that is talked about a lot is the lack of authors. This is due to the fact that they cannot write texts for a stage and feel difficulty in understanding this dynamic?
NM: Yes, but I have the sensibility to tell people that no one is born taught. One of the hardest things to do is the dramaturgy of a text, I can write a play for theater, and I can deliver it to a director and he look at it and say, I really like this, but it needs drama. There is such a lack of sense from who writes for the stage. The texts of Philip Sousa had no drama alongside, amongst us, the company, I, the assistants and the actors we have created it, so I consider this to be a false argument.
It is difficult to find authors in Portugal?
NM: It's hard, because people are afraid. There are some who write, but I believe that they afraid to show it. For example, the Philip Sousa, I knew he had written a few things, try to convince him to see it for seven or eight years until I read the first text. This year we did a play that was "the talks of Mary Jane," of Joana Andrade and she was the who proposed herself to write a text and see what I thought of her writing, I thought I had the potential to be developed with some tips and the show was born that way. There are people and we are looking for people with texts to back up the formulas that we show to our audience.
What is your next play, except the stand-up solo?
NM: It's a text of Ionesco, an adaptation of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, has twelve characters, host great actors and action onstage. It is an absurd text and I think Ionesco decided to grab his iconic text and restructured it. In the end of next year we will have this play on stage, we think, from here till them we expect to raise the funds to mount it because it is an expensive play. There are eleven characters with eight actors on stage, I staged it in partnership with Julio José Castro Fernandes who translated the text from French to Portuguese and did the scenography.
Betting on a theater play in this period is not nearly suicide in a country where there is not a cultural vision?
NM: I would say that people attentive to culture realize that occasionally someone in Portugal was up to govern the structures and I speak of the Secretary of State for Culture, or the Ministry of Culture at different times, I speak of Pedro Santana Lopes and Manuel Maria Carrilho, good or bad, agree it or not, and I do not intend to discuss this issue, they had a project that nobody else had. I have great difficulty accepting that there are people who accept the position knowing beforehand that they will not do anything because they have no means to do so.
And at the regional level?
NM: The same, same thing. There is no difference, no cultural policy in Madeira.
You think they merge culture with entertainment?
NM: Absolutely, but one thing cannot be dissociated from each other, everything has its place, understand that culture are the folk dancers and local bands is reductive, there is more beyond that. If we do not have mechanical fruition and we have for the public to enjoy, the guilt does not lie only in the lack of a credible dynamic, but also from those who have political responsibilities to create the level of infra-structures and training the public towards these mechanisms so things may develop. But that does not matter, because the more a person is educated, has more capacity to think and that is not important to politicians, that people might question a lot, because these are dangerous.
