© Magda Bizarro

TIAGO RODRIGUES / MUNDO PERFEITO – By Heart

CCL – Centro Cultural de Lagos
Sat 25 OCT, 21h30

By Heart is a piece about the importance of transmission, of the invisible smuggling of words and ideas that only keeping a text in your memory can provide.
It’s about a theatre that recognizes itself as that place of transmission of what you can’t measure in meters, euros or bytes. It‘s about the safe hiding-place that forbidden texts have always found in our brains and our hearts, as a guarantee of civilization even in the most barbaric and desolate times.
As George Steiner himself would put it in an interview to the TV program Beauty and Consolation: “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”.
But, bottom line, By heart is a training program for the resistance that only comes to an end when the 10 new soldiers know a poem by heart.


Written and performed by: Tiago Rodrigues
Text with fragments and quotes by William Shakespeare, Ray Bradbury, George Steiner, Oliver Sacks, Joseph Brodsky, among others…
Sets, props and costume: Magda Bizarro
Technical support: André Calado
Poster image: Westwood & Strides
Management and stage photos: Magda Bizarro
Assistance producer: Rita Mendes
Production: Mundo Perfeito
Co-production: O Espaço do Tempo, Maria Matos Teatro Municipal

TIAGO RODRIGUES (born in 1977) is an actor, playwright and director whose subversive and poetic theatre has made him one of Portugal’s leading young artists. His pace of work is astonishing: with is company, Mundo Perfeito, he has created thirty plays in the last decade that were presented at Portugal but also in France, United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Lebanon and Brazil.
At 21 years old, he gives up theatre school to work with the belgium theatre company TG STAN, that works since 1998, as co-creator and actor in several performances. He also has collaborated with other companies, choreographers and filmmakers and has been involved in teaching, curating and artistic community projects.
Since his 26 years old, that he works as guest teacher in the dance school at Brussels, PARTS, directed by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.
Deeply rooted in a collaborative theatre tradition, he has recently created pieces that stand out by the way in which they manipulate documents with theatrical tools, combining both public and private life and challenging our perception of social or historical phenomena.

O Mundo Perfeito has been fighting the forces of evil since 2003, the year when it was born in a kitchen of a two bedroom suburban apartment in Amadora. The company’s name translates the irony of a critic way of regarding the present and the idealism of an optimistic behaviour towards the future. It is also a name that makes people smile, for whatever reason. Organized around the artistic work of Tiago Rodrigues, who shares the direction with Magda Bizarro, Mundo Perfeito is recognized for the quality of its work and also by the continuous attempt at innovation and reinventing itself. Besides producing Tiago Rodrigues’ work, this small company is also known for it’s work with new authors, as well for the spirit of collaboration with portuguese and international artists.
In the field of dramaturgy, Mundo Perfeito organized the project Urgências, that resulted in three shows and presented more than twenty new texts of portuguese authors. Recently, in Hotel Lutécia, Tiago Rodrigues staged texts by some of Portugal’s foremost authors alongside with new texts by such international artists as Tim Etchells or Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. At the level of collaboration with international artists, stand out the performances Berenice, in co-production with the Belgian company tg STAN, Yesterday’s Man, by the lebanese artists Rabih Mroué and Tony Chakar with Tiago Rodrigues and the project Estúdios that since 2008 gave origin to several new performances and has promoted the collaboration of Portuguese artists with those of Belgium, The Netherlands, USA, Congo, France, Croatia, Brazil or Norway. With more than thirty productions, Mundo Perfeito has presented its work in theatres and festivals in countries such as Portugal, France, United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Lebanon, Brazil and Singapore. Mundo Perfeito has also been the cradle for upcoming artists in the last few years and will continue to produce emergent performance makers.
Among other recent works, the performances If a window would open (nominated for the Performance of the Year Prize by the Portuguese Author’s Society), Sadness and joy in the life of giraffes and Three fingers below the knee (awarded for Best Theatre Show of 2012 by the Portuguese Author’s Society and awarded with a Golden Globe of Best for Best Theatre Performance 2012 by the portuguese TV Channel SIC) stand out for its originality and for a permanent search of new ways to fight the forces of evil.