Catarina And the Beauty Of Killing Fascists | Tiago Rodrigues

• When he was only twenty years old, Tiago Rodrigues joined the pioneering Belgian collective tg STAN. With this group he traveled across the world, touring fifteen countries. And while he had already started to work as a director and writer, at the age of 26 he co-founded the “Mundo Perfeito” theater company with Magda Bizarro. With this company he made his debut at the Festival d’Avignon, staging the Shakespearean play “Antony and Cleopatra” in 2015. Seven years later, he returned to Europe’s largest theatrical event, this time as its artistic director. In the meantime (2015-2021), he worked as artistic director at the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in Lisbon (Portugal).
• His first directorial appearance at Stegi was with Shakespeare, as well: he taught one of his sonnets to ten audience volunteers on stage. The performance “By Heart” was a commentary on the importance of passing on knowledge and on the power of poetry.
• However, Rodrigues’ first appearance at Stegi takes us back to 2011, when he acted in “Les Antigones” by tg STAN, a performance that contrasted two contemporary versions of the myth, those by Jean Cocteau and Jean Anouilh.
• At the age of 46, Tiago Rodrigues is one of Portugal’s most distinguished theater directors and actors. His theater, both political and poetic, interweaves historical events with social phenomena, draws on private and public experience, and makes use of minimal theatrical means.
• The dramaturgy of “Catarina and the beauty of killing fascists” emerged collaboratively, through the collective study of texts on totalitarianism, violence, and the rise of the far right in contemporary Europe. The team turned to works by political philosophers Hanna Arendt and Slavoj Žižek, as well as by authors who have spoken more broadly about violence, ranging from Sophocles to Albert Camus and Edward Bond. They also focused on analyses of speeches delivered by populist leaders, such as Trump and Bolsonaro. Rehearsals were abruptly halted with the outbreak of the pandemic, and the show finally premiered in Centro Cultural Vila Flor in Portugal in September 2020, before being stopped again and finally presented at Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in April 2021.
• The Portuguese director notes that, with “Catarina and the beauty of killing fascists” his aim was to create a show that would cause a stir, regardless of the political beliefs of the audience. “To achieve this, we ourselves would first have to feel upset. It seemed fundamental to me to search for the spark of disruption at every rehearsal. And I felt very terrified, but at the same time excited, about the consecutive days of unrest we were experiencing as we worked with this material, trying to build characters, words, and events on stage, that would use the tools of theater to take the audience on a journey of fiction and contemplation.”
• According to the reviews, Rodrigues seems to have won the bet of disturbance: “If [the show] is perceived as a manifesto, it is a manifesto that outlines the significance of theater in today’s society. [...] Can theater bring us out of apathy? Can it get us thinking about creating a better society? We could even argue that these questions are not minor; instead, they are at the core of this work. Tiago Rodrigues promotes critical thinking that is too often replaced by a supposed neutrality on current social issues. And he invites us to react.”
• In his director’s note, he refers to the—utopian, according to many people—potential of the arts to foreground a different way of thinking, subjectivity, and ambivalence. “Perhaps we will not have to try as hard as we had thought [...]. Rather than relying on obvious references to the present, we believe that the best way to talk about what is happening now is to engage with the fiction of the near future.”
• “Catarina and the beauty of killing fascists” has won a number of prizes, including Best Foreign Performance at the Ubu Awards 2023 in Italy, the equivalent prize from the French Critics Association (2023), while it was also nominated for Best International Performance at the Premis de la Crítica in Catalonia.

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.

Hania Rani (“Biesy” and “Now, Run”), Joanna Brouk (“The Nymph Rising” and “Calling the Sailor”), Laurel Halo (“Rome Theme III” and “Hyphae”), and Rosalía (“De Plata”).