RUA Mais Imaginarius Street Theatre Festival Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal 2015
A moment about the city. Just the city. In the context of a street theatre festival, countless are the attention points that inhabit Santa Maria da Feira city. It is populated, lends its body to all the activities, serves them as a stage. It is, therefore, important to highlight its daily, common existence: to value the city as an attraction in itself. It is intended, in that way, to include the city’s built landscape in the cultural and artistic features of the festival. It is proposed that the living of a street [rua] comes to be, on its own, an event: a moment to take time, enjoy the silence, contemplate. This installation is presented as a segmentation of a street by two “curtains”. In the space between them, it is sought to present reality: here the city does not act, the city is. This reactivated way of seeing is enhanced by the subtle acoustic changes and by the lighting of the floor and the facades of this portion of public space. These curtains will be entirely permeable, but will offer distinct crossing experiences – through the more compact central area or sidewards, in less dense zones that allow the street its normal function. They will be made out of strips of different materials, depending on the specific location chosen for the installation: fabric, paper, plastic, foam, or others. In between these two elements, the lighting will use iodine projectors which will light the street in a neutral but unexpected manner.