Maria Sequeira Mendes brings us an alternative history of the theatre. An obscene history, so to speak. “Obscene” means “against decency and modesty”. In classical tragedy, such obscenities as murders or battle scenes were kept away from the viewers’ eyes. Out of sight, close to the mind’s eye? Over eight sessions, we become familiar with that which is not performed on the stage, being instead told, guessed, imagined, haunted. “Remember me”, implores Hamlet’s father, who was murdered, so we are told. Remember Godot, that most obsessive and omnipresent absence. Offstage is a fundamental attribute of western dramaturgy, from the ancient Greeks to post-dramatic theatre. In the latter, what is absent may be a traditional concept of text or even the actors themselves, as in Annie Dorsen’s A Piece of Work, which has been described as “a digital Hamlet for a post-humanist age”. A researcher and professor at the University of Lisbon’s School of Arts and Humanities, Maria Sequeira Mendes is the author of several books, such as The Ordeals of Interpretation (2020) and O Essencial sobre Hamlet (2023).