Lovers’ Chorus | Tiago Rodrigues

A couple in the middle of the night. “I can’t breathe,” she says. “She can’t breathe,” he repeats. They rush to the car and head to the hospital. The play of the Portuguese writer and director already grabs us from the very first phrases.

"Lovers’ Chorus" pulls us into the heart of the relationship between two people as they step on the threshold of a life-and-death experience. And from there, into the course of their shared life, a “together forever” that stands against time and corrosion.

Artistic director of the Festival d’Avignon and creator of Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, which was presented at the Onassis Stegi last year, Tiago Rodrigues directs, in collaboration with Argyro Chioti, the actors Nikos Karathanos and Marisha Triantafyllidou. This is his debut theatrical work, his most autobiographical, which he began writing in 2006 and completed it in 2020. Now, for the first time in Greece, he stages the play himself as a spectacle and artistic event of arresting tenderness, intensity, humor, and profound emotion, with a Greek translation commissioned by the Onassis Stegi to Maria Papadima.

The performance also features lighting design by Rui Monteiro and set and costume design by Magda Bizarro, who is in charge of the Festival d’Avignon’s international artistic programming.

• “Lovers’ Choir” has the form of a fugue and the power of a grand love poem in terms of what is stated and how it is conveyed. For, by virtue of the highly specified repetitions, variations, and alliterations of the two parallel monologues, the voices of its two performers sound as one, speaking as if they closely follow each other’s breath and heartbeat. It is in this manner that they narrate the subtly different versions of their love story, a lyrical and polyphonic story where a young couple recounts the life-and-death situation it experiences as one of them feels suffocating.
• “Lovers’ Choir” was written by Tiago Rodrigues in 2007 in Lisbon and premiered in Portugal seven years later.
• In Athens, it will be presented in Greek with Greek actors.
• In 2020, Rodrigues added a new chapter to his work, for which he stated: “Examining my characters and what they have gone through is like examining my theatrical trajectory since I began writing. Will my characters still be in love? Will the young man I was back then, the one who dared to write this work, be driven by the same need to make theater? I am not sure I am ready to hear the answer, yet I can’t avoid asking this question.”
• Citing subtly differentiated versions of the same events, “Lovers’ Choir” allows us to grope a moment of crisis, like a race against time where all is threatened and where the robust force of love reemerges. It was presented in November 2023 on the stage of Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in Paris, with Alma Palacios and David Geselson in the two leading roles.

• In January 2024, “Lovers’ Choir” premiered at the Centre Dramatique National de Normandie-Rouen. According to the website, “‘Lovers’ Choir’ speaks about the robust force of love, the passage of time, the accidental nature of life, all that is written on the inner side of a wedding ring, everything that divides us or unites us. Undergirded by its lyrical tenor, the musicality of the language, and an accomplished performance brimming with elegance, Tiago Rodrigues’ work undoubtedly possesses the quality of a masterpiece. Purely remarkable.”
• Le Monde wrote: “A jewel of grace and subtlety, as much as well-thought-out as simple in its demeanor,” while Liberation noted: “In the early play of Tiago Rodrigues, […] two actors recount the history of a couple with masterful gentleness as if they are entangled in utter harmony.” Le Temps stated: “There is what is lived and what is being said for what was lived. The director constantly utilizes this two-fold level in ‘Lover’s Choir,’ a thrilling duet nonetheless.”
• The Portuguese director and artistic director of the historic Avignon Festival was first introduced to the Greek audience with his work “By Heart” in 2016 at the Onassis Stegi Upper Stage. In the 2023-24 season, he presented the provocatively titled play “Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists” at the Onassis Stegi Main Stage, pondering how far we can go before beginning to defend democracy, in an overall commentary on the rise of nationalism worldwide.
• The first collaboration of Tiago Rodrigues with the historical troupe Comédie-Française materialized this past July with the presentation of the play “Hecuba, not Hecuba” at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, following its premiere at the Festival d’Avignon.