
“Espectáculo de Teatro” [A Theatre Performance] is a meta-theatre text-based project inspired by Jean Cocteau’s “The Human Voice”, and performed solo by Rogério Nuno Costa. The whole project comprises a website, a live show and a video documentary, and it followed the rules contained in the manifesto “Dogma 2005“, being the only Dogma project made by Rogério Nuno Costa so far. The letter T stands for the words Theater and Text (the major concepts of the project) and is related with all the imagery and artwork used to promote the project, as well as the documentary “T for True” (the project’s making of), which is a wordplay with Orsin Well’s movie “F for Fake” and a post-dramatic speculation on the power of fiction as reality, and conversely. The show premièred in Portugal at Circular/Festival de Artes Performativas de Vila do Conde (September 2008) and later on at Teatro Taborda (Lisbon, December 2008). Program’s statement:
Somebody told me that if I want so much to “leave” the institutionalized narrative, I have to get “inside” it first, since the truth is: I have never been there! Taking that assumption into account, I decided to do exactly what Sophie Calle does when journalists make up projects she never did — instead of writing to the newspapers asking for a correction, she makes those same projects straight away, as if she was correcting reality retroactively. In that sense, this theatre show entitled “Theatre Show” will coincide with my sumptuous entrance in the institutionalized narrative, embracing tradition, history and respect for the past. Nevertheless, this is a unique act, which means I’ll leave the institutionalized narrative faster than I got inside it. There’s a Portuguese popular expression that goes something like this: “getting in at 100, getting out at 20o” [Entrar a 100, sair a 200]. That’s it.
