That one time you disappeared in the shopping centre because mum and dad didn’t buy you some shoes. That one time on holidays, near the pool, – I would have been two and you seven – you scolded mum because she wasn’t, supposedly, looking after me. That one time you threw a yoghurt to my face, even if unsuccessfully. Those times, impossible to count, that you shouted at mum. Those times, impossible to count, you locked yourself in your room for days – if it wasn’t days, it felt like that. Where do you come from? What is that shrill solitude? Where did I fail? Mum says, and I underline it and ask again: where? And this isn’t rhetoric, it is an essay for an incurable disease. One day I would like to solve my brother. One day I would like to take my mother’s pain away.
Credits
Author
Miguel Branco
Creation Support
João Jacinto e Pedro Nunes
Co-Creation Support
fAUNA | habitat de criação – Teatro da Didascália; O Espaço do Tempo
This writing project is supported by a Creation Grant from DGLAB/MC.
Miguel Branco was born in Almada in 1991. Having started off in cultural journalism, he became a playwright quando he crossed paths with the Companhia Mascarenhas-Martins. “Há dois anos que eu não como pargo”; “Lama ressequida com marcas de carro”; “Um pano em Vancouver”; “A última fatia de bacon”; e “O golfinho André” are some of his plays. In 2022 he edited his first book: “Quatro peças para outras formas de vida” (Urutau). He was one of the selected few to receive the Bolsa de Criação Literária 2022 – modality: dramaturgy – by DGLAB/MC