Quaseilhas

A Performative and Transmedial Memory

Abstract

Quaseilhas (“Almost Islands”), a theater play written by Afro-Brazilian author Diego Araújo, premiered at Barbalho Fort, Salvador da Bahia (Brazil), in April 2018. The set consists of a three-room wooden shed placed in the courtyard of a historic castle in Salvador da Bahia, designed to contribute to the entanglement of various memories inscribed in time and space: as the spectators can only attend the play in one room at a time, they have only limited access to the overall events of the play which moreover is transmitted in an unknown language, namely Yorúbà. The shed also refers to the stilts built close to the shore, where the majority of the population is of Afro descent. Araújo borrows features from the alárinjótheatrical form, which blends performance, song, dance, projections of clips, and music, drawing the spectators into a vortex of a polyphonous and intermedial process of remembering fragments of the Middle Passage, slavery, and the difficult living conditions of socially marginalized communities. In its aesthetic, the play also refers to Afrofuturism, highlighting how the memory of the past should be the basis for reimagining the future.