Introduction

This new choreographic creation by Cláudia Dias pioneers a new production strategy embraced by RE.AL. This strategy consists in creating the conditions that preserve the autonomy of the creative process against exterior constraints connected to the process of production. It takes into account the fact that constraints such as the need to compose a dossier of the piece and write intention notes (a working material that interlocutors tend to take for the programme of the show), as well as the need to define the number and identity of the performers and artistic collaborators, are constraints that condition both the nature of the project and its communication, even before the artist has started rehearsals. Trying to reverse the usual logics, we wish to privilege a time of active preparation; a time of artistic research where intentions may be freely tested and experimented in interaction with passing-by different collaborators; a time where the possibility of shifting directions or the possibility of reconfiguring the project according to the evolution of the creative process remains open. The team of collaborators available to the project is called NIR (Núcleo de Investigação RE.AL = RE.AL Research Team) and is a multiform and polyvalent collective assembling not only the artists associated to RE.AL (João Fiadeiro, Gustavo Sumpta and Cláudia Dias) but also permanent collaborators (Rita Natálio, David-Alexandre Guéniot), as well as regular collaborators who participate in the research projects organized by RE.AL. That new production (and creation) strategy will thus allow us to deepen our reflection on the idea of collective creation.    

In October 2007, Cláudia Dias started a first research period at the RE.AL Atelier, in order to define possible directions to follow in her new project. That period, during which she has mainly worked alone, was achieved by an intern presentation and discussion – at the core of NIR – of its propositions. In December 2007, a specific work of analysis and reflection on the dramaturgic lines that we could see in the presentation, as well as on those we could identify as potential, was carried out in order to prepare the second step of the research. Between January and March 2008, Cláudia Dias starts working on a basis of regular exchange with the members of NIR, so that she can test a new version of the project with the intervention of interpreters other than herself and have the possibility to adopt an exterior point of view. That period of work will allow the definitive clarification of the kind of artistic collaborators, performers, and setting construction, which the project demands. In April, after the collaborators team has been formally constituted, a period of intensive rehearsal work will start, both at the RE.AL Atelier and – towards the end – at Forum Cultural José Manuel Figueiredo, an equipped space adequate to the achievement of all technical aspects of the piece. The premiere will happen on the 29th, 30th and 31st May 2008 at the ALKANTARA festival, in Lisbon.

Presentation

Completely recyclable cardboard
Maximum weight to be packed: 25 kg
Do not pile up more than 3 boxes
Not appropriate to contain liquids or dangerous substances
Keep away from humidity

The manufacturer cannot be blamed for any improper use of this box.

Glide a finger over the surface of a table and reach the limit of the force against which the finger will have to stop. In the new creation of Cláudia Dias, friction could be used as a good metaphor for the way in which senses crystallize around possible images. Words and actions are surfaces of contact – one says what one does, one does what one says. A microphone on stage, framed within a small cardboard wall, creates a space for speech – a space where that which one does can be defined, commented upon and contextualized. Action, in turn, is also given its own space. It generates around cardboard boxes, pattern-objects which trigger the entire scenic proposal. Thus, a relationship of forces between words and things is proposed from the start, wherein the formal setup of the apparatus allows breathing and diving at the same time. Plunge into friction. As time evolves, images get suspended in-between what they are in action and what they could become in speech, small breaks in meaning occur, readings multiply, one witnesses photographs of the transitory. Duet of bodies, duet of perspectives.
Words interact and change places – translation produces treason, friction produces fiction. Everything that is said reinstates us in new contexts, adds perspective to them, vanishing points, unexpected directions, rough draft dramaturgies, subjectivity. Things give birth to things and bodies give birth to bodies, in-between bodies that ambiguously escalate the possibility of fiction and embody the problems they present on stage whilst suggesting possible new lives. Before multifunction objects, standardized by serial production (cardboard boxes), the semantic exercise becomes a resonance box of implicit cultural codes. And while we get merged in a confusion of personal, social, symbolic meanings inhabiting the interior of images, the scenic space is converted into a speculation locus for a debate, near public, near political, or political because it is public. As if theatre could, for a moment, become a discussion arena. A place for the construction of a speech and the sharing of urgencies.  A place for manifestation. Or, even, of manifesto.

Rita Natálio, may 2008