An oracular monodrama based on a mineral-organic testimony.
Red Mercury is an acoustic and visual journey following the delirium of the extraction of precious metals through the testimony of one of its most elusive icons, red mercury.
This monologue is conduced by the artificial speech of a synthetic voice, a LED wall vampire — he who sucks the blood of the Earth — a cluster of robot lights and a CGI landscape, at a threshold where each contaminate the other, revealing informations through a multi channel sound system, evoking their crossed paths as well as the many stories, myths and conspiracy theories surrounding them.
A liminal place were the unconscious colapse with the description of facts in a Forensic reconstitution of a deal in Red Mercury, the estranged metal that reveals itself between the tensions of factual and contrafactual story lines. A fragmented experience re-engineered throw paradigm shifts, were the agency and experience of truth is rendered polydimensional through an unfathomable stage machine.
Shot in Kampala, Uganda, during the COVID-19 lockdown, Mercúrio Vermelho is staged as a synthetic landscape through which the visitor dwells.
An original script written by architect/researcher Godofredo Pereira ( Head of Programme for MA Environmental Architecture in RCA) and Jonathan Saldanha, opening the two year period of Saldanha has the associated artist of Teatro Municipal do Porto.
CREDITS
Direction, music, dramaturgy: Jonathan Saldanha
Dramaturgy, text: Godofredo Pereira
Oracle: Biga Yut
Make-up: Jorge Kizzy
Camera: Mantas Kvedaravicius
Lighting design: Letícia Skryky
Light assistent: Renato Marinho
CGI: AALTAR System
Spatial dramaturgy: Catarina Miranda
Executive producer: Joaquim Durães
Sound operation, additional sound design: José Arantes
Additional sound design: Francisco Antão
Production: SOOPA
Co-production: Teatro Municipal do Porto
Support: Direção Geral das Artes and Nyege Nyege
