Following an invitation from Arts Over Borders, leader of Ulisses: a European odyssey project, Marco Martins presents a play based on this work by Joyce, inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, in which the common, everyday life and the thoughts that continually fill the human mind are celebrated, from what happens in 24 hours to an everyday hero.
Marco Martins is a theatre and cinema director with a long career and experience of working with specific communities of non-actors, who has been interested in extensive creative processes in which he starts from life experiences and individual stories to arrive at artistic objects in which these stories become everyone’s, echoing through an outcome beyond the sum of the parts.
The old/new binomial, of enormous importance in each person’s life, appeals to basic issues such as ancestry, transformation, support, appreciation and wisdom, which, although often invisible or overlooked, are increasingly present. The possibility of viewing population aging as a crisis or an opportunity is closely linked to the question of memory and what is important to preserve or invent.
The chapter assigned to Lisbon takes place in a shelter, so Marco Martins returns to work with a non-professional cast to create a play that is based on the circumstances and experiences of a group of young people who live in foster homes, far from their families. The author proposes a reinterpretation of the work of Ulysses in which Bloom’s return home and his 24-hour odyssey through the streets of Dublin take on a new dimension.