Broken hearts, Latin Americans, African Americans, and immigrants pulsed in a loop during the disco era of the 1970s. They all died. This is war. Miss Universe takes refuge in a bunker that was once a disco, in the height of fascism, in Copacabana, where she encounters gay ghosts. From a real archive, her uncle Richard Wagner’s, merging into fiction, We at the nightclub suffer together is a hyper-pOPERA where the bunker becomes a ghostly, utopian disco, reinterpreting homoerotic themes through an androgynous transfeminist lens. We at the nightclub suffer together is a utopian and ghostly opera for the dance of our ghost-archives and an empowerment of queer ancestral survival tools. It’s a theatrical, operatic gesture, born from a love note received in a nightclub in the ‘70s, to embrace suffering and to usher in a beautiful future ahead.
Artistic team:
Staging, Libretto & Composition: Diego Bragà
Performers: Diego Bragà, TBA
Musical Direction, Soundscape: Nico Spinoza
Musical Production: Pedro Joaquim Borges
Hypeer-Pop Electronics & Beats: Diana XL
Choreographic support / Movement dramaturg: Tânia Carvalho
Light design: Rui Monteiro
Production:
Alkantara, as part of Common Stories, a Creative Europe programme financed by the European Union
Co-production:
afroTopia e.V. / africologne FESTIVAL, as part of Common Stories, a Creative Europe programme financed by the European Union
Bolsa de Criação O Espaço do Tempo with the support of BPI and the "la Caixa" Foundation | 2024
With the support of:
TalentLAB 2025
OPART, E.P.E./Estúdios Victor Córdon
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Residencies
- TalentLab, Luxemburg, 17-21 February 2025
- Espaço Alkantara, Lisbon, 24-28 March 2025
- TalentLab, Luxemburg, 30 May - 9 June
- Estúdios Victor Córdon, Lisbon, 30 June - 11 July
- Espaço Alkantara, Lisbon, 8-21 September
- Espaço Alkantara, Lisbon, 29 September - 11 October
- O Espaço do Tempo, Lisbon, 04-15 November
Performances
- O Espaço do Tempo, Lisbon, premiere 14-15 November
Diego Bragà © Rui Palma