»People you don’t know, but want to know more about…«
An interview with director Marco Martins

It’s a writerly exercise to take a public bus or the subway and imagine the stories of the strangers surrounding you. Is this one in love? What job does this one do? Is she underpaid? If you never get the opportunity to meet them––and in the absence of documentary evidence, clear visual clues, or an eavesdropped phone conversation––you necessarily create fictions.

Strangers from everyday life will tell their stories on-stage at the Schaubühne’s FIND 2024 festival. They are seven carers and cleaners from former Portuguese colonies who commute from the suburbs of Lisbon to the centre in Marco Martins and Arena Ensemble’s piece »Pêndulo«. I speak to the director about immigration, vulnerable populations, and how to represent others’ experiences in the theatre space.

Joseph Pearson: There is a lot in a title. Yours is »Pêndulo«, or Pendulum. I think of movement propelled by weight. Where is the pendulum moving, and where is the weight?

Marco Martins: On stage, there is a sliding door that separates working and domestic space––a supermarket from the home, for example. But there is also a movement between the suburbs and the centre of Lisbon, between the workplace and the home. Finally, there is the wider frame, movement between the country of emigration and Europe, from the colonised to the coloniser––from Africa or Brazil, to Portugal. The quality and weight of these pendular movements keeps society in motion and functioning in a certain way. If that changes, our lives in turn will also change.

JP: You focus on immigrant women who work in vulnerable jobs as cleaners and carers. How did the Covid pandemic affect them?

MM: The pandemic made evident their role in our society and the fragility of their positions. The emergency brought into relief those who have and do not have privilege. At the time, I was working in England on a film project about Portuguese migrant workers in meat factories in the North––they were slaughtering sheep and turkeys. With the pandemic, these migrants found themselves in a terrible situation. We had to stop the film for half a year, and I found myself back in Portugal. There, I noticed that cleaners and carers were, at a certain point, the only ones in public transport, the only ones who kept commuting. A touching part of the reflection was how much they were needed in society.

JP: Why did you decide to focus on women?

MM: I didn’t plan to work exclusively with women. Initially, I had one man in the production. But societally––everywhere in the world––these jobs are mainly done by women. Immigrants with experience as carers, who are involved in this pendulum movement from their houses––where they care for their own kids––to a workplace where they care for someone else’s kids, are mostly women.

JP: If we look at the source countries for these immigrant women, we are talking about the former Portuguese colonies in Africa (such as Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe) and South America (Brazil). Do they face similar pressures and stereotypes?

MM: Yes, there is a huge range of perceptions about the different migrations. But it also matters when they came to Portugal. At the centre of the piece are two older women, around 70 years old, from São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola. Their story is linked to a long narrative of slavery. They speak about grandparents who worked in coffee plantations at the age of 14 and had very low or no wages. They didn’t go to school. The older ones, especially, have been through a tremendous life of violence and vulnerability, starting from the problems of getting working rights in Portugal. I wanted to manage the stereotypes ascribed to these kinds of workers and also show their differences. There is a new generation of carers and migrants who come from Brazil and have a superior level of education. Many came to study at universities and do this work to earn more money, which is a different position from previous generations of primarily African migrants who came with their families in the 70s or 80s. Many of the young women today immigrate entirely alone, and it can be tough and isolating.

JP: How can women in these professions participate in a theatre production? Do they lose their jobs to do so?

MM: Many of them have jobs that are not stable, so they can give them up and start again. Some get permission from work to do the play––we talk to the employers. Others were no longer working when we met them. But especially for many carers, it can be impossible.  Obviously, they are paid the same as any other actor for their participation from the first to the last day. When you go on tour a long time after the premiere and the first run, it gets more complicated––it’s challenging to have this play in repertoire for a long time, and the cast can be reduced. Also, and that’s very interesting, when they come back to the play after a time, sometimes their lives have changed, and we try to bring that into the play to update it. For instance, one of the workers was a cleaner who worked in a prison in Brazil. Having earned some money from the play, she was able to take security training and now works as a bodyguard. That is now in the play.

