With O Pecado de João Agonia [The Sin of João Agonia], we continue the rescue operation of Bernardo Santareno’s words that began with our production of A Promessa [The Promise], in 2017. Thus, we do justice to the voice of one of the most important Portuguese dramatists of the 20th century, while refreshing the memory of a contemporary stage classic. The common denominator of both projects is stage director João Cardoso, the artistic director of ASSéDIO, a company alongside which we once again wander into the territory of a playwright who explored a “poetics of roots”. O Pecado de João Agonia (1961) is part of a group of plays in which Santareno asserted his opposition to a repressive system, exploring issues of a sexual (homosexuality) and religious (sin, sacrifice) nature. This call for a sort of “disobedience of dogmas” is made within the confines of a tightly-knit community – a “cragged, primitive hamlet”, Salazar’s retrograde Portugal, a country that still remains among us. A place where the “wind burns” and the sky fills with dark birds in the night of the crime. “Don’t go, João Agonia! Run away, run away!”