V.I.P Room

(2013)

“I found one of my primal scenes in A Queda do Egoísta Johann Fatzer directed by Jorge. We were still in the last century. The character ‘s lines appeared from everywhere, spoken by several different actors, alternately or simultaneously. Everyone could be Fatzer at any time. Perhaps that is the departing point for this show, the road traveled together. During more than ten years, Jorge has enticed me several times to participate in plays and films.  It ‘s my turn to ask Come on, let’s take a ride. I want to discuss with Captain Jorge, to make a project like this,built on rehearsals, meetings, readings,re-writing, emails, exchanged books and DVDs, and to perpetuate this possible gesture, refusing death. I also want to do it with Artistas Unidos, a window that allows you to know every of the freshest things done in theater, outside of our borders or at home. Where I’ve met so many of the actors that I admired, and still do. In V.I.P Room,as a starting point we will have five people stuck in an international airport. Afterwards we’ll transform Jorge’ s words into our questions: What happens after success? After money? After the orgasm? After love? After youth? After the teather?”

Pedro Gil

“When Pedro Gil asked me if I would be interested in writing for him (a play, a non-play, a thing), I knew I would find a partner, and not a simple commissioner. And I wanted to write a play that he wanted to direct, how and when and with whom he wanted. I like Pedro very much, and there have already been twelve years (can you imagine?) since we understood each other, since A Capital, 2000. But I didn’t want to make a play that was a perfect fit for him, following those that he already has done, so beautifully. I wanted it to be mine, with my concerns and unrest, what interests me, what unsettles me, of this world of mine that will soon come to an end. I didn’t want a play to put beautiful words in Pedro’s show, I wanted, as we have been doing for years, to give him the car keys (as I did in the Álvaro Lapa film), talk to him of the intriguing structure of the old (and afterall so fresh) plays of Terence Rattigan (that I’ve been wanting to take to the stage more and more) to deliver to him a world that it’s been disappearing from me. And for years I’ve been tossing and turning, (also because I was never able to direct Boulevard Solitude by Hans Werner Henze, beautiful opera, once again about the Manon from Abade Prévost), with this passion, this vertigo, this death – the money. Hence, this will be my Manon, sola, perduta, abandonata, missing Puccini. Between waiting rooms, hospitals, spas and airports, we are dying, undone. What will you do with this, Pedro?”

Jorge Silva Melo

Text Jorge Silva Melo Direction Pedro Gil  Interpretation Andreia Bento, Maria João Falcão, Elmano Sancho, António Simão, João Pedro Mamede and João Aboim(musician) Scenography and costume design Rita Lopes Alves Light design Pedro Domingos Direction assistant  João Delgado Scenography assistant Ângela Rocha Light Design assistant João Chicó Construction Thomas Kahrel Poster photography Jorge Gonçalves Coproduction Barba Azul (Razões Pessoais), Artistas Unidos and Culturgest Acknowledgments José Manuel Costa Reis and Natália Luiza Sala VIP quotes Manon Lescaut by Puccini, Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky, Wild World by Cat Stevens, Aida by Verdi, La Bohème by Puccini, Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell / Victor Fleming, Don Giovanni by Mozart, White Christmas by Irving Berlin, Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saëns, Anna Bolena, Lucrezia Borgia and Don Pasquale by Donizetti, Ninotchka by Ernst Lubitsch, The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan, Napolitan popular songs (“Core n’grato”  by Cardillo and “O surdato ’nnammurato” by Califano and Cannio), Il Trovatore  by Verdi, Mi Tierra by Estéfano (sung by Gloria Estefan), Carmen Jones by Oscar Hammerstein II / Georges Bizet and, of course, Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost. This play’s text is edited in the collection Livrinhos de  Teatro (nº76)

Premier  the 6th of July at Culturgest, as part of Festival de Almada. Multiple show presentations at  Teatro da Politécnica between the 4th of September and the 19th of  October