Teatro de Marionetas do Porto

Portugal

Wonderland

TEATRO MARIA MATOS

11, 12 May at 9.30pm

Direction and scenography: João Paulo Seara Cardoso Performers: Edgard Fernandes, Sara Henriques, Sérgio Rolo and Shirley Resende Puppets: Júlio Vanzeler Music: Roberto Neulichedl Songs lyrics: Maria de Noronha English translation: John Havelda Costumes: Pedro Ribeiro Movement coordination: Isabel Barros Lighting design: António Real and Margarida Alves Production: Sofia Carvalho Production assistant: Pedro Miguel Castro Direction assistant: Pedro Ribeiro Light and sound operation: Margarida Alves Subtitles operation: Pedro Castro Construction workshop: Rui Pedro Rodrigues (coordination), Inês Coutinho (painting) and Nuno Valdemar Guedes Costumes: Cláudia Ribeiro (coordination), Celeste Marinho (master seamstress), Esperança Sousa (seamstress), Catarina Barros (props coordination), Patrícia Mota (props assistant) Scenography construction: Américo Castanheira/Tudo-Faço Stage photography: Susana Neves Illustration: Júlio Vanzeler Projected images: Photographs from Alice Liddell by Lewis Carroll; Paintings by Claude Monet (manipulated) Trainee: Ângela Ribeiro Technique: Mixed For audiences over: M/12 Time: 60 min. Language: Portuguese and English Co-production: Teatro de Marionetas do Porto e Cine-Teatro Constantino Nery Company sponsored by: Ministério da Cultura/Direcção-Geral das Artes

Inspired in Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carrol.

Twelve years later, the Teatro de Marionetas do Porto returns to the fantastic universe peopled with nonsense of the Anglican deacon, celebrated photographer and professor of mathematics at Oxford, Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. This time the show is for an adult audience and the characters of the Alice stories are free from the language game and emerge themselves in an oniric dimension. Characters who are like playing cards that Lewis Carroll play unconsciously in his game of love with Alice.

Wonderland is Alice's dream, dreamed by us. We go with her, through the light forest full of secrets and fears, we invent passages that did not exist there before and we leave Alice loft. When Alice asks the Cat: “which way I ought to go from here?”, the Cat replies, "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to”. So we feel that the dream invented by Carroll to his beloved Alice touches very lightly our reality. And when Alice, on her initiatic journey, reaches the beautiful garden of white roses, belonging to the Queen, we snap our fingers so that her dream (and ours) finishes in the best moment. Happy ending?

“I mark this day with a white stone” (from the Lewis Carroll diary).

Teatro de Marionetas do Porto, one of the most well known puppet companies in Portugal, presents in Lisbon one of its last creations. Since their formation, in 1998, the company produced and presented more than 30 shows. All these productions represent extremely diverse experiences on the level of the contemporary puppet theatre, looking to find new forms of conception and manipulation of puppets and new ways of regarding the interpretation and the relationship with other areas of creation. The company has also been dedicated to the study and revival of old forms of traditional theatre, like Teatro Dom Roberto, which has been presented more than a thousand times. Their founder and artistic director, João Paulo Seara Cardoso, studied theatre and puppet theatre, attended courses in the Institut National d`Éducation Populaire and Institut International de la Marionnette, in France. He worked with João Coimbra, Marcel Violette, Jim Henson and Lopez Barrantes. In 1982 he initiated the study and spreading of the Teatro Dom Roberto, Portuguese traditional puppets that already had about 1500 representations. he has published children's and is the author of television series for the youngest. Presently, the group splits its activity between the programming of the Teatro do Belomonte, in Oporto, and an intense activity of touring in Portugal and abroad.