Cartas, Telegramas e Postais
Teatro do Silêncio
PT
Performance/Theater

Artistic residency
September 9th – 12th
Arraiolos

Presentation
September 12th, 6.30PM
Cine-Teatro de Arraiolos

M/12A
Free entrance

Text and artistic direction – Maria Gil
Sound and set design – Monika Frycová
Performers – Gisella Mendonza
Production – Teatro do Silêncio
Co-production – ZDB and Teatro Aveirense
Artistic and creative residency – Festival Escrita na Paisagem
Partnership – Livraria Trama and Editora Elefante Azul Clarinho
Support - RE.AL

Cartas, Telegramas e Postais (Letters, Telegram and Postcards) is a performance about the intimacy of the relationship sender-addressee and the need to creating alter-egos. This work stars from an autobiographic text written by Maria Gil during a two-months artistic residency in Spain, within the program "MAP" (a mobility support program promoted by Pépinière pour jeunes artistes). The object "letter" and the exchange of letters between addressee and sender are explored in a performance in which the audience is called to interact with the performer in a close relationship. The two sides and their identities confront, mirror each other, and share a communicational space full of possibilities: who are the communicators? What do we exchange in these intimate writings? What “image” do we give about ourselves to the other?

Cartas, Telegramas e Postais investigates the possibility we all have to re:create a double of ourselves, giving life to hidden sides of our personalities and to fantastic worlds where we can be somebody else, where we can re:invent our biographies, turning it into a parallel life on its own. The intimacy of the relationship sender-addressee is here re:proposed as the relationship between performer and audience member. A relationship affected both by the choice about how much of ourselves do we want to put in the social we create, and by the trust we put in someone else, certain that this other is full of questions and doubts, just like we are.

Teatro do Silêncio, founded in 2004, is based in Lisbon. A transdiciplinary collective, which joins people with a variety of backgrounds: theater, cinema, music, dance, visual arts, and also mathematics. Teatro do Silêncio produces experimental works, based on an ever-evolving research for new artist approaches and languages. The creation of original texts, use of autobiographic materials and the construction of an intimate relation with the audience during performances are other core characteristics of the group. The collective’s creative processes have been materialized in a variety of artistic objects, from performances (all directed by Maria Gil) to short-films, records, and books.