Martim Pedroso
Santa Joana Princesa Auditorium
Sinopsis
Purgatory is a text that, on the face of it, has nothing to say, but which proposes an operation. It doesn’t attempt to represent, tell or signify anything; it doesn’t even seek to pose a problem. It is based on the possibility of something happening.
It is a device that is linked to the “here and now” and to the “place” where we are: floating like plastic supermarket bags on the tepid waters of everyday life and contemporary theatre. Purgatory proceeds in a series of fits and starts. It tries to unravel something. Everything is got ready, they train, they warm up, they attempt a few movements and they summon up a repertoire of gestures, actions and professional tricks. Little by little, Purgatory launches itself into an incongruent, comic dance centred around an impossible, phantasmagorical event, one that is terribly forced, as if what is about to happen could only happen if it were to take place in a violent way: an interruption, a seismic shock in the customary order of relationships. In its slightly mischievous way, the show presents the spectator with a trap: the theatrical relationship is established not as a form of communication, a transmission, a participation or a way of sharing, but as a kind of “Stockholm syndrome”.