This ground-breaking lecture-performance sees Brazilian theatre maker Janaina Leite, together with her mother and a masked pornographic actor, dissect the cultural-historical relationship between men and women as shaped by the roles of torturer and victim.
Inspired by a philosophical essay by Julia Kristeva, Stabat Mater refers to the medieval poem about the Virgin Mary, literally the ‘Standing Mother”, the mother who is always there, at the feet of her crucified son. This woman who was born ‘without pleasure, without sin”, who was impregnated while she slept, becomes the prototype on which the Western world bases its idea of femininity, in the spectrum between whore and saint, between self-denial and masochism.
The piece takes the form of a lecture-performance, but it inventively plays with theatricality and alternative spaces. The music stand becomes a church altar, and the stage turns into a night club with pole dancing and an enormous phallus. With the biblical motif as a basis, Leite evokes models of femininity, like her own mother. Within this space, which can be either womb or tomb, Leite peels back the historical order between male and female to the bone.
‘All I can say about Stabat Mater is that no one will be left unaffected. It is the most daring piece in Sao Paolo’s current season (...) A powerful exercise on trauma and taboos for women that persist in the 21st century.'
- Ivana Moura, theatre critic
dates
Sat June 22 8:30 PM
Sun June 23 4:00 PM
Prices
- default € 26
- CJP/student/scholar € 13
language & duration
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Portuguese surtitles: English, Dutch
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1 hour 50 minutes (zonder pauze)
This performance is recommended for over 18 only.
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Stabat Mater
© André Cherri
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Stabat Mater
© André Cherri
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Stabat Mater
© André Cherri
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Stabat Mater
© André Cherri
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Stabat Mater
© André Cherri
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Stabat Mater
© André Cherri
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Janaina Leite, actrice, regisseur en dramaturg.
© André Cherri
