20.04.2017 – 21.04.2017 / 03:00 p.m. and 09:00 p.m.
Mosteiro de São Bento – Teatro Nacional São João
Praça da Batalha
4000-102 Porto, Portugal
Theatre play
ENDGAME
Tania Bruguera is a Cuban artivist making her first foray into the world of theatre with her version of Beckett’s “Endgame.” She has designed a 8.50 meter tall cylinder of scaffolding, from where the audience watches the performance happening below.
At each new reading of the text, Bruguera considers that “a different dynamic between the characters is revealed and new layers are projected: the dialogue happens between a black person and a white racist, between a battered woman and her aggressor, between lovers…”.
Tania Bruguera transposes the power relations between the characters to the visual set-up and to the cast, which includes one professional actor (Brian Mendes as Hamm), a different amateur actor for each performance (as Clov) who hears and repeats the text for the first time in a declared submission to the words, and two actors whose voices do not come from their bodies, but from the sound equipment around the audience.
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Directed by: Tania Bruguera
Architects: Dotan Gertler Studio
With: Brian Mendes, Jess Barbagallo, Pedro Aires and Lara Ferreira
Light design: Rui Monteiro
Light assistants: Carin Geada and Manuel Alão
Sound design: Rui Lima and Sérgio Martins
Assistant director: Mitchell Polonsky
Technical director: Patrícia Gilvaia
Production: BoCA
Production Manager: Ana Rita Osório
Executive producer: Francisca Aires
Co-production: São João National Theatre (Oporto, PT), Colectivo 84 (PT), Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels, BE), Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (Nanterre, FR), Festival d’Automne à Paris (Paris, FR), Fondation d’Enterprise Hermès (Paris, FR), International Summer Festival Hamburg (Hamburg, DE), Estudio Bruguera
Acknowledgements:John Romão, Christophe Slagmuylder, Philippe Quesne, The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard College TDM, James Stanley, Achy Obejas, Tricia Van Eyck & MCA Chicago, Bob Wilson & The Watermill Center, Estudio Bruguera, New York City Players, Nicholas Elliot, Katiana Rangel, Regina Vorria, Alessandra Saviotti.