ENDLESS WOMAN
"Endless Woman" is a solo experience developed by Andréia Nhur&Katharsis Teatro (Brazil), which travels among theater, dance, music, performance and multilingualism. In the piece, the female gender is presented as a body constantly crossed by women’s echoes present in the cultural memory figures like Madame Bovary, Lady Macbeth, Carmen Miranda and Dadá, the cangaceira (the Brazilian criminal from the country).
The dramaturgical structure is based on the “placed into abyss” concept, picked up from the writer André Gide's ideas. It makes reference to a structure composed by other structures of the same nature, as an endless looping. A woman that is transformed into another, which is transformed into another, and on and on, like a body in continuous sequencing.
The work proposes a discussion about the cultural construction of women in its social, affective and subjective aspect, using small narratives, spoken and sung in several languages.
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More about the proposition:
An empty stage, a microphone, a loopstation and a bottle of water: there is no scenery, there are no exceeding messages, but an actress in continuous transformation. "Endless Woman" is the continuity of a research developed by the Katharsis Theater Group, since 2005, in which body, light and sound are catalysts of a hybrid, multilingual and rhapsodic scene. The staging of "Endless Woman" is built on the multiple crossing among actress, figure and character, triggering a trip from the dramatic and epic to lyric genres.
The piece brings up a language that mixes theater, dance, music, performance and multilingualism and has artistic collaborators such as the choreographer and musician Janice Vieira, the director and light designer Roberto Gill Camargo and the actress Paola Bertolini. The dramaturgical structure traces the idea of narrative in abyss, developed by the writer André Gide, and refers to a structure composed by other structures of the same nature, as a looping process. In the work, several female figures are summoned up, appearing and disappearing, in an infinite game of transformations.
The research:
The idea of this piece comes from the language research developed during 12 years by the Katharsis Theater Group about theatricality and its relations to body, dramaturgy and staging. The audience who watches the Katharsis's plays is led to a perceptual interaction once the concepts are revealed only insofar as the shapes present them. What moves us to create is the materiality (body, sound, light and word) as multiple speeches in the concreteness of shapes (gestures and sonority). Our perspective of scene reveals then senses that are being built in a relational attitude. There is no beginning, middle and end, there is no thesis or linearity. Thus the work depends on an active audience who completes the meanings proposed by the shapes. These assumptions guide an active relationship with the viewers since the passivity of an impositive communication is replaced by the communicability of a transverse relationship.
In this context, "Endless Woman" generates images and discussions about the female gender as an ensemble of conventions, memories and stereotypes that are overlapping, dissipating and transforming. As the shape condenses different discourses, there is not a single feminist agenda that guides a message, but an ensemble of issues that stands out: it's an endless feminism, as voices in confusion to get noticed and re-exist.