Une Histoire Vraie
COMPANY Gato, SA
DIRECTION Lionel Ménard
FROM Portugal
CREATION AND DIRECTION Lionel Ménard
ASSISTANT DRAMATURG Mário Primo
CAST Helena Rosa, Mafalda Marafusta, Marina Leonardo, Raul Oliveira, Rogério Bruno, Tomás Porto
LIGHTING DESIGN Rui Senos
MUSIC SELECTION Lionel Ménard
SOUND DESIGN João Martinho
STAGE DESIGN Helena Rosa, Lionel Ménard, Rita Carrilho
SCENIC CONSTRUCTION Natalia Terlecka, Pedro Mira
COSTIME DESIGNER Florbela Santos
PHOTOGRAPHY Victormar
GRAPHIC DESIGN Ricardo Lynchos
PRODUCTION AJAGATO 2022
ABOUT THE PLAY
“A True Story” - The fortieth creation by GATO SA, is unusual both in its creative process and final result.
Wordless theater that is physical and narrative, presented in an “open” manner and targeted at the entirety of the senses. It confronts us with the volubility of human nature and questions the real compassion of each one of us before the vulgarization of violence in a time of widespread instability and war.
Pauline returns home from childhood moved by an unsettling doubt that accompanies her for a long time. She revisits the spaces she keeps in her memory and rediscovers disturbingly revealing signs about her origins. (...)
If I knew I loved him so much, I would’ve loved him more
"(...) I started by inviting the participants to reveal some of their secrets, their greatest moments of happiness, the fantastic coincidences of their stories. Everyone, from initial training to the last weeks of rehearsals, was able to help me build the bridge. This project, started in Poland by an initiative of Bartlomiej Ostapczuk now held in Stº André thanks to AJAGATO. Mário Primo was like a father to me, benevolent, encouraging, and uncompromising. I thank my magnificent actors who inspired me, convinced me, questioned me, and helped me find my way. The story has come true." L. Menárd
NOV 30th at 9.30PM
Teatro Micaelense
Teatro Micaelense, Rua de São João, Ponta Delgada, Portugal
Lionel Ménard
Lionel Ménard is a trainer specializing in physical theater, a disciple of Marcel Marceau, and director of several international theater and dance companies. In 1987 Lionel Ménard discovered Marcel Marceau with whom he worked for ten years. In the context of preparing a movie script, he listened to Alexandro Jodorowsky and after a good meal became the instructor of the actor Ticky Holgado. After several auditions, he finally joined the company of Philippe Genty. Betting on a contemporary music record, he brought the Arditi quartet to the stage. He spent a week with Michael Jackson and Marcel Marceau preparing Childhood for HBO and writing a short [...] script for a Philippe Glass evening at Carnegie Hall. Claude Lelouch offers him the role of Jesus in a trilogy and he works as a choreographer for Jean-Paul Goude and Léa Seydoux. From the Gymnopédies (three piano compositions written by the Frenchman Erik Satie, published in 1888) he created "Bonjour Monsieur Satie" in the Konzerthaus of Berlin, besides staging Bodecker & Neander. He is invited to write and put on a show for the little ones at the Luxembourg Philharmonic, performing “The Snark" at the Sydney Festival with Scott Kohler and "Out of the Blue" with Alexander Neander and Wolfram von Bodecker at the Valencia Festival in Venezuela. He manipulated a bird for François Morel and tried to get François to dance, then met Bartek Ostapczuk in Dresden, a prelude to several works in Poland. However, the work he is most proud of was represented only once and never left its four walls - it was the staging of “La Volière" (The Aviary) in the Penitentiary Center of Fresnes, France, for prisoners serving long sentences.
GATO, SA
In 35 years of theatrical activity GATO, SA has experienced varied paths and explored different techniques and expressive languages. However, the importance given to nonverbal communication, body expression, and dance has always been dominant in most of their shows. The group was already doing physical theater before even knowing that what they were doing could be called that. The invitation addressed to the French director Lionel Ménard was justified by the quality of his five stagings presented at the International Theatre Show of Santo André, with companies from Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. The creator of plays with unforgettable strong images accepted the challenge and proposed the theme, the methodology, and the process.