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.