Pais e Filhos
Event
A personal story lies at the root of this production: Pedro Penim is going to become a father through the controversial process of surrogate pregnancy. “Pais & Filhos” is the “vortex” in which this actor and stage director now finds himself, as he continues to develop a body of work that hovers between biographic document and the creation of a fictional universe. The show combines a celebrated Russian novel with the cutting edge of contemporary social debate concerning a subject that has been revived by Queer revolutionary activism: the abolition of the family. Using Ivan Turguéniev’s “Fathers and Sons” (1862), as his starting-point, Pedro Penim lets himself be influenced by the queer Marxist theories of female thinkers such as Sophie Lewis, Jules Joanne Gleeson and Alyson Escalante, who rethink parenthood and childcare beyond the biological family, championing concepts such as “full gestational surrogacy” or “gender abolition”. With this project, Teatro Praga seeks to deepen the debate on parentage and family, expanding “Pais & Filhos” beyond a simple personal story.
