Três dedos abaixo do joelho
Tiago Rodrigues / Mundo Perfeito
Teatro Dadà, Castelfranco Emilia
31/05/2013
, 
23:00
01/06/2013
, 20:00
text and direction Tiago Rodrigues
with Isabel Abreu, Gonçalo Waddington
lighting design André Calado
set design and costumes Magda Bizarro, Tiago Rodrigues
video Tiago Guedes
research Joana Frazão, Tiago Rodrigues
producer Magda Bizarro, Mundo Perfeito
Alkantara Festival & Teatro Nacional D. Maria II Lisbon, Korjaamo Theatre / Stage – Helsinki Theatre Festival, Internationale Keuze Rotterdam, Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels, NXTSTP
Running time 1 h 15’
National Première
Played in Portuguese with Italian subtitles
At the Torre do Tombo, Portugal’s national archive, theatre maker Tiago Rodrigues found an incredibly large compilation of material related to theatre during the fascist regime that ruled the country for 48 years. Among thousands of theatre texts, Rodrigues was particularly interested in the reports written by the inspectors that forced the cuts or prohibition of performances.
The irony behind Três dedos abaixo do joelho (Three fingers below the knee) is that it transforms censors into playwrights, using the censors' reports as the text for a theatre performance that behaves like a poetic and absurd censoring-machine. Somehow, the legacy of those who oppressed artistic and political freedom might just become an instrument to point out what's still dangerous and meaningful in theatre.
Three fingers below the knee was nominated for best Dramatic Text and for Best Theatre Show of 2012, being awarded for the last category, by SPA (Portuguese Society of Autors).
"As a measurement of the minimum length for a skirt, three fingers below the knee represents a relatively arbitrary but also clear indication. It traces a horizontal line across the leg of the actress: above no, below yes. Other lines are set out in the script and involving the Commission for the Examination and Classification of Performances: a circle around the words 'her nudity', underlining the expression 'The pig! Does not exist!' referring to God, alongside a constellation of Xs throughout a sketch on the 'freedom from pressure'.
A very clear line also separates the text of a Commission report and the text of a theatrical script. What this performance does is not so much as to dilute that boundary – and it was there in the work of editing and copy-pasting that Tiago Rodrigues undertook – but, more precisely, in rendering it invisible. A censor wrote that 'No cut should be perceptible to the public', Tiago Rodrigues follows that very instruction: picking out a sentence, erasing the quotation marks (and with them, the author, date, context), and affixing them to others. This also incorporates an 'informative' or 'documental' dimension to what censorship meant in Portuguese theatre of this period while also dealing with material written by Father Teodoro in the same way as Othello – staging the reports of the censors, interspersing them with theatrical works famous to a greater or lesser extent – above all, this performance deploys the mechanisms available for making the stage more visible to the violence of the workings of censorship and bureaucracy and correspondingly endowing them with visual image.
And while on occasion, as the audience, we are confronted with not knowing how to distinguish between the thinkings of the censors (of the fascist regime) and our own (or those of our time) – because we understand, because we recognise, because we laugh – it is simply how crossing over any boundary always contains both a promise and a danger. This performance runs the very serious risk of hitting (three fingers) below the belt in order to try and conceive of theatre through trusting in its power".
Joana Frazão
Tiago Rodrigues / Mundo Perfeito
O Mundo Perfeito has been fighting the forces of evil since 2003, the year when it was born in a kitchen of a two bedroom suburban apartment in Amadora. The company’s name translates the irony of a critic way of regarding the present and the idealism of an optimistic behaviour towards the future. It is also a name that makes people smile, for whatever reason.
Organized around the artistic work of Tiago Rodrigues, who shares the direction with Magda Bizarro, Mundo Perfeito is recognized for the quality of its work and also by the continuous attempt at innovation and reinventing itself. Besides producing Tiago Rodrigues' work, this small company is also known for it’s work with new authors, as well for the spirit of collaboration with portuguese and international artists. In the field of dramaturgy, Mundo Perfeito organized the project Urgências, that resulted in three shows and presented more than twenty new texts of portuguese authors. Recently, in Hotel Lutécia, Tiago Rodrigues staged texts by some of Portugal's foremost authors alongside with new texts by such international artists as Tim Etchells or Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. At the level of collaboration with international artists, stand out the performances Berenice, in co-production with the Belgian company tg STAN, Yesterday’s Man, by the lebanese artists Rabih Mroué and Tony Chakar with Tiago Rodrigues and the project Estúdios that since 2008 gave origin to several new performances and has promoted the collaboration of Portuguese artists with those of Belgium, The Netherlands, USA, Congo, France, Croatia, Brazil or Norway. With more than twenty productions, Mundo Perfeito has presented its work in theatres and festivals in countries such as Portugal, France, United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Lebanon and Brazil. Mundo Perfeito has also been the cradle for upcoming artists in the last few years and will continue to produce emergent performance makers.
Among other recent works, the performances If a window would open (nominated for the Performance of the Year Prize by the Portuguese Author's Society), Sadness and joy in the life of giraffes and Three fingers below the knee stand out for its originality and for a permanent search of new ways to fight the forces of evil.
