Real Magic

A companhia Forced Entertainment cumpre 30 anos e Tim Etchells é Artista na Cidade 2014, boas razões para fazer a festa em Lisboa. O Teatro Maria Matos e o Teatro São Luiz recebem o artista e a sua companhia durante oito dias num programa intensivo de espetáculos, performances e instalações, alguns com muitos anos, outros acabados de estrear, outros ainda criados propositadamente para a ocasião. REAL MAGIC promete ser uma montanha-russa de surpresas, mistérios, encontros íntimos e eventos épicos. Um encontro inesquecível com um dos artistas mais idiossincráticos das últimas três décadas.

No seu site, Forced Entertainment lança um convite aberto para o envio de textos originais sobre os encontros e as experiências com a companhia. Uma só regra: os textos têm de ter exatamente 365 palavras. A propósito de um encontro inesquecível, aqui fica a contribuição do encenador e dramaturgo britânico Tim Crouch:

And at the Central School of Speech and Drama, from time to time, we had classes with Dr. Susan Melrose. She arrived from Kent on her bicycle. She had an asymmetrical hairstyle. She was charged with trying to teach the actors performance theory. And after her classes we, the actors, went to Stage Combat or Voice or bitched on the steps about what relevance was any of that philosophy to anything. Dr. Melrose tried to teach us hermeneutics but I never got it. Then she organized a trip for us to see Club of No Regrets. It was 1993. I watched that work like I was a house cat, its nose pressed against the double glazing, watching its wild brother playing in the jungle. Fuck, I thought. Fuck. Those people smashed things up and got messy and lost their poise and read lists and played really seriously and used microphones in small spaces and talked about love and identity and fragmentation. And I went back to drama school and worked on my auditions pieces. Fuck. I was on the wrong side of the paradigm shift. Should I send them a photo and CV? These people were a collective; they understood hermeneutics; they lived in Sheffield. You didn’t ask people like that for a job. You learnt their names like you learnt the names of the Ramones — Tim, Robin, Cathy, Claire, Richard, Terry — Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, good times. Disco Relax and First Night at the Toynbee Studios. Quizoola at the basement of the Gardner Centre in Brighton. Exquisite Pain in Lisbon. Spectacular at the Tron. And so on. I organized a Crouch family outing to see Bloody Mess at the QEH. And then a works outing to see it again at Riverside. I bought Certain Fragments and remember those cardboard signs by heart — A Narcoleptic Rent Boy, A Bloody Fool, Death Himself. These were new forms that felt as old as the hills. At some point during this fandom I started to make my own work — and Forced Entertainment are in no small way responsible. They had been calling to me since 1993 — through the double glazing. And thank you, Dr. Susan Melrose.

Artista na Cidade 2014
Teatro Maria Matos e Teatro São Luiz