PT | EN

Please, Love Me! follows Clió, a pop singer celebrated by the public but ignored by critics, who decides to document her own story as she prepares to mark ten years of her career.

Haunted by an enigmatic entity and guided by a profound belief, Clió becomes convinced that she can only free herself from the pain that permeates her existence if she offers something to the gods. Yet behind the artist lies a dark secret. How far will she go to break the cycle of violence?

Moving between stage and cinema, myth and reality, Please, Love Me! reflects on identity, gender, and power, inspired by Eurocentric and Yoruba mythologies and by the experience of being a Black Cape Verdean woman in a patriarchal world.

Credits

Script and Staging
Cleo Diára

Interpreted by
Cleo Diára, Mário Coelho

Dramaturgical Support
Melissa Rodrigues, Roxana Ionesco

Original Music
Cachupa_psicadelica, Henrique Silva

Movement Support
Piny Orchidaceae

Stage design
TBA

Costumes
Eloisa D'Ascensão

Video
TBA

Production
CAMA

Co-production in Residency
O Espaço do Tempo

Cleo Diára was born on 2 September 1987 in Praia, Cape Verde. She moved to Lisbon as a child, where she completed most of her education. Her first theatrical experiences were with the university theatre group Miscutem, which led her to begin her professional artistic training in 2012 at ESTC ⎯ the Lisbon Theatre and Film School.

A multidisciplinary artist since 2015, she has performed in several theatre projects by national directors, including Mário Coelho, Mónica Calle, Pedro Baptista, Rogério Carvalho and Sónia Baptista. In 2020, she was awarded the Amélia Rey Colaço Grant to create the performance Aurora Negra, in collaboration with actresses Isabél Zuaa and Nádia Yracema, which premiered at TNDMII and toured across the country. In 2022, the Aurora Negra collective presented its second creation, Cosmos, on the main stage of TNDMII and, in 2023, Missão da Missão at TBA. Beyond her theatre work, she has also taken part in various national and international film productions, including Diamantino by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt; Verão Danado and Entroncamento by Pedro Cabeleira; Terra Amarela by Dinis Costa; Nha Mila by Denise Fernandes; O Vento Assobiando nas Gruas by Jean Waltz, among others.

Cleo Diára (CV/PT)

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