Agenda Municipal / Theatre This is a genuine Hitler_ premiere
03 and 04 Oct
Casa das Artes programme
Casa das Artes | Small auditorium - 21h30
Admission: €6. Students, Cultural Quadrilateral Card and Seniors (aged 65 and over): €3 | Rating: M/12 | Running time: 90 min
A painting appears out of nowhere when a sister and brother empty their recently deceased father's house. The painting is signed: A. Hitler.
Nachtland, “nightscape" or "a place of darkness” — the title here “translated” as “This is a genuine Hitler” — is the latest (2022) work by Marius von Mayenburg. In it, this German author of Jewish descent manages to bring together, around a painting supposedly painted by the Führer before he became one, many of the traumas of contemporary German society: what place to give to the nation's criminal past, how to talk about it, discuss it, reframe it, how to relate it to the present. He also manages to provoke a complex and sombre, but often hilarious, discussion about art, its value, its neutrality (or lack thereof) in relation to the context in which it is created, its taint or purity when contrasted with the biography of the person who brought it into the world.
Crossing all these issues with the deeply divided opinions of family members about what to do with that painting (keep it; sell it and keep the money; sell it and donate the money; simply incinerate it...), what Nachtland does, with supreme intellectual, theatrical and linguistic mastery, is to fearlessly confront everything that is sensitive, everything that is unresolved, the minefields where society throws its sense of history, belonging, politics and morality. In doing so, what Nachtland asks of us is openness and courage to witness the discussion he proposes, the extremely complicated prejudices that govern it and, perhaps, the impossibility of an “acceptable” outcome.
Artistic credits
Text: Marius Von Mayenburg
Translation: Francisco Luís Parreira
Direction: João Cardoso
Assistant director: Pedro Galiza
Cast: Daniel Silva, Gracinda Nave, Inês Simões Pereira, Joana Africano, Pedro Galiza, Pedro Quiroga Cardoso and Teresa Arcanjo
Set design, costumes and graphic identity: Sissa Afonso
Lighting design: Nuno Meira
Lighting assistant and operator: Pedro Correia
Sound design, engineering and operation: Francisco Leal
Video: Nuno Leites
Executive production: Inês Simões Pereira
Communication support: Daniel Silva and Inês Simões Pereira
Promotional photographs: Inês Afonso Cardoso and Sissa Afonso
Production: Assédio Teatro
Co-production: Casa das Artes de Famalicão, Teatro Nacional São João and FITEI
Hosted by: Teatro Municipal de Bragança
Support: Portuguese Republic – Culture, Youth and Sport / Directorate-General for the Arts
48 readings