HOLDING ON TO NOTHING WITH EVERYTHING I'VE GOT

I use autobiography as a source for narrative by following the principle that the more one reveals about oneself, the more one moves closer to an audience member and the more both are connected through principles of identification and recognition. I accept what already exists on the body of the performers, both to unveil one's history of the experience of the self and to extract the archetypes one's surface embodies. This approach presumes a research into reduction--taking the experience of the self to a stage where states, emotions, qualities of presence are mapped in a “created” context of fiction. This map produces an extraction, a dislocation of information and a movement into the realm of fiction, where it is updated and displaced from the individual history of the subjects. This dislocation operates as a revelation of subtext, nuance and subtlety, in a paradoxical gesture that not only unveils what lies "under" but also allows the transition of a reading of a personal event to what it signifies on a universal scale.I have been developing this research in a workshop since 2006. After 2007, I've been experimenting with different formats of presenting it. In Porto, after a week of work, we have arrived to this text and to this display.Who are these 11 people? Who are they when placed together? What is this? A soap opera, a film, a drama or a sociological case study? What do you see happening in this theater?


SKITe/Sweet & Tender Collaborations- Fragments of Experiences
Theatre de la Cité Internationale, Paris, France
March 3rd & 4th

A project by Antonio Pedro Lopes in collaboration with Mia Haugland Habib, Thami Hector Manekhela, Tommy Noonan, Rani Nair, Domenico Giustino, Monica Gillette, Montserrat Payró, Begum Erciyas, Marianne Baillot, Koen Vandendriessche and Chiara Gallerani.

Performed in French, 30 minutes