Teatro São João

Um Sonho

by August Strindberg
directed by Bruno Bravo

Um Sonho

Description

“My most beloved play, child of my greatest pain.” Premiered in 1907, Um Sonho [A Dream Play] is one of the most revolutionary creations of August Strindberg, the founder of modern theatre. In it, the Swedish playwright tackles and solves a paradox: to depict the incoherent but seemingly logical form of dreams. Characters take shape, dissolve and regenerate. They leave the scene and then re-enter it in another time and place. Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable in this arsenal of apparitions where the pathetic and the comic, realism and oneirism, the lyrical and the ironical clash together. “The distortion of time and space is the soul of the theatre”, says Bruno Bravo, the man charged with bringing this TNSJ production to the stage. This director’s career is marked by a number of austere, ritualised shows, which rely on the words’ power to generate images, movement, surprise. In Um Sonho, we have not one, but twenty, fifty plays that Strindberg has stitched together, much as we ourselves do in the morning with our torn dreams. Who is the dreamer? Who is the dreamed? The theatre is the place where we come together to dream communally.

Credits

by August Strindberg directed by Bruno Bravo

translation and dramaturgy João Paulo Esteves da Silva set design and costumes Stéphane Alberto lighting design Alexandre Costa music and sound design Sérgio Delgado scenography assistance Margarida Silva

cast Ana Brandão, António Mortágua, Joana Carvalho, Lisa Reis, Mário Santos, Patrícia Queirós, Paulo Freixinho, Pedro Frias

produced by Teatro Nacional São João

playing time 2:00 Ages 14 and up


English subtitles
Post-show talk | 14 Dec Audio Description | 17 Dec Portuguese Sign Language | 14 Jan