Tiago Rodrigues, Portuguese author, playwright and director, the first non-French artistic director of the prestigious Avignon Festival, brings to Venice the imposing and controversial show Catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas at the close of Biennale Teatro 2023.
The beauty of killing fascists – that’s what the title means, we argue – of a play by Rodrigues, Portuguese author, playwright, and director and also the first non-French director of the prestigious Avignon Festival. Inspired by a real story, the show explores the issues of today and the ideological controversy of a past epoch, tearing open the veil of respectability with provocative irreverence and quick rhythm. Beleizão, southern Portugal, May 1954. Caterina Eufémia, 26, an illiterate day labourer protesting for better pay, is killed by a fascist gendarme.
Rodrigues brings Catarina’s spirit back to life: she appears to her niece in a dream, asking for revenge. A family tradition was born: every year, they would meet in the country house in Beleizão, and would kidnap and kill a fascist to avenge their ancestor. The ritual continues for over seventy years, until a younger Catarina turns 26, and won’t participate in it. She just doesn’t feel like doing it, she wavers, she doubts her motives, she questions what it means to fight violence with violence. She wonders if any other way out is possible, goes against tradition, and disobeys.
The theatre piece is wild and daring, an invitation to relentlessly question the reason behind what we do and to think independently. How far should we go to defend democracy? Can we break the rules as we do? Who is a fascist?
