Viúvas : performance sobre a ausência = Widows : performance about absence

'Widows, Performance about Absence' is part of the continuing theater research the Tribo de Atuadores Ói Nóis Aqui Traveiz has been undertaking on the imagery and recent history of Latin America. Using Ariel Dorfman and Tony Kushner's Widows as a starting point, the Tribe continues its investigation into the ritual scene, within the trajectory of Teatro de Vivência (experiential theater). 'Widows' features women who fight for the right of knowing where are the men who were disappeared or killed by the military dictatorship that the country went through. It is an allegory about the events that took place in the last decades in Latin America, and the need to keep the memory of this time of horror alive, so that it does not repeat itself. Ói Nóis Aqui Traveiz' Teatro de Vivência strives for an open and sincere relationship with the audience, in which actors and spectators share a common experience with the intensity of a unique event, capable of producing new modes of perception.

Based in Porto Alegre, The Tribo de Atuadores Ói Nóis Aqui Traveiz was born in 1978 out of a desire for a radical renovation of the language of theatre. During the several years of their existence, they have created a personal aesthetics founded upon the authorial work of the actor, both on the stage and on the streets. Their venue, the Terreira da Tribo de Atuadores Ói Nóis Aqui Traveiz, works as a community theatre school, offering several free workshops open to the public. Their tribal organization is based on the principle of collective work, both in the creative process and in the maintenance of the space. For Ói Nóis Aqui Traveiz, theater is an instrument for both revealing and analyzing reality, and it's function is social - to contribute to the collective knowledge and to the improvement of the quality of life of the people. In a world marked by exclusion, marginalization, homogenization, by dehumanizing and barbaric efforts, they see it as their moral imperative to denounce injustice, sold opinions, authoritarianism, mediocrity and the erasing of memory. Ói Nóis sees theatre as an art of resistance, in the service of arts and politics, an art that does not fit the market patterns for ethics and aesthetics. Instead, they see theater as a way of life and as a vehicle for ideas: a theater that does not comment on life, but that takes part in it.