Premiered in 1998 as part of Festival Mergulho no Futuro, in the Small Auditorium of Centro Cultural de Belém, Poetry and Savagery is one of Vera Mantero's most emblematic creations. The piece stems from amazement at the human condition – the ability to create the sublime alongside the brutal – and asserts itself as a search for freedom through the body. A body stripped of codes, open to the unknown, moving with the naivety of a primordial being, discovering itself, others and the world. On stage, a group of performers inhabit a space of sensitive transgression, proposing a ‘positive savagery’: a state of instinctive listening, where new ways of existing and communicating are experienced, beyond words. The physical proximity to the audience invites a more direct and visceral involvement. ‘We are people trapped in our bodies. We are sedentary, cerebral, we communicate mainly through words,’ says Mantero. This play is, above all, an invitation to liberation.
In 2026, the piece returns to the stage where it premiered, at the CCB's Small Auditorium, featuring some of the original cast members, joined by a few new creators and collaborators.
Freedom. Immanence.
(from where did I get this idea of freedom?)
Freedom as availability to vibrations, availability to hear them and availability to accomplish them in some way. To hear these vibrations inside us, to embrace them, opens an enormous field of possibilities, creates the energy to construct, gives a sense of meaning, meaning to do things, or energy itself creates the meaning.
I like this idea, energy itself creates the meaning.
I think that freedom is what makes it possible to enter immanence.
Probably without freedom it could not be entered.
It must be why I am always falling back on the idea of abandonment, the idea of abandonment and openness and all the related items.
Vera Mantero
Notice:
The conversation with the artists on the 8th, moderated by Ana Pais, will take place in the CCB's Blackbox. Those interested should follow the directions at the front of the theatre to get to the venue after the performance.
The performance on 9 January will be recorded for archival purposes by O Rumo do Fumo. Due to the audience seating arrangement on stage, some audience members may be captured in the video recording. Spectators who do not consent to their possible inclusion in the recording are kindly requested to inform the CCB Front of House staff before the start of the performance.
