Monologue “Major” by Jacinto Lucas Pires opens in Porto

ANDplayed by Marcos Barbosa, the play opens with the character Benedetta Croce sitting in a upholstered chair with beige fabric flowered and illuminated by a lamp whose light reveals the actress's curly hair and a body protected by a satin nightgown and a robe.

“The shorts of the rope fell”, launches Benedetta Croce, bored with the routine of that domestic task. In her speech, memories of her past life as a young actress are released, full of successes and parties with champagne flutes, where she even had a maid, Natacha, “white and naive”.

With the call of a director who invites her to be the protagonist in a new film, Benedetta Croce tries to believe that that role can relaunch her career to return to being a capital woman and a famous actress.

“Major” is the show that marks the start of the new season of the Teatro Nacional São João (TNSJ), in Porto, this Wednesday, at the Teatro Carlos Alberto, and that was an order from TNSJ itself to Jacinto Lucas Pires.

In statements to journalists, Marcos Barbosa explained that the play speaks of a woman alone, haunted by certain ghosts, after an important career.

“ It is indeed a story of a great diva, a great woman of the theater, who is now forgotten in her house, still with these memories and looking for her place ", said the director.

In the various speeches of Benedetta Croce, who leaps between the life of a diva and solitary old age, is also mentioned an absent son and a husband who left and who has a much younger girlfriend.

The poetic recreation of Euripedes’ “Medeia”, translated in 1964 by Sophia de Mello Breyner Anderson, is a constant presence in this monologue, with the verses of this translation being rehearsed by the character in the hope of playing the role in the new film.

According to the director, there is a parallelism in the text between what Medea does in the play and what Benedetta somehow decides to do in “Major”, which is also to kill her ghosts.

“In fact, what happens in these plays, like the Euripides play, is that Medea, in the play, finds the right words to express what we feel. Somehow, Benedetta, in search of words, to convey what she feels and to talk about her loneliness, or to try to resolve her loneliness, or to bring back these ghosts of Natacha, or Thomas, or her son, who is Jonathan, or the great scenarios of the movies, she goes looking for words to bring back those moments. In fact, when she says those words, we return to those moments”, she added.

According to Marcos Barbosa, the play sees Benedetta demanding his place in the world, just as Medea did in Euripides' play.

Luisa Cruz confessed that she had done a monologue and said she didn't want to do it anymore, but she did, because the play was going on tour across the country.

“ I think it is very important to decentralise, to take places other than Lisbon and Porto, Coimbra and Faro, and that pleased me, that kind of theatrical campaign elsewhere. And then, of course, the text. They were expecting me to say yes or no, for Jacinto [Luke Pires] to write, that is, this is a very big bonus, it is an honor. It is not every day they write for an actor or for an actress ", said the actress.

Asked whether this piece is also a reflection on feminism and the aging process of women and how the doors can be closed because of age, Luisa Cruz said yes: “Yes [it’s a reflection]. It does not point out paths or solutions, [...] but, yes, there are many things, there is talk of having the courage to live in a true body, whatever it means to each of the people, it says that it does not do plastics, and that it wants to be an old and free woman”.

“Major” opens at the Carlos Alberto Theatre on Wednesday, where it is on stage until Sunday. The opening session is over.