Bernardo Santareno evokes a gray and misty era. In the second half of the 20th century, Portugal was immersed in the morals and good manners of a Estado Novo regime with a musty smell. It was a time of fear, censorship, and oppression, manifested in a forced suffocation ordered by a fascist regime that would continue for the following decades.
It is to this suffocating environment that Santareno transports and envelops us.
A violent storm near the coast and the shipwreck of a fishing vessel provoke the despair of a fishing family. A tragedy is announced. Everything seems lost in this sudden turmoil.
A young couple, desperate, begs for the rescue of a father swallowed by the waves. If he is saved, they promise from then on to fulfill a vow of chastity.
The request was granted: the shipwrecked man was saved, binding the fate of this couple to a promise that increasingly seems impossible to keep.
This is the backdrop in which we meet the characters of this play. They live in a depressed and enclosed society. Appearances must be maintained at all costs. Daily life becomes tense and unbearable. For how long?
In this dive into the contingencies of the human condition, the true tragedy was yet to come.
BEYOND THE STORM
My debut in theater came through Francisco Leal, who challenged me to capture a series of videos for the play A Promessa by Bernardo Santareno, directed by João Cardoso in a production by Assédio Teatro.
The initial idea behind the challenge was to create about 4 videos in slow motion, using fixed shots, recording various sea states throughout the rest of the year and into the summer.
The goal was to do this in a close-up context, positioning the viewer, without any reference to the horizon line, at the lowest possible point to give scale to the waves.
In the rhythm with which it unfurls, the sea does not hesitate when it is angry. From the coast, in an instant, it seems to gain strength, only to soon begin losing it, dissolving in size, thickness, and color, breaking into foam until it reaches the rocks or the shore. A fleeting illusion; in a new cycle, another comes, and another follows… without stopping. And this is how we see it, hear it, feeling its moods inside.
Because it is timeless, it seems to have no time in our time. It is this permanence and unpredictability that I sought to capture in the videos I made for A Promessa.
For copyright reasons, the video that opened the play, which I share above, does not have the best part: the sound design by Francisco Leal with the music that was framed in the soundtrack for these images. In this version, and in order to share it on this site, I opted to keep the sound of the sea exactly as I recorded it.
Even though the image was the main focus, since the sound would be worked by Francisco, I always brought a tripod to the pier. After all, I confess, the “dive” into this scale of proximity seduced and challenged me, and I ended up recording many hours that gave me immense pleasure.
It’s often like that. The almost obsessive search for quality material that might later be selected for post-production, and the preference for filming openly—not focusing so much on what is happening but on what might happen—led me for many days, weeks, and even months, to capture the waves breaking on the shore. “Who works for pleasure never tires.”
One of the other videos, which served as a separator between the scenes, was supposed to feature seagulls as the backdrop. In the end, what I found were tailor birds (common terns) that often lose their small prey to the seagulls. If this scene separator suggested a period of calm and less tension in the narrative, the intruders happened to parade for long minutes, exactly when I didn’t expect them!
During the final rehearsal, before the premiere at the Teatro Nacional de São João in November 2023, I was surprised by a huge translucent screen, about 10 meters high, covering the stage, where the video of the “Storm” was projected in the foreground, with the actors starting the scene just a few meters behind. As a separator between the scenes, the video then became part of the set during the action. João Cardoso’s direction and Francisco Leal’s sound design made this premiere a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life.
After the storm, the calm. It’s good to make the most of it while it lasts.
The play was presented on various stages across the country. And the sea from the coast of Praia Grande and Praia das Maçãs was able to continue its journey after the performances in Porto.
How I wish I could have gone too!
Dramaturgy | Regina Guimarães
Direction | João Cardoso
Scenography and Costumes | Sissa Afonso
Sound Design | Francisco Leal
Lighting Design | Filipe Pinheiro + Nuno Meira
Image Capture and Scene Video | Jorge Murteira
Fight Choreography | Miguel Andrade Gomes
Cast | Ângela Marques, Benedita Pereira, Daniel Silva, Inês Afonso Cardoso, João Cardoso,
João Castro, Maria Inês Peixoto, Pedro Galiza, Pedro Quiroga, Rúben Pérola,
Susana Madeira
Assistant Director | João Castro
Executive Production | Maria Inês Peixoto
© Photos | João Tuna, Teatro Sá da Bandeira – Santarém
Co-production | ASSéDIO / Teatro Nacional São João