King Lear, Ensemble-Sociedade de Actores — Performance Shakespeare 2016

King Lear by William Shakespeare
Presented in Portuguese
Touring Portugal

Ensemble-Sociedade de Actores

Co-produced by:
Ensemble-Sociedade de Actores, Teatro Nacional S. João and Teatro Municipal de Bragança

Creative Team:
Directed by: Rogério de Carvalho
Translated by: Fernando Villas-Boas
Set design: Pedro Tudela
Music: Ricardo Pinto
Costumes: Bernardo Monteiro
Lighting design: Jorge Ribeiro
Direction assistance: Emília Silvestre

Cast:
Lear: Jorge Pinto
Gloucester: Ivo Alexandre
Kent: João Castro
Edmund: Elmano Sancho
Edgar: Miguel Eloy
Goneril: Isabel Queirós
Albania: Pedro Galiza
Regan: Vânia Mendes
Cornwall: Simão Do Vale
Cordelia: Raquel Pereira
Fool: António Parra
Oswald: Diogo Freitas
French King: Daniel Silva

Tour Dates and Locations:
June 30 to July 17, 2016 - Teatro Nacional S. João / Porto

September 24, 2016 - Teatro Municipal de Almada /Almada

September 29, 2016 - Teatro Munivipal de Bragança / Bragança

Also Touring in 2017:
April 22, 2017 - Teatro Municipal de Vila Real / Vila Real

September 8-9, 2017 - Centro Cultural de Belém / Lisbon

Funding and Sponsorship:
Ministry of Culture

King Lear is a play about the disintegration of a world where blindness is sight and madness is wisdom. A play that conveys to us explosive revelations on love, power and (individual and social) justice. At the start, Lear believes that power is limitless, and so divides it among his three daughters. But he ends up discovering that suffering is the only thing that is truly limitless, something that deeply strikes nearly all of us, for the pains of the conflict between parents and children are inevitably universal. It is said, and rightly so, that in King Lear certain human wrecks manage to recover their humanity. But that recovery does not imply redemption, it just means that they refuse to accept suffering, torture and death. When Lear enters, bearing Cordelia dead in his arms, someone noticed that even Shakespeare seems to fall silent before this death, and the babblings of a mad old man will have to do as the eulogy of his “loved” yet “forsaken” daughter.

Actor Jorge Pinto is Lear, after having played Claudius in 2002 staging of Hamlet by Ricardo Pais. In the year of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Ensemble Company returns to an author who writes of a time “when madmen lead the blind,” now in the company of stage director Rogério de Carvalho, another wise and restless master.

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On YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMXvUhxW8T8

For More Information:
http://ensembledeactores.com/espectaculos

Audience Information:
More than 5000 people saw the 2016 performances in the Portuguese cities of Porto, Almada and Bragança.