Teatro de Ferro (Portugal)

DURA DITA DURA

24 and 25 May at 9.30pm (Fri, Sat)

_{⇨ TICKETS ONLINE Tickets: 6 to 12€ (with discounts)}

_{Technique: Mixed Language: Portuguese Age guidance: +6 Runs: 50 min.}

Dura Dita Dura is a puppet show for all ages about the atmosphere of deaf terror that reigned for half a century in a country where the walls had ears. Through the attentive, sometimes astonished gaze of a well-loved child who is permeable to the prevailing malaise, the aim is to reveal a past that is still close, but which tends to fade into the "memory mists".

Once upon a time there was a little boy who lived in a small country facing the great ocean. It was said that in this country, great men and men of all sizes had set out to sea in search of other countries and other men. But this happen a very long time ago so much time that the little boy we're talking about had never set foot in the sea...

- Regina Guimarães

Dura Dita Dura premiered at FIMFA Lx9 and in the year that marks the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April, the Carnation Revolution, it makes perfect sense to present the story of Baltazar, a boy who grows up somewhere, in a lost little village of a forgotten Portugal, but closely guarded and self-surveilled. Balthazar is mute, but not deaf. His vivacity is unusual for a little boy and conflicts with the obscurantism that characterizes little Portugal. Balthazar is a silence scandal in a silenced country. But you don't choose the place and time where you are born.

BIO

Teatro de Ferro was founded in 1999. The artistic directors are Carla Veloso and Igor Gandra. The choice of the name - Teatro de Ferro (Iron Theatre) - implies a notion of primordial, resistant and at the same time changeable matter: this transformation process continues to inspire them. The work of the Company has been developed in the theatre of, and with, puppets and objects. They conceive their practice in the logic of a research in which the puppet has assumed a matrix value in its possible hybridizations, both tempted and tempting. The relationships - of the body interpreter with the manipulated object and the implication of each spectator in the building of this relation - are lines of thought that are transversal to the artistic practice of Teatro de Ferro. Igor Gandra is the artistic diretor of the Festival Internacional de Marionetas do Porto, since 2009.

_CREDITS

_{Text and song: Regina Guimarães Direction, scenography and puppets: Igor Gandra Music: Michael Nick Fado/song: Ana Deus Performer: Igor Gandra Lighting design: Rui Maia, TdF Set up direction: Eduardo Mendes, Mariana Figueroa Construction workshop: Gil Rovisco, Nuno Bessa, Américo Castanheira - Tudo Faço Lighting operation: Mariana Figueroa Photography: Susana Neves Acknowledgments: Amarante Abramovici, Tiago Afonso, Maio, Sr. José Pereira, J. P. Coimbra, Jorge Paupério - Somnorte, Deolinda Fernandes, Prazeres Rovisco, Mário Gandra, Inês Mamede, João Alves, Carlota, Matilde Coproduction: Festival Internacional de Marionetas do Porto, Festival Escrita na Paisagem and FIMFA Lx - Festival Internacional de Marionetas e Formas Animadas de Lisboa Company sponsored by: República Portuguesa - Cultura | Direção-Geral das Artes}