Nuno Cardoso, theater director: “We have resigned from our duties as citizens” | Culture

Nuno Cardoso (Canas de Senhorim, 52) was a happy and poor boy who learned to speak a Mozambican dialect and who tried to fulfill his family’s dreams by studying law at the University of Coimbra. The theater swept the jurisprudence in a matter of months. No one will know if a Perry Mason has been lost, but few doubt that the European scene has gained one of its most exciting directors. Actor and founder of several companies, since 2019 he has directed the São João National Theater of Porto (TNSJ), which this year has co-produced a new version of Essay on blindness to celebrate the centenary of José Saramago, a bilingual production in Catalan and Portuguese which was attended by more than 20,000 spectators. His next work will be the adaptation of Alexandrian fadoby Antonio Lobo Antunes. Cardoso, who has staged operas with convicts and immigrants in the past, can involve ex-combatants of the colonial war as his father.

Ask. What is the greatest blindness of today’s society?

Reply. Our inability to see the other and repair it generates enormous conflicts. The blindness of consumerism and individualism disturbs our obligation to redistribute wealth and fight for the common good. This part of our inability to empathize, to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. Everything starts from there, from the inability of someone like Putin to admit another identity and to feel attached to our inability to recognize that the immigrants who arrive in Europe are our lifeblood for the future, not a problem. Why does Trump win the election? Is simple. People are tired of not being seen. A jester appears and there is a rage vote supporting him. The main culprits of this are not the far-right forces, they only take advantage of it, they are the democratic and progressive forces, which stop seeing their surroundings, the offshoring of work, globalization, cutting the redistribution of wealth, poverty and anger…

P. Do you see that anger in Portuguese society?

R. Yes. The Portuguese are said to have it brandos costumes (mild way), I don’t agree with this at all. In Portugal there is racism, there is discrimination and violence against women, what I think still exists is a possible time for dialogue. Portugal is a bypass country, which has its advantages, but with the same problems. We are also a European country integrated into a European project, which is a great experience, as big as American democracy, and there we have to play a life-or-death struggle between this idea that we are all equal and we can live in a city to guarantee peace or the recognition of nationalisms, of fear.

P. Will this setback be a legacy of the war?

R. Fear is the main blindness, but fear exists because we cause it. Populisms were not born from a virginal conception, we also resign from our duties as citizens. A democracy is made of attention, of constant participation. For us, Ryanair flights, weekends in Marrakesh, holidays are pleasant and we give up investing in the system that has allowed us to do so. When there are elections, if it’s sunny and you don’t go to vote because the beach is big, that’s our responsibility. There is a set of issues that seem to have been resolved and are not, and in crisis situations like the current one, they stress the social fabric. This society sustains itself as long as it produces excess wealth, which comes at the expense of another part of the planet. When this goes into crisis, what was disguised undergoes stress.

P. Doing jobs with inmates or with residents of marginal neighborhoods, is this your way of not resigning as a citizen?

R. I try not to resign myself as a citizen in everything I do, whether it’s as an artist, as a father or as director of the national theater, but it’s an effort because I also like slippers, the beach and those things. This theater is not only theatre, it is also an educational center open to all, theater groups, mediation work. We talk a lot about the rights that a citizen has but it is very difficult for us to identify the duties. I come from a very poor family, which instilled in me the duty to improve things. Sometimes I feel that the world of culture and art is so absorbed in its categories and complexities that we forget that we are meaningless if we don’t work for others. Theater was the vehicle I discovered for doing this.

P. How did you get to the law and how did you leave it to enter the theatre?

R. I come from a small place in central Portugal, Canas de Senhorim, which is my center of gravity. I had a super-happy childhood among books, rivers and forests, a fantastic family. We imagined Coimbra and graduate, law school as something hyper-special, I was the first person in my family to go to university. It was all a fiction, without knowing it I was already doing theater. When I got to Law I got a huge shock because it wasn’t my thing. I was very lost when I found this course from the Theater Initiation Circle of the Coimbra Academy. At the audition they asked me why I wanted to join and I said I had read Shakespeare’s works which was a lie. When I left first class I said to myself: ‘this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life’. I’ve been lucky and have the ability to tell stories as a way of life, which is the only thing I’m good at.

P. What are the differences between doing theater with professionals or with special communities such as prisoners?

R. I do not know. I only know how to do things in one way, both with professionals and with citizens, which is from two to six, we work, we tell a story and it has to make a good impression. When I work on repertoire I do it with professional actors, which is something TV stars should understand, they are good on television, please don’t try to do repertory theater in Alexandrian verse because they don’t have the technique to do it. When I work with citizens, I require them to tell stories and have fun, I don’t require technical virtuosity. As in everything, it’s a matter of empathy and of perceiving what the limit of people’s dignity is, it’s about doing things for the public. I’ve already been in prison, in the Cova da Moura, in the suburbs. I’m very lucky because while I do and I’m in the strangest places, both in Portugal and abroad, I’m also in the most fantastic theaters and I’m the director of TNSJ.

Current entertainment doesn’t think about audience, about giving, it thinks about billing

P. Will you be the next Portuguese director who ends up directing a cultural institution in France? It begins to be a trend after the departure of Tiago Rodrigues and Tiago Guedes for Avignon and Lyon.

R. Nerd. I like to work outside but I am available. I’m an old-fashioned director, I like the text and I get immense pleasure from my language. I already have my dream place. I am artistic director of TNSJ, where I grew up, in the city that adopted me, in my country, in my language and therefore I want more here. This does not mean having a closed vision of what Portugal is. Our language is almost 300 million people, that’s why I went to Cape Verde for Castro, which is our basic Creole text. Coming across a sister language, which is Catalan, was also great. I’ve had a few invitations but not that many, because I’m an egocentric person, not very nice.

P. Is culture increasingly confused with entertainment?

R. There is confusion between art and culture, and between culture and entertainment. Stig Dagerman wrote german autumn that theaters were full during the war. Art is something amazing that will always trump entertainment, as you see now with Netflix and stuff like that. To do theater you need the body, the voice and the imagination. And from the public. And then we tell stories about ourselves. When we reach borderline situations, this is very easy to evoke. Current entertainment doesn’t think about audience, about giving, it thinks about billing and that is anathema to any society. But I’m not afraid to fight them, in resistance we are the turtle and we will win. Art must be communion with the community.