By Heart | Tiago Rodrigues

• “By Heart” was first presented at the Onassis Stegi in December 2016, as part of a tribute marking 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare.
• “This play is essentially the portrayal of a search for the ultimate book, the only one that my grandmother would keep inside her head once her eyes failed her. During the show I also recall the story of Nadezhda, Osip Mandelstam’s wife. When the Russian poet was arrested and his books confiscated, she started teaching a poem to ten people at a time, in her kitchen. So that her husband would continue to be published in people’s memories. And that is what I try to do. I teach William Shakespeare’s sonnet to ten audience members at each performance. One of the sonnets from the book that I chose for my grandmother to learn by heart.” – Tiago Rodrigues
• “[...] the poem is born as a device to help us apprehend the world, simplifying the task of apprehending it. So rather than an end in itself, the poem would be a means or a tool to reach the goal of knowing a world by heart. Poetry would thus be the art of creating mnemonics. […] our physiology is helpless against the poetic invasion. Because of my work as an actor, some texts have got inside me, they have settled in and never left me since. They are discreet tenants who dwell in my memory, although they can be awakened at any time.” – Tiago Rodrigues
• Critics on “By Heart”:

“A performance as piercing, as intelligent, and as remarkable as it is moving. Tiago Rodrigues is a poet, a visionary, an artist who stirs the audience, who creates without a safety net, walking the slippery ground of memory and poetry, literature and death, and ultimately of theater.” – Armelle Héliot, ‘Le Figaro,’ 6/11/2014

“In the performance ‘By Heart,’ reality intrudes upon and shapes the narrative, a process that exalts language as the ultimate means of attaining freedom.” – Tiago Bartolomeu Costa, ‘Público,’ 28/11/2013

“When the public enters the room, there are 10 chairs on stage for 10 volunteers from the audience. Only then can the performance begin. [...] By the end, those on stage have formed a powerful sense of ‘we.’” – Gonçalo Frota, ‘Time Out Lisboa,’ 20/11/2013

“In a world where most of us memorise nothing more poetic than passwords and pin numbers, what is the point of a theatre piece built around the spectacle of 10 people learning a Shakespeare sonnet by heart? […] Rodrigues’s message, like Ezekiel’s, is political—a cry from the heart against the outsourcing of our culture to faceless geopolitical forces, whether fascist ideologies or internet search engines. The performance has humour, intensity, emotion, it delivers a strange satisfaction. And it shocks. How hard can it be to learn a sonnet? Hah… Wanna try?” – Arminta Wallace, www.irishtimes.com, 25/9/2015

• Tiago Rodrigues first appeared in Greece as an actor, participating in the performance “Les Antigones” by tgSTAN, presented at the Onassis Stegi in 2011. The production juxtaposed two contemporary versions of the Antigone myth, that of Jean Cocteau (1922) and that of Jean Anouilh (1944).