ABSTRACT

Cão Solteiro & Vasco Araújo

“The first thing that comes to mind is an image
that for some reason strikes me as charged with meaning,
even if I cannot formulate this meaning in discursive terms (…)
Around each image others come into being, forming a field of analogies, symmetries, confrontations”

(I. Calvino, Six Memoranda for the Next Millennium)

ABSTRACT is the result of Cão Solteiro’s collaboration with visual artist Vasco Araújo who, since 2009, has been exposing the processes and political circumstances of artistic creation, testing the limits around what is private and public, personal or transmissible, and the possibilities of crossing different languages. ABSTRACT summons the unfolding of the meaning of the words abstract/abstracto for a performance that is both a reflection on the path traced in this partnership, and an incursion into abstraction as an artistic current, from a non-historical perspective, but in its various ramifications in contemporary art. A hypertextual narrative is put forth, with references in theatre, performance and the visual arts, playing with the audience’s expectations, distanced from literal references, in the construction of subjective images, and, above all, in the possibility of leaving readings open.

São Luiz Teatro Municipal | Lisbon 2023
PT.25 | Montemor-o-Novo 2025

script Cão Solteiro & Vasco Araújo
text Alexandre Melo
set design Vasco Araújo
costume design Mariana Sá Nogueira
lighting design Daniel Worm d’Assumpção
sound design Miguel Lucas Mendes

video mapping Rodrigo Pedreira
image editing Miguel Faro
sewing Teresa Louro, Rosário Balbi, Ana Martins
costume design assistance João Natário
production director and photography Joana Dilão (CS)
production Mariana Sá Marques (CS)
diffusion Raquel Bravo (CS)
press advisory Cláudia Duarte / this is ground control (CS)

actors Ana Libório, Cleo Diára, Greg Wohead, June, Paula Sá Nogueira, Silvana Ivaldi, Vasco Araújo e Estagiários do Curso Profissional de Artes do Espectáculo/Escola Básica e Secundária Passos: Manuel Beatriz Leão, Deiby Sampaio, Dioclécio Sebastião, Elizandro Rafael, João Alves, Sebastian Hubert

Publishing Project
texts (programme)Maria Sequeira Mendes, Nuno Fonseca
images (programme)Mariana Sá Nogueira

Educational Project
theater interns Manuel Beatriz Leão, Deiby Sampaio, Dioclécio Sebastião, Elizandro Rafael, João Alves, Sebastian Hubert (Curso Profissional de Artes do Espectáculo/Escola Básica e Secundária Passos Manuel)

Residency in co-production O Espaço do Tempo
support Arcalo, Bazar do Vídeo, Bertomel, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Junta de Freguesia da Misericórdia, Teatro Praga
co-production Cão Solteiro Teatro, São Luiz Teatro Municipal

company financed by República Portuguesa | Cultura – Direcção Geral das Artes and Câmara Municipal de Lisboa