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Summer Garden 2020
M/16

ANIMAL ANIMAL

Tiago Barbosa and Cláudio da Silva

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When an animal looks at us, it sees us as we are and will not articulate its mouth and tongue to tell us in words how it sees us. Nor can we know what such words would tell us. This absence is a fault only for us. The animal before us does not speak our language. And that dumbness leaves us defenseless. And naked. The animal’s body is like ours. Real and concrete. It has a face, community and habitat.

It invites to committed curiosity, apart from the reactions in which we have been training ourselves. It summons our gaze and the imagination of a response that risks an interaction, more or less direct, individual or communal. Physical, political, artistic or other. Even though it might be awkward and difficult. Creatures do not pre-exist in the relationships in which they are involved, they are built by reciprocal induction. They are produced in the interplay, at different times, scales and distances. Bequeathing, inheriting and rewriting gestures and stories. Redoing ideas of nature and creating kinship. ANIMAL ANIMAL is a storytelling machine. Two human actors telling stories in which the protagonists are animals.

From a selection of species and an amateur knowledge of their morphologies, behaviors and affinities with human space, together with a repertoire of motives and ideas inspired or stolen from fiction or essay literature, stories are improvised taking as a setting Jardim Gulbenkian and the city of Lisbon, including its surroundings, Monsanto and beyond. The species adapted to the urban environment will be approached, the elusive ones that take refuge in the peripheries and also those that only tolerate the wild habitat.

The plots are developed individually, sometimes alternating voices, in an exercise in which the narrator takes as a motto what he heard before. Speculating and fabulating sentence by sentence, sometimes resorting to fiction construction devices and evading them at times, the actors move towards an unknown nothing, ending in guaranteed common places and many tired anecdotes betraying good intentions, among which, in due time , perhaps the shock of a surprising intertwining of bodies and species will arise.

ANIMAL ANIMAL is a joyful practice and a process in lightness. Without an end.

Tiago Barbosa

Credits

Direction: Tiago Barbosa
Creation and Interpretation: Cláudio da Silva and Tiago Barbosa
Production: ZDB

ZDB is financed by República Portuguesa – Cultura I DGARTES – Direção-Geral das Artes. Support from C.M.L.

Tiago Barbosa He has a degree in Theater - Actors / Directors by ESTC. He worked as an actor and performer in theater, dance and performance shows, under the direction of Gustavo Ciríaco, Rui Catalão, Miguel Castro Caldas, Nuno Gil, Jorge Andrade and Miguel Pereira, Ainhoa Vidal, Paula Sá Nogueira and André Godinho, Maria Gil, Dinarte Branco and Tiago Nogueira, Martim Pedroso, Mónica Calle, Bernard Sobel, Miguel Loureiro, Lúcia Sigalho, Francisco Alves, João Lourenço, Manoel Barbosa, André Guedes, Rita Natálio, Joclécio Azevedo, Vítor Hugo Pontes, Inês Jacques, António Pires, Catalina Buzoianu, Jorge Silva Melo, Adelino Tavares, Paulo Lages, Renata Portas, Marcos Barbosa, and Edward Fão, among others. On television, he participated occasionally in series and soap operas. He worked in cinema with directors such as Sandro Aguilar, Francisco Manso, Manuel Pradal and Patrick Mendes, among others. He participated in the art and neuroscience project “Raízes da Curiosidade”. He assisted Vera Mantero in the shows “Pão Rico” and “As Práticas Propiciatórias dos Acontecimentos Futuros”. He staged “A Grande Sombra Loira”, based on sonnets by Florbela Espanca, and “OLÁ, EU SOU O PAI NATAL”, with his text.

Cláudio da Silva He worked with Teatro Praga, Miguel Loureio, João Fiadeiro, Miguel Pereira, Jorge Silva Melo (Artistas Unidos), Rogério de Carvalho (Teatro Municipal de Almada), Pablo Fidalgo, Ricardo Aibéo, Mário Trigo, Madalena Vitorino, Jean-Paul Buchieri, Inês de Medeiros, Carlos Pessoa (Teatro da Garagem), Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, Ana Borralho e João Galante, Nuno Cardoso, Rita Natálio, João Samões, Gonçalo Amorim (Teatro Experimental do Porto), Manuel Wiborg e António Pires (Teatro do Bairro). He co-directed Debaixo da Cidade with Manuel Wiborg. He staged O Meu Blackie by Arne Sierens for Artistas Unidos and Felizmente Há Luar by Sttau Monteiro for TEP. He co-created Teatro Fantasma, with Carla Bolito, O3 with Pedro Nunez. He created Poeta Armando.

In cinema he worked with Solveig Njordlund, Jorge Cramez, José Pinto Nogueira, Luís Galvão Telles, Ico Costa, Patrick Mendes e João Botelho. He received the SP/RTP Best Cinema Actor award for his interpretation of João Botelho's Filme do Desassossego. On television, he participated in the series Inspector Max, Liberdade 21, Dez, Aqui Tão Longe and Terra Brava.

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