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A theatre festival, like a river, is forever changing, yet always staying the same. At no festival in 2013 was that more true than at Festival de Almada. Portugal\u2019s largest theatre festival\u2012which is held every July in the city of Almada, on the south bank of the River Tagus, and across the water in the capital, Lisbon\u2012lost its artistic director and founder, Joaquim Benite (1943-2012). It fell to his successor, and long-time assistant director, Rodrigo Francisco to fashion a programme which, at one and the same time, was consistent with Benite\u2019s commitments to quality drama, internationalism and serious cultural discussion, yet also found appropriate ways to mark the passing of one of the most important figures in modern Portuguese theatre.<\/p>\n It speaks to Benite\u2019s legacy, and to Francisco\u2019s honouring of it, that, in many ways, the 30th edition of Festival de Almada felt like any other, despite the absence of the great man. The programme, in which Portuguese theatre works sat proudly alongside productions from such diverse nations as Argentina, Austria, Finland, Greece, Slovenia and, as so often in the past, France, looked very much like a Benite programme. The parallel programme of films, visual arts and discussions\u2012including Encontros da Cerca (\u2018Encounters at Cerca\u2019), held during every edition of the festival in the gorgeous Casa de Cerca arts venue, which is perched high on a cliff overlooking the river and Lisbon\u2012was very much as before. Even the outdoor, communal restaurant, in the grounds of the D. Ant\u00f3nio da Costa School, (which has always seemed like a little piece of municipal socialism), was as Benite had always wanted it.<\/p>\n Yet, if the 2013 programme was impressive in its respectful continuity with the history of a festival which has always been a testament to one man\u2019s vision and passion, it also provided much-needed spaces in which to remember, celebrate and mourn Benite. Portuguese scholar, theatre critic and founding editor-in-chief of Critical Stages <\/i>Maria Helena Ser\u00f4dio was joined by international colleagues at an event which both marked the publication of Ser\u00f4dio\u2019s new biography Joaquim Benite desafiou Pr\u00f3spero\u2026 e inscreveu o mundo no seu teatro<\/i> (\u2018Joaquim Benite challenged Prospero \u2026 and inscribed the world as theatre\u2018<\/i>) and celebrated Benite\u2019s towering role in Portuguese theatre since the Revolution of April 1974. At the D. Ant\u00f3nio da Costa School, <\/i>French set designer Jean-Guy Lecat created a beautifully-designed museum-style installation charting the many productions of Benite\u2019s career, which was supplemented, before and after performances in the school\u2019s courtyard, by screenings of Benite\u2019s TV interviews.<\/p>\n Experiencing just a few days of the extensive, two-week-long programme, I was fortunate to catch Portuguese maestro Jo\u00e3o Paulo Santos\u2019s presentation of Leonard Bernstein\u2019s operetta after Voltaire\u2019s Candide.<\/i> The piece was performed in the school courtyard with a full orchestra and a cast which was as fine in satirical humour as it was in song. By turns, neatly metatheatrical, delightfully silly and bleakly comic in its reflections on Voltaire\u2019s satire on optimism (not least when the choir sings, jauntily, the words \u201cwhat a day, what a day for an auto<\/em>\u2013da<\/em>\u2013f\u00e9<\/em>\u201c), this deceptively light entertainment spoke to Portugal\u2019s history (the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 plays a very important part in Voltaire\u2019s story, of course) and its troubled present (what good is Panglossian optimism during the country\u2019s current socio-economic woes?). Ironically, albeit in-keeping with Bernstein\u2019s intention, the breezily comic nature of Santos\u2019s production did more to put smiles on Portuguese faces than any economic policies devised in Lisbon, Berlin or Brussels.<\/p>\n A highlight of the international programme was the Franco-Malian production entitled Le Papalgui<\/i>. The piece is based upon German author Eric Scheuermann\u2019s early 20th-century book Der<\/i> Papalagi<\/i>, which, according to Scheuermann\u2019s dubious claim, collected together a Samoan chief\u2019s anthropological observations of white European society. Performed by Habib Demb\u00e9l\u00e9, a Malian actor and author (and, fascinatingly, a one-time oppositionist presidential candidate in his homeland), the play is presented as an illustrated lecture, in the late-Victorian, anthropological style. Although the show was performed in French, with Portuguese surtitles, even I, a monolingual Anglophone, found myself engaged thoroughly by the intelligent satire embedded within both the theatrical form and Habib\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n White Europe and the white-dominated colonies it created (from the United States and Canada, to Australia and New Zealand) continue to be fascinated, afraid and hateful in their relations with what, as the late, great Palestinian writer Edward Said explained, they still, in the 21st-century, consider to be \u201cthe Orient\u201d. In putting a West African performer in the role of a wide-eyed anthropological observer, who has encountered white Europeans for the first time, Le Papalgui<\/i> turns the tables, both humorously and with great political import, on a set of imperial and post-imperial ethnic and cultural assumptions which are, at best, patronisingly paternalistic, and, at worst, malevolently racist, even genocidal.