JP: I wanted to ask you about the current political debate in Portugal, as the far-right surged in this March’s elections––

MM: The role of the immigrant in the society has become very central. The extreme right claims they take our money, our jobs, even when there’s nobody else doing these jobs and young people are emigrating from the country––we Portuguese are a country of migrants and have moved all our lives to France, the United States. My work is about giving space and a vehicle to represent voices we don’t often see on stage. But I have to say that this isn’t exactly a political agenda, but because of my genuine interest in those I don’t know and want to know more about––people who surround me in everyday life to whom I wouldn’t otherwise have a connection. Theatre is a place to bring people together, and sometimes it can bring us to broader discussions about the issues, because in the media in general it is becoming rarer to hear these people’s voices. We have politicians and journalists talking about immigrants, but we don’t have immigrants talking about themselves.

JP: Tell me how you met and worked with the women in your production.

MM: It was a process: With a longstanding colleague, I started interviewing many women who commute, about a hundred of them. They are more than just one community, and it was clear from their personal stories that although they have points in common, they are also very different. But I started to choose not only the cast but also the central themes. My departing point is always the biography of these women, and then I construct a fiction.

JP: Would you say this is an auto- or docufiction?

MM: Not exactly. A fictional world is constructed to contain their lives, in this case, a supermarket, which is a place to problematize the questions I want to investigate. That way, I can use completely autobiographical material, such as their experiences of doing job interviews or some of the phone calls they make. If I bring a text that resonates strongly with the interpreter––if it is a portrait of their lives, even if it did not come from their experience––then we can include that. However, they never put on a character very different from who they are, even if the situation is a construction.

JP: What are your strategies for working with non-professional actors––or, perhaps we should call them »experts of everyday life«?

MM:  I’m very unhappy with the term »non-professional actors«. The other day, I was reading a text that uses the term »professional amateurs«. I like that very much. But I call them »interpreters«. Working with them is very different from working with professionals. The departure is a text that you discuss with them, and the dramaturgy develops from there. It’s a longer process: I take five to six months. In the first months, we don’t work every day, but we spend the last three months daily in the studio, telling stories about each other, doing improv, and creating fiction that can represent their stories theatrically. There is a physical aspect, and I always work with someone connected with dance and with a composer. We’re in the studio together in a laboratory. The »final« play happens late in the process. I want to add that many of these women––most of us in general––have never had an opportunity to tell their story to anyone, perhaps only to their husbands or sons. In the theatre, they are constructing and discovering a kind of identity. It’s a process, and I try to use every tool I can to tell their story.

JP: For example?

MM: Take the mobile phone, for example. We have the two spaces: the supermarket and their own houses. But there is a third space, a ritual space, of the mobile phone. It’s where they feel at home, it’s how they communicate with their children in Africa or Brazil, or with other families. I noticed these women always have their phones nearby. They’re always cleaning and talking, holding it under their ears as they do work. For the first time ever, I said: please use your mobile phones during rehearsal! The technology was complicated, but we even found a way to amplify their conversations. Of course, if it was something intimate, they would ask: listen, I’m here in rehearsal; do you mind the others hearing our conversation? I invited some of the families to be part of the play through these mobile phone interactions; we asked them questions. We had them talk about their lives. When the interpreters picked up the phone, it was obvious what the real problems were. Whether a son was being cared for by someone else, about the papers they didn’t get, about how they send money––letting the mobile phone into the rehearsal space made it all the more vivid.

JP: I can’t wait for the play, and to see you in Berlin.

MM: Me too.

A parting thought for those who have been reading this series of FIND essays so far: one of the things most stimulating about the festival is how it etches a picture of global theatre. I say »etch« and not »draw« as the conclusions are necessarily sketchy––in my case, the aperçus of one observer based on a small sample. But having now interviewed a half-dozen directors who will soon descend on Berlin, I find it impressive just how much the Covid pandemic has exerted its force on creation. There are pieces developed as pandemic-compliant for socially distanced viewers (»Not One of These People« was originally conceived as a five-hour durational piece through which small numbers of viewers could pass). There are other works for which the pandemic provided the thematic concerns: how state involvement in the economy could work differently (»Il Capitale«) or how urgent it is to tell the stories of the older or vulnerable members of our communities (»The Confessions« and »Pêndulo«). As Artist-in-Focus, Alexander Zeldin told me in our interview, »we live in the shadow of memoir«. I think the pandemic has entrenched the »documentary turn«, but many directors were already »fed up with make-believe«. The tragedies of the past years, along with the rise of distributive self-fashioning facilitated by social media, make abundantly clear the drama of the everyday. It’s also an opportunity, as in Marco Martins’ work, to give faces and humanity to those, as he says, surround him in everyday life to whom he »wouldn’t otherwise have a connection«.

I look forward to seeing you at the festival.

Pêndulo