Teatro São João

Floresta de Enganos

by Gil Vicente

directed by João Pedro Vaz

Floresta de Enganos

Description

“Look at me and look at you.” Gil Vicente remains, now and always, inhabitable by all of us, who live five hundred years later. Master Gil, we are told, is a “living text” that allows us to look at ourselves and dream. Filled with Vicentine and other visions, stage director João Pedro Vaz invites us to wander through the Floresta de Enganos [Forest of Deceits], originally performed in the “year of Our Lord 1536”. In Vicente’s final comedy, we are immediately confronted by a Philosopher who has a Fool tied to his foot, the most enigmatic pair in all of Vicente’s work. The Philosopher announces all the figures who will be deceived by love: a merchant, a man in widow’s weeds, a young girl, Cupid, Apollo, king Telebano, princess Grata Célia, judge Justiça Maior, and even a shepherd, linked by chains of love to something he cannot guess. Finally, a pilgrim named Ventura comes to solve this love-en-abîme. “All this takes place in the forest, which has always been the locus par excellence of idyll and deceit, of transformation through love; in other words, of the theatre. Like in a (Vicentine) midsummer night’s dream”, the stage director warns us. “Look at me and look at you”: such is the last line in the self-penned epitaph of the one who was called “the most Angelic and Demonic of all Portuguese poets”.

Credits

by Gil Vicente directed by João Pedro Vaz Castilian verses translated by José Bento

set design and costumes Sara Vieira Marques direction assistance and masks Gonçalo Fonseca

cast Afonso Santos, Hugo Paz, Joana Carvalho, João Melo, Lia Carvalho, Mário Santos, Rodrigo Santos and Ananda Miranda (alaúde)

produced by Teatro Nacional São João

playing time 1:30 M/12 anos

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English subtitles
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Portuguese Sign Language | 20 MAR Post-show talk with Luis Mestre | 3 APR

Within the scope of the cooperation programme with the Cape Verdean Ministry of Culture and Creative Industries.