To Kill or Die For

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, the rising of non-democratic populist forces in Western societies has been polarizing public spheres, in which affective atmospheres of anger, resentment and rancor fuel racist, authoritarian and conservative ideas while building dramatic scenes of vulnerability for democracies. Controversial in more than one way, Catarina e a Beleza de Matar Fascistas (Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists), by Portuguese director and dramaturge Tiago Rodrigues (Director of the Festival d’Avignon) turns the spotlight on violence, discussing its place in a democratic system. The production shows a dystopic Portugal in 2028 ruled by a fascist party, where a family keeps a tradition alive: killing a fascist every year. The conflict starts when the to-be-initiated daughter doubts this tradition. In the final scene the deputy’s twenty-minute racist and misogynist monologue leaves no audience indifferent, having often turned the room into a commotion.

While throughout the play democracy is debated through arguments that engage with the moral and ethics of the audience, the deputy’s speech is overcharged and manipulated by an emotionality that touch them in a diffused way. This is telling of the current political moment and the affect worlds it creates, namely the politics of public feelings that happen through an imperceptible tactility. This article addresses the issue of the tangibility of public feelings impacting the surface of collective bodies. I will be looking at how Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists produces and sets in circulation public feelings of freedom, injustice and fear across times and ignite audience response; as well as how it discloses agonistic public feelings of the present, inviting the audience to touch the future and perhaps reconfigure the present.

Notes

1 The production is currently touring with a different cast, hence photos and names may not match the performance in the present.

2 Catarina Eufémia is an icon of the resistance during the dictatorship, especially dear to the Portuguese communist party. She represents the struggle for better working conditions in a traditionally poor farming region divided into large estates (latifúndios) in the south of Portugal— Alentejo—in a profoundly illiterate country. The Carnation Revolution (also called 25 April) only broke out twenty years after her brutal assassination.

3 At the time of writing the production has been performed in Portugal, Switzerland and Austria, where similar protest waves occurred. In 2022, it will tour in Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Norway.

4 For a detailed analysis of this production and more on Tiago Rodrigues see Pais (2017).

5 Romeu Costa found this pattern in Portuguese and non-Portuguese audiences as, at the time we spoke, he had had the experience of performing in the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne and Theater Halle E + G BetriebsgmbH (Vienna).