6 shows, 2 absolute premieres, 4 laboratories and 10 presentations in collaboration with the University of Minho, artistic residencies and workshop of dramaturgy are the program of this celebration of the theater from June 7th to 16th
The 31st edition of the Gil Vicente Festivals will take place from June 7th to 16th at the Vila Flor Cultural Center in Guimarães. Constructed from a symbolic theatrical axis, in which limit experiences will unfold, more than ever this art of living body nothing left untapped. Future and uncertainty, love and crisis, real and absurd, memory and identity, fear and desire, imagination and revolution, will be some of the themes represented during 2 weeks of debate and restlessness. Because the Gil Vicente Festivals want to disturb everyone. The city and the public. Those who already assume the theater as passion and those who want to discover this art. Therefore, we choose the most convenient ways and take the theater as a public space for debate, because in reality it was born for that purpose.
The 31st edition of the Festivals Gil Vicente opens with two premieres. "Lungs”, on June 7th, by Luís Araújo, exposes a generation that makes uncertainty a way of life. "Lungs" is the story of a conversation between a couple in their thirties, M and W, during a trip to Ikea discusses the possibility of having a child and the impact it will have on them and on the planet. "Am I a good person? Will I be a good father? What kind of world will our son inherit? Is it wise or necessary to bring another child into this world? "With the staging of Luís Araújo - who after
"Underground" (2016) re-signs a creation for Ao Cabo Theater "Lungs" is not explicitly a play on climate change, it is a play about people, a young couple faced with an unexpected possibility that leads them to reevaluate the rest of their lives in a way that is immediately recognized as a possibility in the present and trying to imagine a recognizable future that has in the present and in the society in which we now live a kind of instruction manual.
It follows "Retables", on June 8th, the new play of Theater Workshop that takes the city up the stage. The city is the main protagonist of this creation, in another intensely participative project of the theater company of Guimarães. A city made up of teachers, students, lawyers, managers, unemployed, retired or trainees who is now called to represent a city of Alcaides and Governors on the stage of the CCVF, but that becomes the stage of manifests when cannoneers or beggars break out. A working city that is invaded by children, becoming stage of imagination. The cast chosen for more this investigation of the art of theater is not innocent, are the usual suspects: the students of the Workshops of the Oficina Theater, people from 8 to 64 years who, since October 2017, decided during their day to day to do theater, thus approaching those who make the theater their daily life.
The first week of the Gil Vicente Festivals is concluded with "If I lived you died", on June 9th, a show by Miguel Castro Caldas & Lígia Soares, Miguel Loureiro and Tiago Barbosa, Filipe Pinto, Gonçalo Alegria and Salomé Marques, which explores one of the limits of the theater, the text, which is delivered to the public at the beginning of the play. SPA 2017 Award for Best Portuguese Text Represented, "If I Lived You Died" has the character of an essay, an attempt, an investigation. The viewers can switch between the reading and the view of the representation. The spectacle happens precisely in this particular interval, between reading and seeing, between the book and the stage, the intermittent attention of the spectator, between the raising and lowering of the head, in a movement of the collar.
Opening the second round of shows, Tónan Quito brings us a love story. "Casimiro and Carolina", on June 14th, Horváth, talks about the aftermath of the crisis of 1929, to remind us of what we are still going through. The depression is big, high unemployment, but despite the austerity measures taken by the government, the characters meet at a beer party to have fun, drink and forget about the problems. Casimiro and Carolina are a loving couple, he is unemployed, he works, until they break, argue, separate and the wound is open. The desperation from which they fled is visible. How will we be when these policies pass? There is hope? Is it possible to love in times of crisis?
In turn, Estelle Franco, Mariana Ricardo, Masako Hattori, Paula Diogo and Sónia Baptista challenge us to reflect on how memory operates in our lives in "On Remember and Forget", on June 15th, This is the first part of a trilogy, inspired by the book "Les Formes de l'oubli" by the anthropologist Marc Augé, which will be completed with "The Autumn Season" and "Landscape". Three shows about what we choose to remember or forget, or what we are able to remember and forget.
The cast of performances ends with "Perplexed", on June 16th, by Cristina Carvalhal, a play in which reality seems to be constantly being reformulated, bordering on the absurd. The couples, holidays, children, domestic servants, Darwin and the law of the strongest, the Nazi shadow or a masquerade are some of the themes present in this kind of comedy of customs, haunted by Pirandello. The characters multiply. But after all, what is real? Perhaps only a certain appetite for the great philosophical questions that have disturbed us since Socrates.
The program of the Gil Vicente Festivals would not be complete without the Guimarães Gang, which again peacefully occupy the festival, repeating the format inaugurated in 2017, artists in residence at the Candido Creation Center and playwrights in a workshop at Vila Flor Palace. This year, undergraduate students and alumni of the University of Minho Theater also join the parallel activities program, invading (and conquering) Espaço Oficina with the presentation of a sample of 10 of their projects, 4 laboratories with the participation of Victor Hugo Pontes, Pedro Telles, Joana Providência and Vera Mantero, and 5 independent projects with the general coordination in charge of Tiago Mora Porteiro. In these Festivals Gil Vicente relationships are created, questions are launched in search of answers, paths of encounter, communion and sharing open. We expect the public to participate and become uneasy about each discovery.
"Underground" (2016) re-signs a creation for Ao Cabo Theater "Lungs" is not explicitly a play on climate change, it is a play about people: a young couple faced with an unexpected possibility that leads them to reevaluate the rest of their lives in a way that is immediately recognized as a possibility in the present and trying to imagine a recognizable future that has in the present and in the society in which we now live a kind of instruction manual.
