The theatre and performance company Truta no Buraco premiered its latest piece on November 24 at Damas – Bar e Sala de Concertos. Truta no Buraco was born in Lisbon, on the sidelines of Andreia Farinha’s occasional remunerated freelance work. On the sidelines of institutionalism, she has been putting on shows almost always with an empty wallet. In partnership with João Melo, and permanent collaboration with José Smith Vargas, Bernardo Álvares, Manuel Bivar, Luísa Homem, and more recently with Raphael Soares, Faia Supico and João Ayton, they have since 2015 tried to think socially about life and culture. Taking the words of Andreia Farinha, Truta no Buraco wants “to produce critical thinking about the world through a more accessible culture, less politically facetious and cheesy”.

Irony, sarcasm and a perverse sense of humour are discursive features of this performance. The theme of the stories told is always the same: birds. But, in the detailed description of these stories, we notice the protagonist is often the ridiculous and charming side of the human species and not the birds. The video with the opening credits mentions Hollywood cinema. The trash imagery of this cinema is a feature throughout the play, encompassing the staging and interpretation of the acting crew, in addition to the set’s visual and plastic effects. The artificial blood spat out in one of the acts of the play embodies this idea. Andreia Farinha wishes to compare the weight of the eye of a hawk with the eye of a person. She calls her assistant Zé (played by João Ayton), so that he generously gives her his eye. Zé’s generosity is not an act of affection or admiration for Andreia, but fear of her authoritarianism. This character is a satire depicting the stereotype of the submissive assistant in artistic work: he always accepts to do anything to enter and be in the world of art. Zé advances quietly, scared of what will happen to him. Andreia comes closer and, a few seconds later, gouges out the character’s eye with a spoon. There is blood everywhere. Louis suffers and places his hands on the spot where his right eye had formerly been. The blood quickly trickles down his hands, staining everything around. With the act accomplished, Andreia presents the eye to the audience while Zé leaves the stage. The aesthetics of this moment fits into the so-called trash imagery of Hollywood cinema. The tricks (special effects) used take advantage of the exaggeration and absurdity typical of this kind of cinema. There is another moment that obeys the same train of thought, where the video stages the dramatic moment between Louis (João Ayton), the cook, Hugo (Bernardo Bertrand), the head waiter, and Farah Diba (Catarina Rodrigues), wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran at the time. Farah Diba was responsible for hiring both of them and didn’t want any trouble. Hugo and Louis get into an argument that culminates in violence. This drama takes place at a megalomaniacal party organized by the Shah in the desert. To adorn the party, thousands of birds were ordered. Fifty thousand European sparrows died due to the harsh desert conditions. The video depicts what this moment would have been like using the idea and aesthetics of Trapped in the Closet, R Kelly’s music video set. The singing voice synchronicity in the dubbing of the characters’ lines, the music, the acting and the drama are a clear and assumed imitation. It’s another fine trashy moment. Humour, sarcasm, exaggeration and ridicule are at work again – the performance of the show always lives by these rules.

At the beginning of the play, Andreia wants to make a culinary recipe from Alentejo called stuffed turkey, grandfather’s farmhouse style. The reference is Alfredo Saramago, an anthropologist with a passion for gastronomy and its knowledge. This recipe contains a thrush, a goose duck, a partridge and a hen. The birds are killed on Christmas Eve and kept all night in an earthenware bowl, with water and several cut lemons. Then they were deboned and seasoned with salt, pepper and rosemary. The recipe is quite long, but the thrush ends up in the partridge’s stomach, the partridge in the chicken’s stomach and the chicken in the goose’s stomach. Halfway through the performance, Zé takes the turkey off the stage, already seasoned, and puts it (supposedly) in the oven. At the end of the performance, Andreia Farinha asks Zé (always elegantly and arrogantly) to fetch the already cooked stuffed turkey, grandfather’s farmhouse style. The turkey (smoked and not cooked) is laid on the table (covered with a tablecloth), next to the champagne glasses served by Zé at that moment.

Then, Andreia calls João Melo (co-creator and technician) to the stage. The latter declines, refuses to answer, pretending not to hear. João Melo, besides being a co-creator, captures and edits video. In this scene, he plays the role of the technician. She gets angry as she finds it unacceptable for a technician not to respond immediately to what is asked of him. She walks off the stage towards João and they begin to argue slyly. This argument is a stereotype of the relationship between technician and artist, which is often abusive due to the whims of the latter. Andreia imperatively demands João to go on stage and he accepts submissively. Upset, he arranges the champagne glasses, trying the famous trick of pulling the towel off without knocking the objects over on the table. A small and very curious temptation is created in the audience: even though it is practically certain to go wrong, there is a minimal hope that it might work. Of course it goes wrong, everything falls to the floor, including the floor itself which falls with everything else. Eles passarão, Tu passarinho – Uma história política das aves ends with João Melo singing the closing credits of the show with George Michel’s song Careless Whisper. Yet another beautiful and ridiculous moment.