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WasteBand (2003) A virtual performance with tea by Patrícia Portela (Special Mention Prize ACARTE / Gulbenkian for performance of the year 2003) (Prize Reposição Teatro na Década by Clube Português de Artes e Ideias) WASTEBAND by PATRÍCIA PORTELA "To lose is a matter of method" – Braque Waistband : strip of cloth that forms the waist of a garment, esp. at the top of trousers or a skirt (in Oxford dictionary) Wasteband : strip of time that shapes your days, by extending the waiting moments instead of the action ones, creating a bigger possibility of accidents and collateral effects in lives that have been over programmed. How can you be virtual without being digital? Wasteband is a virtual performance for 1 astronaut/salesman, 1 musician, and 1 power point, where performers and spectators seat together around a table where vertical images are being projected. Based on the coincidental fact that both a Chinese ritual and scientific theories prove that the moon will soon fall on a beach full of frogs on the exact date we perform. Following the anxieties of Sergei Krikalev at the Mir while waiting to be brought back to Earth, this is a performance about waiting, wishing and wasting. Writer and performer Patricia Portela Sound Design Christoph de Boeck Space Design Eric da Costa Vídeo Patrícia Portela and Patrícia Bateira Production Helena Serra and Patricia Portela Co-production by Casa D’os Dias Da Água and included in the programme of Experimenta Design 2003, Bienal of Lisbon. Supported by MC /IPAE, SONY, Lugar Comum, Transforma, Espaço do Tempo, CNC, INCM, Tap Air Portugal, CMLisboa, Oceanário, Delta cafés and Kodak. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian has supported the research process of this project, initiated in Rotterdam 2001 at APT – arts performance and theatricality. | PRESS QUOTES | “WasteBand, a brief treaty of love and science fiction, enchanting narrative and charade of intertwined stories in an equilibrium between collage and accumulation of layers of information, formal structures, dramaturgical and poetical organization of time and space (...) Claudia Galhós in “Jornal de Letras” „(...) the ingenious production WasteBand by the Portuguese Patricia Portela.(…) is (a) travel program into the best of allegories, WasteBand. Fundamental science, distorted signs and fake history give evidence in this performance of a real existing parallel universe of stories. The audience sits around a large conference table together with the artist and are taken on a masterfully calculated flight path through this universe.(…)Portela projects dream dancers in zero gravity, remainders of memories of reality and the dissolving love story of Tania and Jose. «We live in an enormous novel» says Portela, the poetical travel guide and dazzling speaker, «in which nothing must be invented: all these images are already there.» Helmut Ploebst in de standard ; Viena Austria “WasteBand - the taste of the future” “(...) very futuristic, very conceptual and, also, very funny.(...) the future is tempting.” José Couto Nogueira in “O Independente” “WasteBand is a fusion performance, where everything connects.” Cátia Felício in “Público” “(...) Wasteband makes use of humor and music, proposing a kind of work in progress where real time only happens after virtual time (...) the performer uses different rhetorical forms such as the debate, the conference, the monologue and she also talks about love stories (…) the final structure is a format between a soap opera, a video game and an internet environment.” In “Número magazine” (...) A remarkable process of recreation of the place of text in theatre, of the place of the word and its relation with the audience (...) during the presentation, the spectator drifts between perplexity, overdose of information and the perception of human vulnerability (...) (...) the saturation of information leads to an opening towards emotion, an unusual moment in our actual cultural and artistic time.(...) (...)In a detailed and intelligent structure, Patrícia Portela searches in theatre for a strategy of communication with the spectator, researching and renovating storytelling formats. (...) Ana Pais in Sinal (theatre critic magazine) It was a memorable performance for those who were present on the last 6th of November at the Teatro- Cine da Covilhã(...). It was the break of all taboos, in the way theatre was presented, in the way the performer was on stage and most of all in the way she captured her audience. António Gil in Jornal da Covilhã

• published: 24 Mar 2011
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