OLO A SOLO ABOUT A SOLO

In the beginning it was me and a puppet in an empty space. I was discovering what this puppet was able to do. With the insistence and the repetition, I realized that it was the puppet itself that was being discovered. I realized then that this was a solo on a solo.

This puppet play is animated by a question: is it possible to represent what happens when we lock ourselves in a rehearsal room or in an atelier aiming to create something new? What is discovered and what is invented in this chimera? What was already there? Are we really alone when we are performing a solo? What use is what we lived, read, dreamed, wished or fear… What use is what has already been done by others, in other times and elsewhere?

In this solo performance, we discover resonances from universes as diverse as Jorge Luís Borges, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ágota Krystóf or Heiner Muller.

OLO – um solo sobre um solo premiered at FIMFA Lx14.

BIO

Teatro de Ferro was founded in 1999. Originally created as a label identifying the creative works of Igor Gandra and Carla Veloso, the project gradually evolved towards the state of a professional creation structure.

The choice of the name – Teatro de Ferro (Iron Theatre) – presupposes a notion of primordial, resistant and at the same time changeable matter: this transformation process continues to inspire them.The work of the Company has been developed in the theatre of, and with, puppets and objects. They conceive their practice in the logic of a research in which the puppet has assumed a matrix value in its possible hybridations, both tempted and tempting.The relationships – of the body interpreter with the manipulated object and the implication of each spectator in the building of this relation – are lines of thought that are transversal to the artistic practice of Teatro de Ferro.

The promotion of Portuguese contemporary dramaturgy is a defining trait of their artistic project, the reason why the company has mainly worked with original texts by Portuguese writers.

TdF has been reaching heterogenic publics. Improbable partnerships, the search for alternative contexts outside of the usual circuits of the performing arts, the intense itinerating activity, the creation aimed to the youngsters, and the projects of cultural action, are TdF clearest gestures, and in this way they declare this plural wish of sharing.