Carla Cruz

(documentation from the 20th of July at George Wood Theatre – Goldmsiths)

“The Other” a performance by Sonal, followed by “May Those Who Are Wounded Seek No Refuge But Shed Their Blood in the World” by Carla Cruz

20 July 2011

19:00
George Wood Theatre

Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross
London SE14 6NW
(Free event)

From the reading of the seventeenth century epistolary book Cartas Portuguesas by Sister Mariana Alcoforado and the seventies book, also epistolary and based in that older one, Novas Cartas Portuguesas by Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Isabel Barreno and Maria Velho da Costa; performance attempts to create a place for new subjectivations.

The letters by the first author were written between December 1667 and June 1668, while those by the three Marias (as the authors became known as), date from 1971. The seventeen-century ones are most likely a fiction by a French male author, the second ones know it but do not acknowledge it, and are dated but not signed.

This performance is the exercise of vengeance and passion as proposed by these 4 women, exercices were the object is just the excuse. My passion is the world, my exercise art and the object is any.

Mother abbess, where I am sent from the house of my parents

there was no bread for us at men’s table.

Our useless body was pledged to the lord

In the house of the lord we shall eat

In the house of the lord wer shall sleep

And what shall we be with no body nor cavalier?

Our passion is the lord, our exercise paradise, our object the world.

We shall be nuns in a convent.

This performance visits womens passions; from passion for passion itself to the passion for the world. Because the object of passion is just an excuse, pretext in and by itself, to define, and in what sense, our dialogue with the rest. Let’s see: what is left is the world, and the theme is passion. The performance will use spoken and written word, action over the body and visual images in an intimate atmosphere.

We have decided this to be a serious undertaking. What I shall do with you will be serious, even though the very fact will make me feel like laughing. Or, as today, not laughing one bit.

It is now possible to download the catalogue of the project, in which I took part, Agora não/Not yet (António Contador / Filipa Ramos) here.

The excerpt of the interview with Charlotte Smith is, for now, only available in Portuguese.