Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists
Tiago Rodrigues
A Festival d’Avignon Production
International Theater | US Premiere
Friday, July 5 at 8 pm
Saturday, July 6 at 7 pm
PS21 Pavilion Theater
In Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, by Tiago Rodrigues, it’s 2028, and every year, a Portuguese family commemorates the 1954 murder of activist Catarina Eufémia at the hands of the Salazar dictatorship by kidnapping and killing a fascist. But this year, the young woman chosen to carry out the ritual refuses. The family’s credo is “Doing harm in order to practice good,” but the woman asks, Can an act of violence lead to justice? What if the killing isn’t a form of protest, but merely a crime?
Thus Tiago Rodrigues is asking whether we can defend or preserve democracy by violating its fundamental principles. But rather than offering pat answers, he brings the consequences of these questions to life as dramatic paradoxes that are both lucid and unnervingly grotesque. In doing so, he creates a performance that challenges audiences and their own inner contradictions to the point where it hurts—painfully so at the moment when we should be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese revolution and the end of fascism in Europe—and makes palpable the threat that has reemerged across the entire continent and beyond. PS21’s performances of Catarina and the beauty of killing fascists take place on July 4th weekend, an ideal time to focus on the history, meaning, and prospects of democratic institutions in the US.
“The world of fiction, in which I still believe as a theater artist, allows certain things that aren’t possible in politics. Like this completely absurd and truly awful question, “Should the fascist be killed or not?” Only the theater can create a context in which that question exists.” -Tiago Rodrigues
In Portuguese with English supertitles.
Please note: Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists includes strong, politically inflammatory language, violence, and loud sound effects.
2 hours 30 minutes
Image by Joseph Banderet
“Rodrigues isn’t a showy director: He is a humanist at heart, preoccupied with empathy and the ways in which today’s world undermines it. Complexity is always the answer in Rodrigues’s work — and it is one of the best ways to the audience’s heart.” — The New York Times
—After both performances of Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, audience members who wish to discuss the show are invited to stay for a brief conversation moderated by Thomas Bartscherer, the Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard College and Senior Fellow at Bard’s Hannah Arendt Center.
—On Tuesday, July 9th, 2024, 10-11am EDT, PS21 and Executive and Artistic Director Elena Siyanko invite actor Romeu Costa and Thomas Bartscherer to participate in an online discussion focusing on the ethical, political, and aesthetic questions raised by Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists.
These questions include: how do democratic societies deal with political violence? what role, if any, can the arts play in facilitating political self-understanding of individuals and of social and political collectivities? What responsibilities do artists and arts organizations have when it comes to works that portray violence? The event is free and open to the public.
Please register here to receive the Zoom link: REGISTRATION LINK
We have prepared a reader with four texts (contents below) that provides some context for thinking about the ethical, political, and aesthetic questions raised by Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists. If you’re interested or curious, you may wish to read one or more of these texts before or after the show.
Reader
Table of Contents
1. Hannah Arendt, On Violence, Part II (1969-1970)
2. Bertolt Brecht, “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” (1935)
3. Robert O. Paxton, “What is Fascism?”, from The Anatomy of Fascsism (2004)
4. Andrew Marantz, “Why We Can’t Stop Arguing About Whether Trump Is a Fascist”, The New Yorker, 27 March 2024
On both Friday and Saturday evenings, join fellow PS21 members on the terrace for a pre-performance member party! Refreshments and a light dinner will be served, and you’ll hear from PS21 Executive & Artistic Director Elena Siyanko on the significance of the performance. Parties start 1.5 hours before each performance — Friday, July 5th at 6:30pm, and Saturday, July 6th at 5:30pm.
Not a PS21 member yet? Sign up today!
Tiago Rodrigues
Tiago Rodrigues, actor, director, playwright, and producer, was born in Amadora, Portugal, in 1977. He joined the Belgian collective tg STAN in 1997, where he co-created and performed in productions in more than 15 countries. Six years later he and Magda Bizarro founded Mundo Perfeito, where he created numerous shows that have been performed. Since 2023, he has been artistic director of the Festival d”Avignon. Rodrigues is celebrated for dismantling the boundaries between theater and everyday reality and challenging our perceptions of social and
historical phenomena.
In 1997, still a student, Rodrigues joined the Belgian collective tg STAN, where he co-created and performed in productions in more than 15 countries. Six years later he co-founded Mundo Perfeito in Amadora, where between 2003 and 2014 he created more than 30 works, many in collaboration with Portuguese and international theater artists, choreographers, and dancers. They were produced in Portugal and more than 20 other countries, often at major European and international festivals, including Paris’s Festival d’Automne, METEOR Festival (Bergen, Norway), Theaterformen (Hannover and Braunschweig, Germany), Montréal’s Festival TransAmériques, and kunstenfestivalsdesarts (Brussels). He then spent seven years (2015–22) as Artistic Director of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in Lisbon, before taking over the reins in Avignon.
Whether Rodrigues is creating hybrids of fact and fiction, rewriting the classics, or adapting novels, his approach is rooted in the give-and-take with his actors and other artists, partners in the poetical transformation of reality through theatrical means. The ultimate expression of this approach may be Occupation Bastille (2016), an artistic takeover of Paris’s Théâtre de la Bastille by nearly 100 artists and spectators. In addition to Catarina and the beauty of killing fascists, Rodrigues’s other notable recent works include Dans la mesure de l’impossible, Lovers’ Choir, The Cherry Orchard, The way she dies, and Please Please Please.
With: Isabel Abreu, Romeu Costa, António Fonseca, Beatriz Maia, Marco Mendonça, António Parra,
Carolina Passos Sousa, João Vicente.
Text, direction: Tiago Rodrigues
Artistic collaboration: Magda Bizarro
Stage design: F. Ribeiro
Light: Nuno Meira
Costumes: José António Tenente
Sound design, original music: Pedro Costa
Choirmaster, vocal arrangements: João Henriques
Voices-over: Cláudio de Castro, Nadezhda Bocharova, Paula Mora, Pedro Moldão
Choreography: Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz
Weapon coordinator: David Chan Cordeiro
Translation: Thomas Resendes (French), Daniel Hahn (English), Vincenzo Arsilio (Italian), Igor
Metzeltin (German)
Surtitles: Patrícia Pimentel
Production: Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisboa)
Executive production: Festival d’Avignon
Co-production: Wiener Festwochen, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione (Modena), Théâtre de la
Cité – CDN Toulouse Occitanie & Théâtre Garonne Scène européenne Toulouse, Festival d’Automne
à Paris & Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale, Comédie de
Caen, Théâtre de Liège, Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Le Trident –
Scène nationale de Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), Centro Cultural Vila Flor
(Guimarães), O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo).
Support Almeida Garrett Wines, Cano Amarelo, Culturgest, the French Institute in Paris
Copyright Spectacle / Show © Filipe Ferreira ; Tiago Rodrigues © Christophe Raynaud de Lage
Thanks to Mariana Gomes, Rui Pina Coelho, Margarida Bak Gordon, Rita Mendes and the team of
the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II. We also thank Sara Barros Leitão and Pedro Gil who, even though
they are no longer on stage with us, will always remain Catarina.
Music from the show: Hania Rani (Biesy et Now, Run), Joanna Brouk (The Nymph Rising, Calling the
Sailor), Laurel Halo (Rome Theme III et Hyphae) et Rosalía (De Plata).
Supported by Theatre & New Forms, a program of Albertine Foundation in partnership with Villa Albertine.
