The Missing Parts

By 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.

A Missing Part 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?

In PORTUGAL (the re-worked version):
Encenação e Criação - Pedro Antunes
Texto - Pedro Antunes, Alexander David, Pedro Vaz Simões
Dramaturgia & ass. direcção - Pedro Vaz Simões
Co-criação & interpretação - Pedro Antunes, Tânia Leonardo e Alexander David
Canto - Sira Camacho
Produção - Hugo Sousa
Projecto produzido por - Colecção B - Festival Escrita na Paisagem

In UK (the scratch & original idea):
Created & Directed - Pedro Antunes
Co-creation / Cast - Vera Soares & Pedro Antunes
Ass. Direction/ Staging: Hugo Caroca, Tania Leonardo.
Presented at Camden People’s Theatre & Etcetera Theatre (with a week developement at BAC)