Quaseilhas

Q U A S E I L H A S  [Quasi Islands] is grounded in the creation of physical, visual and sound performances within the dark zones of the Araujo family's afro-diasporic memories. The Araujos, author Diego Pinheiro´s maternal lineage, are descendants of once enslaved Yorùbá Ijesa peoples from the Nigerian city Iléṣà. It is the first original Brazilian theater work in an African language, Yorùbá.

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Using the Yorùbá oral literature structure, Diego Pinheiro composed an oríkì (literature that is about the personal, community or ancestral identity) for his family and community, Alagados de Itapagipe, a place where the relationship with the waters and their movements always touched daily life, be it from the sea, the mangroves or standing waters.

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Pinheiro subverts the oríkì logic, which is grounded in real facts, by substituting the forgotten for the invented. With the intention of establishing an affinity with his familial past, the artist composed the entire work in the Yorùbá tongue, a language that was spoken in his family three generations prior. Within the family nucleus, the language was called “switching tongues.”

This is the same logic behind the performance concept. The alárìnjó (a term adopted with the intention of creating a performative non-western amalgam between actor, dancer and singer) relate to their black family memories, producing a performative memory through a body that walks, dances and sings at the same time, within the same gesture and the same action. This kind of play between the director and the alárìnjó allows for a correlation between other afro-diasporic geographies besides Alagados de Itapagipe, as demonstrated through the set design and the performances by Laís Machado, Diego Alcantara and Nefertiti Altan. These geographies, configured in active space, are Camamu-Bahia, Quebra Machado-Bahia and Pantaleon, Guatemala. They are divided into three separate spaces within the installation, with the alárìnjó moving between them while audience members select one space from which to witness the work in its entirety, generating three parallel but different lived experiences for audience members.​

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*Original text written in Portuguese by the producers of this project, Plataforma Àràká. Summary and translation done by Nefertiti C. Altán.