Público Reservado

Howard Barker is the last of the tragic. It insists on the idea of establishing a world populated with death, created through violent gesture, and language: it is always between me and the Other, always creating not bridges, but scores: gaps, fractures, pauses, misunderstandings, suspensions between what I think and what my language translates. Language — always this — at the beginning of everything, separating us from other animals. Or theatrical art, as Barker would say, instead of theater. Judith: A Parting From The Body, a reinvention of the story of Judith and Holofernes, where Judith murders General Holofernes, after a covert seduction, to free the people from tyranny on the eve of yet another conflict and Dead Hands, where two brothers and their father’s mistress meet, to confront everything that can’t be said. — Renata Portas


Público Reservado has been around for 9 years, during which it has presented performances on its own initiative on a regular basis in alternative venues or spaces such as Contagiarte (2013), José Rodrigues Foundation (2014), Zero Box Lodge (2019), Rua das Gaivotas (2022) and Luz e Vida (2022). It concurrently carried out several co-productions with institutions such as Teatro Nacional São João and Teatro Municipal do Porto. They work on repertoire pieces, seeking an experimental and authorial approach in personalities such as Jean-Luc Lagarce, Valère Novarina, Peter Handke, Jean Anouilh, Luigi Pirandello and Heiner Müller, among so many others. Their mission is also to explore the limits of theatre and language and to carry out experimental research work, featuring long rehearsal and maturation periods for each performance/object, aiming at a ‘theatre of art’ as stated by Giorgio Strehler, that is to say, looking for a theatre that strives for artistic excellence without neglecting the spectator as an accomplice in this adventure.