last common ancestor 2017
Last Common Ancestor is a play about inaction created by the company Teatro Voador Não Identificado. On the stage, there is only one actor (whose lack of acting doesn’t guarantee the audience that he’s actually an actor) reading a text (which the audience is unable to determine if it’s being read or known by heart). From these uncertainties, the actor Leandro Romano (also director and the playwright of this project) narrates a personal event of his childhood: in the theatre class at school, he was cast to play the protagonist but was demoted by the director to interpret a tree. Almost twenty years later, Romano returns to the stage to relive his trauma: interpreting a tree. Situated in this immobility, the play questions the meaning of acting and what is the role of theatre in contemporaneity. With just his own voice, Romano tries to reassemble his family tree, which includes not only his family members, but also the artistic inspirations that led him to build this performance. For this, the company build a hybrid theatrical form, an unusual intersection between solo, performance art, talk, manifesto, dramatic reading, stand-up comedy and, maybe, theatre.
The play debuted in Porto (Portugal) in October 2017.
credits
Direction, dramaturgy and acting: Leandro Romano
Co-direction: Julia Bernat
Co-dramaturgy: Luiz Antonio Ribeiro
Light design: Isadora Petrauskas
Costume: Elsa Romero
Production: Isadora Petrauskas e Leandro Romano
Last Common Ancestor is a Teatro Voador Não Identificado production.
downloads
Dramaturgy (Only in Portuguese)
Photos (by Andrew O'Dowd)
