Saramago comes on stage: blindness in the century of screens

Albert Prat read

, by José Saramago, during the pandemic on the recommendation of his partner.

Although it had been published in 1995, it was one of the readings that skyrocketed during the Great Confinement, along with

de Camus or the

by Daniel Defoe.

They looked for experiences in books and movies in which to reflect, whether they made sense or not, to face those unusual days of confinement.

Prat did not know that, two years later, he would go on stage at the Teatro Nacional São João, in Porto, to become one of those blind men that Saramago locks up in an insane asylum by decision of the current ministry to contain the spread of an epidemic of origin uncertain and that paradoxically invades the blind with white light.

It is almost irremediable, and also easy, to draw parallels between the real pandemic and the literary one, so that Nuno Cardoso, artistic director of the Portuguese theater and staging, turns against it.

In his meeting with the press last Tuesday, during a rehearsal break in Porto, he explained that he hesitated between adapting Eça de Queiroz or Saramago and finally opted for the Nobel Prize before the coronavirus.

The pandemic context affected the logistics and timing of the project, but Cardoso did not want it to contaminate anything else and rejected a suggestion to introduce masks in this version.

He does not even find equivalences between diseases: "This is a work about the epidemic blindness that the man with full health has, it is not a work about a pandemic caused by something external."

More information

José Saramago: "The allegory comes when describing reality no longer works"

A scene from 'Essay on Blindness', Saramago's novel, in a version adapted by Nuno Cardoso for the São João National Theater in Porto.

Joao Tuna

Published before the explosion of screens and networks, the

continues to offer lessons about the present, which perhaps explains why it is the Nobel Prize novel that has been staged the most times, in addition to inspiring the film by Fernando Meirelles (

) .

which opened the Cannes Festival in 2008, with Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Gael García Bernal as protagonists.

“Blindness is also a parable about our social media world.

We do not realize that we are cloistered in our narrative, that we are the crowd that surrounds us, we are a crowd of ourselves.

The blindness of the mobile is that of a person who does not see himself or others, ”reflects Cardoso.

"The blindness that Saramago speaks of is the blindness of reason," he stresses.

The play, which is the first co-production between the Teatro Nacional São João and the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, opens this Friday in Porto and will open the season in Barcelona on September 29.

Then functions are planned in Braga, Aveiro and, again, Porto.

Spoken in Portuguese and Catalan, it stands up with 14 actors (half Portuguese, half Catalan) who exchange roles and dialogue in both languages.

In the fall of 2021 Cardoso locked himself in for 48 hours with 20 Catalan actors to do the

He selected seven who for two weeks have been participating in daily eight-hour rehearsals in Porto.

On Tuesday, three days before the premiere, the director was still polishing details of the audiovisual projections, the lighting, the intensity of the scenes or the entrance time.

Coexistence is rehearsed in the asylum.

"I knew a little about Saramago's work, but when you prepare for a work, you try to fully understand what happens to the characters, the degradation in which they fall in their confinement, how desperation and exploitation arise, the worst of society is there”, observes the actress Gabriela Flores.

"The lesson that this show gives us is a warning: gentlemen, barbarism is there," she adds.

The actors Jorge Mota and Maria Ribera, in a scene from 'Essay on blindness' by José Saramago, at the São João National Theater in Porto.João Tuna

Dehumanization and solidarity.

Hope and anxiety.

Saramago's book is built on antagonistic drives, from the apocalyptic man is a wolf to man to man is good by nature.

The eternal duel between Hobbes and Rousseau.

“It tells us why the human being instead of going towards goodness goes to the other side.

Blindness is the inability to put yourself in someone else's place and the work asks us questions: When does empathy end, does humanity end?

"Saramago has the great ability to deeply understand the human soul," says Clàudia Cedó, responsible for this stage version.

“For me it is a story about survival, morality, love, selfishness,

Although it ends up being natural, the bilingualism of this

has not been an easy start for the cast, in the opinion of the Portuguese actor Jorge Mota, who had already cut his teeth in Luxembourg in some multilingual works.

Mota's international work somehow illustrates the close connection between Portuguese theater and avant-garde European stages for a few decades.

A recognition that has also led to the fact that two of the main Portuguese directors have been signed in France: Tiago Rodrigues left the direction of the Dona Maria II National Theater to take charge of the Avignon Festival and Tiago Guedes has resigned from the direction of the Municipal Theater Porto to lead the Lyon Dance Biennale.