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MEASURE FOR MEASURE . 2012

Measure for Measure (1604)

By – William Shakespeare

Translation – Fernando Villas-Boas

Direction – Nuno Cardoso

Staging assistance

and movement – Victor Hugo Pontes

Set design – F. Ribeiro

Lighting design – José Álvaro Correia

Original music (performed live)

Rui Lima, Sérgio Martins

Voice and elocution – Maria do Céu Ribeiro

Acting – Afonso Santos Puído; Bernardino; Fidalgo; Frade, Catarina Lacerda

Cabo Theater

Measure for Measure is a plot in which more questions than certainties unfold. It tells of a Duke who wants to reinforce the virtuous and punitive dimension of his government, but doesn’t want to pay the price of unpopularity. So he fakes his departure and hands over power to a regent, Angelo, who doesn’t know the measure of power because, in his moral rigidity, he hasn’t learned to determine the boundaries of arbitrariness and, having always incorporated virtue as an external dogma, doesn’t know where the fine line is that separates the public from the private. All the characters are hostages to a game that is never exactly clean, a game of betrayals, seductions, underhanded surveillance, of conforming to the same set of conventional rules. A game that, at the end of the day, never wants to do more than smooth over the obvious obscenity so that everything stays the same, so that its structure remains. Apparently, it’s in the rules of this game that a mere bureaucratic fault can lead to the death penalty. Apparently, it is possible that a given outcome depends on the trafficking of what is most essential to people: their dignity. But it’s also possible to defuse the game, to pretend it was just a test…

HOW MANY HAVE PASSED, HE ASKED . 2011