Description
“Three hundred pages of non-stop anguish”: thus José Saramago describes his book, an anguish devoid of sentimentality and tinged with a very dark humour. Blindness (1995) fictionalises a world where (nearly) everyone becomes blind, an epidemics that causes a discretionary power to isolate all the infected in a restricted space. In this apocalypse of the soul, where “man is a wolf to man”, Saramago displays a ravaged society’s vicious survival instinct. The culmination of a cooperative project between the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and the Teatro Nacional São João, this stage adaptation of Saramago’s novel testifies to the universality of the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer and the cross-border nature of theatrical creation. Stage director Nuno Cardoso helms an Iberian (and bilingual!) raft filled with a cast of Portuguese and Catalan actors, united in the utopian belief that the stage might solve, or else further complicate, the mysteries of this text. “The gate is wide open, and the lunatics come out.”
Gallery
Credits
by José Saramago
directed by Nuno Cardoso
scenic version Clàudia Cedó
set design F. Ribeiro costumes Nídia Tusal music Pedro “Peixe” Cardoso lightning design Nuno Meira sound design Joel Azevedo video Luís Porto
staging assistance Manuel Tur
cast Ana Brandão, Adriana Fuertes, Albert Prat, Ferran Carvajal, Gabriela Flores, Jordi Collet, Jorge Mota, Lisa Reis, Mafalda Lencastre, Maria Ribera, Montse Esteve, Paulo Freixinho, Pedro Frias, Sérgio Sá Cunha
co-produced by Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, Teatro Nacional São João
In colaboration with Institut Ramon Llull
playing time
3:30 with intermission
Ages 16 and up
Show in Portuguese and Catalan, Portuguese subtitles
Post-show talk | 12 jun Portuguese sign language | 19 jun