The Teatro Académico Gil Vicente (TAGV), in Coimbra, will host, next Friday and Saturday, the next stage of the show that features research, text, direction, and performance by Joana Craveiro, the company's artistic director.

On May 31st, it will be the turn of the documentary theatre show to reach the Teatro Municipal Constantino Nery, in Matosinhos, and, on June 23rd, the Teatro Sá da Bandeira, in Santarém, according to a note from the group.

In the 2024 tour, the Teatro do Vestido follows "closely the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of April 25th" just as the company led by Joana Craveiro did ten years ago, on the 40th anniversary of the revolution.

"We observe, analyse, dissect, reflect", we read in the presentation of the show, in which the Teatro do Vestido emphasises that "memory is not closed", because "the nature" of memory is "of a permanent construction".

The "meaning of a given historical event thus becomes a battlefield of various subjectivities, ideologies, and interpretations that are played out in the different attempts to inscribe in the public space a 'definitive' version of a given event", says Joana Craveiro about the play.

Although 50 years constitute "a fraction of a second in the history of the planet" and "a short time" in "the history of a country", they are a distance that allows the theatre company, together with "some of the agents and subjects of that history who are still alive, to understand how those times were experienced that still shape and condition us in our present and allow us to build futures", adds the Teatro do Vestido.

"This show is about that", writes the artistic director of the documentary theatre company, emphasising that the play lives from "the close relationship with the way in which the inscription of History in the public space, the public uses of memory, and the politics of memory evolve".

"And they make us evolve in our apprehension and interpretation of the events that the show addresses", adds Joana Craveiro.

"This work, whose research began in 2011, started from an intense and in-depth research around the life stories and memories of ordinary people about the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, April 25, 1974, and the revolutionary process that followed that day - a milestone of all beginnings in our life as a free country. It was accompanied by extensive historical research and the gathering of documents, artefacts, personal objects - part of a sensitive, affective archive, shown and handled live in the show", writes Joana Craveiro.

Divided into seven parts, "with a revolutionary dinner in the middle and a final debate/conversation", "'A living museum' is a demanding show and one of great complicity with those who watch it, an almost forensic investigation of aspects that constitute us as a country, as a community, as individuals, where collective memory and individual memory intersect and where someone who was born later questions the past from their place as a 'daughter of the revolution.' All this develops over six, which are sometimes more, because as a living museum, it is situated in this place of questioning and quoting the present."

"In this year of commemoration of the 50th anniversary of April 25th, we are witnessing a wealth of expressions, controversies, and divisions around the date, which could not but be present in this new cycle of presentations that begins this week at TAGV, in Coimbra", continues the director of the Teatro do Vestido. "Who knows what each day until these recitals will bring us? The museum feeds on all this. That's why its approximate duration and its open, in-progress nature."

"The new composition of the Assembly of the Republic, in turn, demands from each and every one of us an awareness of the crucial moment in which we find ourselves, this corner of particular history where the paths before us are fraught with uncertainty and danger. But also the hope of knowing our role in this script, in this struggle", concludes Joana Craveiro, artistic director of the Teatro do Vestido.

With creative collaboration and assistance from Rosinda Costa (in the version staged between 2014 and 2016) and Tânia Guerreiro, "A living museum of small and forgotten stories" has costumes by Ainhoa Vidal, lighting design and technical adaptation by João Cachulo, editing and light operation by Cristóvão Cunha, sound operation by Igor de Brito, video operation by Henrique Antunes, and production direction by Alaíde Costa.

The play is supported by Estêvão Antunes and the technical support of FXRoadlights, in a tour supported by the association Abril é Agora.

"A living museum of small and forgotten memories", with research, text, direction, and performance by Joana Craveiro, premiered in 2014, as part of her doctoral thesis.

On April 22nd and 23rd, the Teatro do Vestido presented, in Vidigueira, Alentejo, the show "The Revolution also happened here", based on the memories of the municipality's population about the Carnation Revolution.

"Those who attend can expect to 'embark' on an adventure", Joana Craveiro told Lusa at the time about the show that aims to be a "magical journey" that values the role of people "as subjects of history" and that was part of the commemorative programme of the 50th anniversary of April 25th in that municipality in the district of Beja.

Read Also: Bragança Theatre highlights local artists in the coming months (Portuguese version)