andreiaduarte-eng

Before Time Exists
Before Time Exists was conceived through a constellation of meetings and artistic exchanges between the artist Andreia Duarte and indigenous leaders, thinkers and artists such as Ailton Krenak, Davi Kopenawa, Denilson Baniwa, Jaider Esbell, Naine Terena, Zahy Guajaraja and many others. These meetings resulted in exchanges that illustrated the desires of the scene in drafts that established the concept of the work, especially between 2019 and 2021. All the refinement came to fruition with the collective creation and production that began to come together in August 2021.
Nothing matters to us between reality and fiction. In Before Time Exists we keep our gaze on the crossroads of different worlds that dialog and exchange about plural ways of being in life. We have no interest in resolving what is real or fictional in the staging, as there is no commitment to a truth in the creation.
The proposal demystifies the traditional role of the text in theater, understanding dramaturgy as the set of meanings proposed by all the scenic elements. We look for theatricality in the history of the subjects and in the play on stage, which points to cosmopolitan and collective issues, tensioning exclusivist forms of artistic production. The show is made up of artists who bring creation to life and are less involved with the idea of determining languages. Our composition flows in different ways, such as visual sound projection, through music, visual arts, performance, orality, song and dance.
Anything can happen in this creative space: the wind moves the scene and the industrial fan scratches reality. The work collapses onto the stage while counter-recording objects come and go, in a stage room that changes all the time, reinventing time in the theatrical performance itself.
Indigenous leader Ailton Krenak explains that in the time of myth there is no anxiety of certainty about the future of life, because there is no guarantee of duration. It is part of a magical temporality which, like a door, opens, inviting us to pass through and interact in the world as a collective experience.
Although urban society is in a moment of urgency, where all chronology is oriented towards capitalist production, ascendancy is active. When anthropocentrism threatens the world by degrading the environment, polluting the air, burning the forest or destroying the river, all the beings that inhabit the planet are altered and can take revenge on humans by spreading disease, causing earthquakes and hurricanes.
Faced with chronological time that reduces memory to individualism and makes us forget the primary meaning of existence - the air we breathe, the water we drink, the natural origin of all life - we ask ourselves: is it still possible to negotiate with the world?