Daisy and Dionísia: three plays with the theatre of Pessoa's poets

• Autor(a) principal: Nascimento Rosa, Armando
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.51427/cet.sdc.2021.0004
• topic: theatre; Fernando Pessoa; poet-actor; dramaturgical creation; text and scene; teatro; Fernando Pessoa; poeta-actor; criação dramatúrgica; texto e cena

Between 2002 and 2013, the author of this article published and saw staged three different plays that establish creative dialogues with the work of Fernando Pessoa. Two of them – Audição – Com Daisy ao vivo no Odre Marítimo (Audition – With Daisy live in Lisbon) and Cabaré de Ofélia (Ophelia’s Cabaret) constitute a dramaturgical diptych sharing a common character who is present in both: Daisy Mason; reinvention of the figure from a Pessoa’s poem, portrayed in them as a drag‑queen friend of Álvaro de Campos, “legend of poetry and music‑hall”. The third of these plays, Menino de sua Avó (Fernando and his Grandmother), brings to the theatrical scene Dionísia Seabra, Fernando’s crazy grandmother, in a play with seven scenic encounters between grandmother and grandson that extend beyond the physical death of both. The article begins by establishing a brief comprehensive picture of Pessoa’s approach to the universe of theater and dramatic creation, namely that which in its plural creation is identified with a function that we can designate as a poet‑actor. The discursive course of the article gives attention to each of the mentioned plays, articulating the motivations for their writing, the imaginary that constitutes them, as well as the way they relate to elements and figures from the fictional universe of Fernando Pessoa.