'The Secretaries' premieres at Bombarda Gardens

Directed by Maria Inês Marques, the play 'As Secretários' is a "black comedy about patriarchy and feminism", which will be performed next weekend, on the 17th, 18th and 19th, at Sala Estúdio Valentim de Barros, after having premiered in January at Teatro do Campo Alegre, in Porto, according to TNDM.

The action takes place in the fictional town of Big Bone, Oregon, in the early 1990s, and centers on five female managers at a sawmill.

Confined to the office and to a job that aims only to continue the company owner's profits and "feed the employees' sexist fetishes," the five workers establish a secret ritual, with the aim of "redressing gender injustices."

The ritual consists of the monthly slaughter of a lumberjack on the first night of the five women's synchronized menstrual periods.

"Patriarchy, feminism, gender roles or capitalism" are, according to TNDM, the themes of 'The Secretaries', premiered in 1993 at the WOW Café in New York, in a show that, according to experts, "marked the North American theatrical avant-garde in the 1990s".

Thirty-two years later, the text arrives on Portuguese stages, in a "claustrophobic spectacle that recovers the aesthetics of 'slashers', a type of horror film in which a psychopathic killer stalks and kills his victims, "and of television fiction from the 1980s/90s, proposing a rigorous and uncomfortable study of the insidious infiltration of patriarchy into the professional, political and interpersonal universe of women."

Translated by director Maria Inês Marques, 'The secretaries' are Carolina Amaral, Crista Alfaiate, June João and Maria Jorge, while Lígia Roque plays the role of the boss.

The show is a Plataforma Uma production, together with TNDM, Teatro Municipal do Porto and Teatro Académico de Gil Vicente, in Coimbra.

With special participation in the 'voice-over' are David Pereira Bastos, João Vicente, Luís Moreira and Marco Mendonça.

The set design and costumes are by Pedro Azevedo, the lighting design by Teresa Antunes, the original music and sound design by Rui Lima and Sérgio Martins.

In the video is Fábio Coelho and, in choreographic support, Diego Braga.

On the 17th, the performance takes place at 9pm, on the 18th, at 7pm, and on the 19th, at 4pm.

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