Teatro do Bolhão presents in Portuguese “The Pleasure of Objects” in the Auditorium of the Soares dos Reis National Museum, on 24 and 25 November (Friday and Saturday), at 19h00, and on 26 November (Sunday), at 16h00.
The performance is a charity event.
Admission is free and the audience is invited to make a donation of any amount to the Unidos pelo Edu* campaign.
Written and directed by Zeferino Mota, the play “The Pleasure of Objects” is presented in the form of a lecture and addresses issues related to heritage and memory, finding its natural habitat in the conference room of a museum.
An actress in the character of an art historian presents the paper “The Pleasure of Objects”. The recent death of a close person had made her discover how a significant absence sacralises photographs, letters, crockery, gestures, etc. and how it is relationships of affinity that make an object real; it becomes real through a bond and closeness.
This “revelation” is proposed directly to the audience listening to the “lecture”: the object made sacred by memory is preserved, recycled, invited to occupy a place, it can last a lifetime and can even be a legacy for future generations; its prolonged contemplation contrasts with the rhythm of our time, in which images pass fleetingly across the retina and the multiplicity of alternatives means that we have no obligation or need to linger in one place.
The biography shared by the “performer” as a speaker is only apparently individual; it is the story lived by men and women trying to reach a place they can call home.
* The Unidos pelo Edu campaign is in favour of the rehabilitation of Eduardo Cunha, a 17-year-old student on the Acting Course at ACE Escola de Artes. In April this year, he had an accident in a swimming pool and suffered a serious injury to his neck. Now, after a difficult and long process in intensive care at Hospital de Santo António, he is undergoing intense rehabilitation. His family, who have been supporting him constantly, have launched a fundraising campaign @unidospeloedu, with which ACE Escola de Artes, Teatro do Bolhão and the Soares dos Reis National Museum are associated.
Teatro do Bolhão was formed in 2002 by a group of eleven professionals under the artistic direction of António Capelo, Glória Cheio, João Paulo Costa, Joana Providência and Pedro Aparício, later joined by António Júlio. The company, based at the Palácio do Bolhão, has a synergistic relationship with the ACE School of Arts, integrating the young professionals trained into a constantly renewing team. Since 2010, the company has been promoting an Educational Service that fosters a continuous and organic relationship with the region in which it operates through workshops, laboratories and workshops, as well as through the Portable Theatre, which takes literary works taught at different levels of education to schools.
The Bolhão Theatre is an entity funded on a four-year basis by the Directorate-General for the Arts – Ministry of Culture.