ARENA /2021
ARENA is a game without words that relies solely on the actors’ bodies and creativity. This play invites us to think about what it means to be in an assembly of people, placing four pieces in the board game: the space, the audience, an alien, and Jan, a character made of six actors.
A play conceived and directed by Sílvio Vieira, premiered on 25 November 2021 at Garagem do Chile, an old mechanics shop in the heart of Lisbon. Last presented 19 December of the same year.
1h M12
directed by Sílvio Vieira
cast Anabela Ribeiro, André Cabral, Catarina Rabaça, Inês Realista, Miguel Galamba, Miguel Ponte and Pedro Peças
collaboration Nídia Roque
stage design and costumes Ângela Rocha
light design Manuel Abrantes
stage design assistant Diogo Gonçalves
photography Leonor Fonseca
video António Mendes
lighting operation Janaina Gonçalves
press agent Raquel Guimarães
production outro
partners Portuguese Republic | Ministry of Culture, Lisbon City Council, GDA Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
co-production residency O Espaço do Tempo
acknowledgements Ana Catarina Santos, André Pato, Bernardo Souto, Biovilla, Cindy Vieira, Francisco Leone, HIT Management, Graciana Romeo, Juan Capriotti, Guilherme Gomes,, Guilherme Moura, Laura Frederico, Leonardo Garibaldi, Pedro Carraca, Pedro Mendes, Primeiros Sintomas, Ricardo Santos, Rui Seabra, Sérgio Henriques, Teatro Meridional, TNDM II
Poster painting: Teurgias, Maximo Graterol B., MMII
FROM THE BEGINNING
This play draws from three techniques — choreography, silent film, and Foley — evoking that which is translatable from these crafts to the theatre.
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Is it possible to invert the complementary role of sound in theatre? Just as the choreographer discovers movement in Tchaikovsky’s canonical Swan Lake, can actors and directors find stories in music? Do music genres have equivalents in different theatre aesthetics? -
Silent movie masters like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd inspire a stage language that separates entirely from the verb, rooting itself in the body of the actor, the maintenance of mystery, and the exploration of objects — how to find wonder in what eventually becomes predictable? -
Foley emerged in the 1920s with the advent of radio dramas. Discreet when well-executed, it’s frequent for Foley artists to create a sound using objects that are nothing like their original sources, creating an illusion rather than a copy. Integrating foley in ARENA is in line with one of the play’s main rules: to ingeniously reinvent objects, rethinking their purpose and form.
beyond good and evil
Today, there is an urgent need for silence. If silence precedes listening, what would happen if the world fell quiet for two minutes?
Noise, spreading to all domains of life, is met with a desperate and ever-louder cry for silence. Art has been quietly denouncing this saturation, and ARENA will certainly be part of this voice. However, I would like to think its strength lies elsewhere.
If beauty is beyond good and evil, the strength of a play without words resides less in political reaction (usually pessimistic), and more on an elegy of theatre as an immanently collective manifesto, revealing of humanity, of relationships between people minus the clatter of words and machines.
March 2020, Sílvio Vieira