<\/p>\n Habib assumes the role of the astonished anthropologist with a delightful energy. In his amazed and perplexed speech, and by way of a series of often hilarious images on projected slides, he casts the white European as a curious \u201cother\u201d, who engages in inexplicably strange social and cultural practices. Performed in the studio theatre of the former Almada Municipal Theatre, recently renamed the Joaquim Benite Municipal Theatre, one can imagine how much Benite, a passionate Francophile and a lifelong Communist, would have loved this witty piece of political theatre.<\/p>\n There were many fine theatre productions besides these in the 2013 Almada programme. However, for me, the undoubted highlight of my brief time at the festival was the screening of the documentary filmJoaquim Benite\u2019s Last Creation: \u201cNo\u201d is Not Enough<\/i>, by Catarina Neves. I must declare an interest here, in that Ms Neves is a friend of mine. However, it would be absurd to review the 2013 Almada programme without making reference to this film, which received a standing ovation when it was screened in the main auditorium of the Joaquim Benite Municipal Theatre during the festival, and was subsequently invited to the prestigious Doclisboa documentary film festival in Lisbon, where it won the coveted audience prize. Moreover, I have always made it a professional principle to review art works \u201cwithout mercy or malice\u201d,[1]<\/sup><\/a> and I cherish my professional integrity too highly to tarnish it by giving anything other than my considered opinion of Neves\u2019 film.<\/p>\n This caveat considered, I can write with absolute honesty that, like the audiences in Almada and Lisbon, I find the documentary to be a fascinating, sometimes deeply emotionally affecting, consideration of both Benite\u2019s theatre making and his life. The film is topped and tailed by touching material taken from interviews with members of Benite\u2019s family, particularly his grandchildren, which was recorded after his death. However, its primary content is taken from the rehearsal process for the director\u2019s final production, a staging of Timon of Athens <\/i>by Shakespeare (Benite passed away just days before the show opened at his theatre in Almada in December of 2012).<\/p>\n Neves, who was well known to Benite both as a journalist with a special interest in theatre and as a longstanding friend of Festival de Almada, was given exceptional access to the rehearsal room. Here we see how the director, wheelchair-bound by his illness, was never more himself than when making theatre. Building his production through a combination of uncompromising aesthetic judgements and a variety of political and philosophical observations inspired by the play, we see Benite\u2019s rehearsal room, not as a location of modish democratic collectivism, but as a place of benevolent dictatorship. First-and-foremost a practical man of theatre, he does not spare his actors in his demands that ego and, even, personal feelings be set aside in order to cut, quickly and directly, to the immediate aesthetic requirement. The result is, on occasion, a creative tension which, ultimately, does great credit to both Benite and his cast.<\/p>\n Inevitably, the most powerful moment in the film comes with the announcement of Benite\u2019s death. Neves was in the rehearsal room\u2012where Francisco was deputising for Benite, who had been taken into hospital\u2012at the moment when the news of the director\u2019s passing was broken. What follows is a brilliantly effective piece of film making. After a brief, dark silence, we see the naked Timon from Benite\u2019s production, relieved of his once great wealth, his previous power and, even, his clothes, he stands before us in all his human vulnerability, an Everyman travelling between the cradle and the grave. Emotively apposite, beautifully metaphorical and visually dramatic, it is a moment, and a film, of which I feel sure Benite would have approved.<\/p>\n Endnote<\/strong><\/p>\n \n<\/a>[1] From the set of aphorisms I entitled \u2018Twenty-one Asides on Theatre Criticism\u2019, originally published in Critical Stages<\/i>, number 2 (Spring 2010): accessed December 17, 2013, https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/2\/twenty-one-asides-on-theatre-criticism\/<\/a>, and republished in David Ian Rabey and Sarah Goldingay (eds), Howard Barker\u2019s Art of Theatre <\/i>(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 101-102.<\/p>\n![\"Joaquim](\"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/10\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2016\/04\/Joaquim-Benite-8x6.jpg\")
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