Antígona : ritos de paixão e morte = Antigone : rites of passion and death

Based on Sophocles' play, this performance intertwines text fragments by Albert Camus, Anaïs Nin, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Dante Alighieri, Edgar Alan Poe, Ezra Pound, Fiodor Dostoievski, Friedrich Nietzsche, Heiner Müller, Hölderlin, Jean Anouilh, Jean Cocteau, Jean Paul Sartre, Julian Beck, Lao Tsé, and Mallarmé. Ói Nóis found in the Greek Tragedy of Sophocles a space to discuss the civil disobedience of the individual against the oppression of the State. The play is adapted into an environmental performance, beginning with the battle between Thebes and Argos in the courtyard of the Terreira, and progressing through the five different environments the audience crosses, including a desert covered in tons of sand. The adaptation does not follow the classical structure but is divided into a non-realistic sequence of 30 scenes, including a dialogue between a mother and a son who deserted war, an added scene that tells the story from the point of view of the people instead of that of nobility, which classical tragedy privileges. The performance lasts three hours and accomodates fifty spectators, who are invited both to watch and to participate in scenes such as the 'Bacchanal,' featuring the cutting off and ritual burial of a giant phallus that Creonte wears by a Maenad. Text fragments from Camus, Artaud, Brecht, Nietzsche, Heiner Müller, Julian Beck, and several other authors, are intertwined into the narrative with the purpose of opening up the Greek story into other political situations.

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.