U
Event
U tells the epic journey of a very peculiar Ulysses, not the superhuman hero of Homer's Odyssey, but a huge white bear, a polar bear. Taking as starting-point Maria Alberta Menéres’ Ulisses, a children’s version of the Odyssey, stage director Joana Magalhães drew inspiration by the book’s opening line: “A tale never loses in the telling.” Thus, contrary to the univocal slant of the tale which glorifies the hero and his deeds, she decided to make it dialogue with a short story she had written, A Educação de Um Ditador (The Education of a Dictator). U is kidnapped by the inhabitants of a certain domestic-animal-ruled country, and he was educated according to democratic principles to become a dictator. Made a leader against his will, U escapes and sets off on a journey back to Ithaca, the land of savages, in search of his lost identity, but on arriving there he is once again welcomed as a messiah. U uses the wandering of its main character through a black and white world to question the concept of the hero and our lazy attachment to the notion of a saviour who will forgive us and save us from disaster. The real catastrophe, Penelope’s catastrophe, the planet Earth, continues to unfold, always waiting for salvation. Basically, U’s makes us think about democracy, as a collective and participatory project.
