‘Theatre as the site for forging democracy and Tiago Rodrigues’

Catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas (Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists)’

Guest Lecture by Prof Maria Delgado

(The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London)

Wednesday 12  February 4.00-5.30pm

Yudowitz Room, Wolfson Building

Followed by drinks in the Atrium.

Both democracy and theatre are a work in progress. Both rely on participation to function and to produce their effects. Both consist in a “politics of rehearsal”, necessitating an understanding that they are never complete, never secured, never closed. Democracy, like theatre, relies on a complex process of engagement — that of an audience entering a space where people interact and engage with the enfolding action on the stage(s) around them, but also with each other. In this paper, I reflect on theatre as a site for forging and understanding the workings of democracy: on the courtroom drama as a space for debate; on Argentine director Lola Arias’ theatre of the real where actors perform their own stories; on interventionist theatre that calls democracy to account; and, in the final part of the paper, discuss Portuguese director Tiago Rodrigues’ Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists (first produced in 2020 and still touring). Rodrigues’s refashioning of the family drama as a Brechtian lehrstück reflects on the rise of the right and the deployment of vigilante justice, asking uncomfortable questions about whether undemocratic means can ever be justified in defence of democracy.