photo by Olga Belchior

Presented at Camden People’s Theatre on the 26th November.

Created & perfomed by Pedro Antunes, Hugo Caroca, Ariana Lebron and Mauro Matos | Direction and Text by Pedro Antunes & Mauro Matos | Choreography by Ariana Lebron  & Hugo Caroca | Costumes & Set design by Pedro Antunes and Lucy Newholm | Lighting design by Hugo Caroca | Music by Donald Newholm, Ruido, Tiago de Almeida and Joseph Vidar | Photography by Olga Belchior  | Production by Sara Little

Supported by Scene Pool

St. Elizabeth of Portugal (1271- 1336)

A Catholic Pop Performance

A Portuguese Queen that, although under her husband’s control, defies him and goes out into the streets to care for the workers and feed the people. The legend tells that one day she was caught by her husband leaving the house whilst hiding bread in her apron. She lied telling him it was roses she was carrying and when she opened the apron the bread had been transformed into roses.

photo by Olga Belchior

This story is here dismantled and transformed into visceral visual experience where the queen is placed as real replica of the saint’s image represented by a stone sculpture, creating a figure of living metaphors and vivid allegoric pictures.

Beyond the narrative of the legend we assist to the people’s fight against an authoritarian and petrified society that is staged by a group of workers that perform the breaking of this cold sculpture of a roman catholic saint, carving away a sexuality and sensuality that emerges out of her ruins. The broken saint gives birth to a carnal woman of brown skin , a new body that emerged out the rigidity and immobility.

Under the ruin and the destruction we have the queen’s son trying to shape and construct the spirituality and memory of his own mother, wanting to embrace her body in a intimate and maternal moment, that has been ripped a long time ago.

I’m performing The Missing Parts this Thursday at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden. It’d be lovely if you could come along for a few drinks and a bit of theatre.It starts at 9.30pm and there will be a whole variety of acts, with a good measure of humour thrown in – our’s is a work in progress so we’ll appreciate any feedback. It get’s pretty packed so you better get your ticket in advance. It’s an ongoing project so if you’d like to prepare yourself or follow up afterwards, please follow the blog!

Click here for more details about The Missing Parts

Pedro Antunes

A son trying to reconstruct his family.
A performance about a family reunion.

A live family re-construction.

After many years of separations from his real family he attempts to recreate a family re-union, that he never managed to face in reality, so he invites a group of people to become the members of his family, to re-enact that moment. The audience will be placed in each of the different family roles. They will be asked and lead by the performer (the son) to re-enact different episodes of a happy family. His relationship with his father, his mother and his aunty will be adjusted or manipulated to his necessities. In this fictional set up, there are gaps  and lapses of memory and that’s where the autobiographical reality of the performer lies.

The idea is to create an intimate performance, that works a a family re-union and where the audience shares and participates on  the fictional construction of a family and simultaneously is the reality of the autobiographic identity of the the son (Pedro Antunes), as they (the audience) are placed and are made to feel a family persona (the father, the mother, the aunty or the uncle) and this will initiate a process of discover of the real motivations behind the experiment.

The Missing Parts is a exploration into my relationship with my family, as well, as my decision from being away from them, a necessity to lie about my missing parts, a necessity of a family to cover up the son that is missing , that is away. How a social mechanism works without a part? how can they replace that missing part? What are the fictional stories that live inside his mind to replace the absent father and mother that is away?

Created & Directed by Pedro Antunes
Devised & Performed by Pedro Antunes and Vera Soares
Assistant Director/ Staging by Hugo Caroca and Tania Leonardo
Presented at Camden People’s Theatre, Etcetera Theatre and BAC (Battersea Arts Centre)

Next Sunday the 30th Nov, I’ll be presenting a performance in development (under construction / unfinished) at Camden’s People Theatre, that is called The Missing Parts and is the second of a double bill starting at 9pm. Please be there and give me your feedback afterwards. If you can’t make it and want to find out more about this performance, please folloe the blog.

Thanks
Pedro Antunes

La Pocha Nostra’s Pedagogy
by Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Roberto Sifuentes [MEX/USA]
Devised by Pedro Antunes & a group of 24 amazing performers
Presented in Escrita na Paisagem, Évora

This performance was created during the La Pocha Nostra Summer School (Escrita na Paisagem, Evora, 2008) by a collective of 25 international ‘rebel artists thinking together, exchanging ideas, fears and aspirations and jumping into “the abyss” together’ (La Pocha Manifesto)

‘La Pocha practices collaboration across national borders, race, gender and generations as an act of citizen diplomacy and as a means to create “ephemeral communities” of like-minded rebels. The basic premise of these collaborations is founded on the idea that if we can negotiate difference on stage or around a table, we can certainly do it in the social sphere. If we learn to cross borders on stage, we may learn how to do so in the world. And, we hope others will be challenged to do the same.’ (La Pocha Manifesto)

La Pocha Nostra is neither an ensemble, nor a troupe. We are more of a conceptual “laboratory”, for the want of a better term; a loose association of rebel artists thinking together, exchanging ideas, fears and aspirations and jumping into “the abyss” together. (La Pocha Manifesto).

Physical performance, made of poetic movements & memories from a distant home. Narrow Rooms, tells us the story of two people living in isolation and separated by one invisible wall. From their partitions / narrow rooms we can see fragments of their intimacy – These are moments of solitude and displacement, but also of suspended time of dreams in between lands.

Directed by Pedro Antunes
Devised by Adrian Hughs and Vera Chen Hsueh-Chen
Presented at Diorama Arts Centre, Thechnis Theatre, Escrita na Paisagem and Festival Y