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| By Heart with Tiago Rodrigues. Photo: Magda Bizarro |
By Heart.
Written and performed
by Tiago Rodigues. Revsed by Joana Frazao. Setts, props and costumes, Magda
Bizarro. Producers Mgda Bizarro, Rita Mendes. Co-producers O Espaco do Tempo
and Maria Matos Teatro Municipal. Stage Manager Andre Pato. Executive Producer
Rita ForjazTeatro Nacional D. Maria ll. Odeon Theatre. Adelaide Festival 2019
March 5 – 10
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
On first impression, By Heart would be more aptly described
as a Master Class. Portuguese actor, Tiago Rodrigues invites ten unsuspecting
members of the audience to come onto the stage and occupy the ten chairs on
either side of his chair in the centre. Once the ten brave volunteers are
seated the performance can begin and the audience and the ten strangers sit in
expectation.
Before anybody is told the role
that they will be expected to play, Rodrigues explains his fascination with literature professor,George
Steiner’s television show, Of Beauty and Consolation. He also relates the
occasion when Boris Pasternak, against all advice rose to speak at a Writer’s
Congress in Moscow. At this event, Pasternak asked the audience to learn a poem
which they could then pass onto others, who in turn would pass it on to others
and so on.. In the words of George Stiner, philosopher and teacher, “Once 10
people know a poem by heart, there’s nothing the KGB, the CIA or the Gestapo
can do about it. It will survive”
From a box of books on the floor,
Rodrigues reveals the text that the ten people will learn by heart. He holds it
up for all to see. – William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30, poem of love,
reminiscence, loss and comfort. It is from this point that Rodrigues gradually
reveals throughout the performance the significance of his choice.
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| Tiago Rodrigues. Photo: Magda Bizarro |
Each person on the stage , through
repetition, is coaxed to learn the first four lines of the sonnet. Once this is
committed to memory each person is then given one of the remaining ten lines of
the sonnet o learn by heart. Rodrigues lightens the tone with riddles for the
audience to solve before introducing Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the
temperature at which a book can be burnt. He has committed part of the story to
memory, where books cannot be burnt and where literature can be stored to pass
from generation to generation, free of censorship or destruction. His mission
is clear- to ensure that the beauty and the consolation of literature may be
preserved for all time.
By Heart has been inspired by the
story of resistance leader Nadezhda Mandelstam, who would invite ten people to her home to teach
them the poems of her exiled husband, so that they could be passed on to another
group of ten and so on, so that Osip Mandelstam’s poems would live on in the
hearts of the Russian people, safe from Stalin’s censorship.
It is here that Rodrigues’s
literature class enters the domain of profound and hart warming theatre. He
recounts the story of his 94 year old grandmother. Her sight is failing and
before she goes blind, she would like to learn a book by heart that she can
hold in her memory and share with her family, and especially her grandson who
shared the same love of books. It becomes clear that the book he chooses for
his grandmother is a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets. She commits to memory seven of the 154
Shakespearian sonnets to decorate the heart.
In a final ritual, Rodrigues
gives each of the ten people a wafer o digest nd hold to their hearts, infused
with love of poetry, family ., Baked in Lisbon, and imprinted with the words of
Sonnet 30, the offering is a token of the bond shared by all people and the
resistance to all who would seek to destroy the precious gift of literature.
As they file out, moved and uplifted
by Rodrigues’s sincere and modest performance, ushers hand out squares of paper
inscribed with Sonnet 30. Simple in its conceit, gentle in its message, unpretentious
in performance, By Heart reminds us all of what we hold most important
in our lives. It is a valuable lesson to digest.
