On World Refugee Day, Paulo Matos presents a theatre performance based on the story of a man who flees his home country, where life has become hell, to seek a possible future elsewhere. The actor/refugee, alone on stage and in his destiny, carrying the despair and yearning of flight, wants to pass through, wants to reach the other side of the land, the sea, the border and life. Between him and the place he dreams of is a world of almost insurmountable barriers. He relives and retells the path, the journey, the very act of walking, travelling, crossing, in the hope of survival and an arrival in the “city of the rich world”, for “the start of a new life”. The journey is both external, in the confrontation with all the dangers and struggles, but also internal, within the character’s feelings, reflections and experiences. The text tells us about his inner dilemmas, his suffering, his severing of ties with his place of origin and his relationship with God, “that eternal absentee”. A refugee, a martyr to his involuntary fate and his voluntary escape, he declaims his inner pain, harsh and sharp like a hunter’s knife. He rises in front of us like a crucified man, he rises on stage, in the air, in the theatre’s space and in our gaze, to accuse us. This Refugee is not just someone, he is all of us.

Dissemination support