Também foi assim que as coisas se passaram

Abstract

This paper will address the issue of transmission of memory and its relationship with the Portuguese recent history, from the performative lecture of Joana Craveiro Um Museu Vivo de Memórias Pequenas e Esquecidas [A Living Museum of Small and Forgotten Memories] (2014). We tried to articulate the concepts of cultural memory with the small memory (which makes us unique in contrast with the large and widespread memory), from a narration of the post-memory generation, following the creative process of this work. In line with the artistic productions of Teatro do Vestido (the theatre company owned by Joana Craveiro), which since 2001 has worked exclusively with original texts of autobiographical nature, A Living Museum is built on several starting points, articulates various strands of a complex history and allows filling the blanks in the conventional narrative about Portuguese recent history. The macrostructure follows the chronological order – the dictatorship, the re-enactment of the day of the revolution, and finally, after the (celebratory) popular dinner, comes the subsequent revolutionary process (PREC). The material comes from a repository, and according to the artistic perspective of Craveiro’s and her selection criteria, is turned into an interpretative monologue that calls many other voices through an inclusive construction: “The Museum is mine, but it’s also of the people who had never had a voice and whose voice I wanted to hear.”